Abstract:

This paper presents a visual compositional tool inside PatchWork (PW, Laurson and Duthen 1989, Laurson 1996a) called Viuhka. This work has been motivated by the need to form bridges between various compositional ideas, visual components found in PW and control of sound synthesis. Viuhka allows to generate complex, multi-layered textures either for instrumental music or for sound synthesis. The user can create Viuhka patches visually by choosing a set of boxes and making connections between them. After feeding appropriate inputs, the user evaluates the patch which results in the final musical texture. The output can be inspected either as a chord sequence or as a piano-roll representation. If necessary the patch can be edited and re-evaluated. As a final step the output can be converted to a synthesis control file.