Here is a cool concept.

I think many of you are familiar with the Twitter service; even if you aren’t using it yet, you probably are aware of the fact that there are millions of people all around the globe twitting like frenzy using this service (defined by some as the SMS of the Internets) as it’s the 3rd most used social networking site standing right after the Facebook and MySpace.

It’s a micro-blogging site where registered users can update their status in a minimal fashion, for the people following them to see, and where people can stay up to date about the status of their buddies, work related info, status of various projects etc. by simply following the account providing the relevant info. Some people use it to keep in touch with busy friends without much hassle in their busy day schedules, and it is also being used for following status of projects provided that they use Twitter to announce their stuff. I’m pretty sure there are many other active purposes of usage, people are inventive.

A cool (if not coolest) purpose of usage (for me anyway) is, I think, germinated from the SuperCollider codes Dan Stowell started to post on his own Twitter blog as status messages, a concept which later evolved into a SCTwitting collaboration as the act of posting little code chunks (called “SCTwits”) that make cool sounds is found interesting by other SuperCollider users. The fun comes from the limitation Twitter employs: Your posts can not be longer than 140 characters! This limitation tickles the creative mind and influences the creative process in a way that one strives to find the balance between simplicity, humor, coolness and of course the subjective beauty of the end result, but in the end, it’s all limited by 140 characters.

SuperCollider is a very expressive language with its generic tool set and various syntax shortcuts, yet its still surprising to see what people can fit into 140 characters of code. SCTwitting people typically follow each other on Twitter, and the experience is fun, inspiring and educating.

Here is the link for the mailing-list topic where it all started:

http://www.nabble.com/sctwitt-td22745438.html

You can find the blog addresses of some of the contributors to follow under the topic in the mailing list. And here is mine if you want to follow me:

http://www.twitter.com/earslap

This is so fun and brain twitching that I want to keep on doing it forever (unless everyone quits and I start to feel retarded for posting stuff there for some long time by myself without anyone following, of course). Here are my contributions so far; with the resulting sounds embedded in case if you don’t have a machine with SuperCollider around, or if you reached to this page while searching for what SuperCollider is all about. This is an expressive language!

This one sounds like a bad trombone being tested by an incompetent player:

{a=LocalIn.ar;LocalOut.ar(Mix.ar(x=SinOsc.ar((Decay.ar(Impulse.ar( [4,4.005]),1e3*a.abs)*50), a).distort));x;}.play;//tryingharder_to_noavail

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This one is glitchy:

{f=LocalIn.ar(2).tanh;k=Latch.kr(f[0].abs,Impulse.kr(0.5));LocalOut.ar( f+AllpassN.ar(Pulse.ar([2,3],k*0.01+1e-6,0.9),1,k*0.3,100*k));f}.play

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Switching scenes:

play{f=LocalIn.ar(2).tanh;k=Latch.kr(f[0].abs,Impulse.kr(1/4));LocalOut.ar( f+CombC.ar(Blip.ar([4,6],100*k+50,0.9),1,k*0.3,50*f));f}//44.1kHz

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Abusing FFT buffers:

play{f={LocalBuf(512)};r={|k,m|RecordBuf.ar(Pulse.ar(8,m,6e3),k)}; r.(a=f.(),0.99);r.(b=f.(),0.99001);Out.ar(0,IFFT([a,b]).tanh)};//44.1kHz:)

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Granular sampling (uses one of the infamous default sounds that ships with SC):

play{t=Impulse.ar(75);Sweep.ar(t,150).fold(0,1)*PlayBuf.ar(1, Buffer.read(s,"s*/*".pathMatch[2]),1,t,Demand.ar(t,0,Dbrown(0,2e5,2e3,inf)))!2}


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Thirsty anyone? Water sound (to my ears):

play{Mix({a=LFNoise1.ar(0.2.rand);DelayC.ar(BPF.ar( WhiteNoise.ar(Dust2.ar(a*a*4**2).lag(8e-3)),10e3.rand+300,0.09),3,a*1.5+1.5,45)}!80).dup}

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Easy IDM:

play{AllpassC.ar(SinOsc.ar(55).tanh,0.4,TExpRand.ar(2e-4, 0.4,Impulse.ar(8)).round([2e-3,4e-3]),2)};// #supercollider with bass please…

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Please follow and contribute if you like monkeying around with SC!