David Wessel and members of the research team at Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies design high-tech music systems that give performers and composers new tools with which to create music. Musicians can explore complex sound representations by viewing them from different perspectives such as those illustrated below.

http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu

To the right is a view from a sound editor that displays the changing frequency and amplitude of sounds as a function of time. Time increases to the right and frequency increases in the distance. A snapshot of the frequency range and amplitude values at any time can be obtained by moving a "shadow plane" along the time axis.

Below, a more traditional way of displaying the amplitude of a single frequency as it changes with time. The arching lines represent different frequency components of a sound.

Images created by
Amar Chaudhary
(Cal M.A. '98) using
Open Sound Edit program.

Back to Wessel essay

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