Fibonacci Tone Scapes

Click on the name for the mp3 (rendered to audio with the Roland Sound Canvas).

Intro - About this type of tune - mp3s and midi clips - To find out more

Intro

These mp3s were rendered to audio with the Roland Sound Canvas. It has sounds similar to those on the wave table soundcards you get on many computers nowadays.

You can DOWNLOAD your free trial of Tune Smithy to play any of these tunes endlessly - and by varying the parameters you can make them into new tunes of your own. To find out more, see Play & Create Tunes as intricate as Snowflakes - First steps.

What is a Fibonacci Tonescape?

These add pitch to the Fibonacci rhythm. The tune goes up (or down) by a different interval for each size of beat in the rhythm. So for the rhythms with two beat sizes the tune moves by one interval for the long beats and another interval (usually in the opposite direction) for the short beats. For the rhythms with three beat sizes, it's the same idea, but you have three sizes of interval for the three sizes of beat.

This pitch variation helps to bring out the structure of the rhythm. It's not quite a sloth canon, but the rhythm is fractal, and the pitch variations almost repeat.

Since the tune is based on a succession of intervals without any underlying scale structure, the pitches don't have to fit into any finite conventional scale. If you use just intonation intervals as the basis for your fibonacci tonescape, or any other intervals apart from equal divisions of the octave, then you keep getting new pitches as the tune continues.

To avoid pitch drift as much as possible, normally you choose the interval sizes to match the rhythm. For instance if there are many more short beats than long beats, you need to make the interval for the long beats larger in proportion. If you don't do this, the tune will rapidly drift in pitch up or down. Tune Smithy can automatically calculate what interval sizes you can use to minimize the pitch drift. Normally there is still a bit of pitch drift, but you can make it very small, perhaps only a fraction of a cent in many minutes.

Alternatively, one can explore drifting pitch for effect, perhaps together with the rebound option in the Ranges for Parts window.

Another approach is to use the new alternating pitch option. This alternates the direction of the interval for each interval size as the tune continues, which keeps the tune steady in pitch.

For the technical background, and details, see Fibonacci rhythm and tonescapes

up - top

Mp3s and midi clips

For the midi clips, click on the red or blue notes below. Or click on the name below for the mp3 again.

alternating three beat fibonacci tonescape [4 mins]	cousin to the wind [4 mins]	evolving starscape [4 mins]	fib tscape short beat nearest 13o8 3o2 alt [4 mins]	fib tscape short nearest 3 beat 9o8 3o2 7o8alt [4 mins]
Fibonacci 1 2 3 exp tscape [4 mins]	Fibonacci rain shower [4 mins]	flight [4 mins]	harmonics and sub harmonics with fibonacci tonescape [4 mins]	intersetellar voyager returns home [4 mins]
jazzy fibonacci tonescape [4 mins]	LM L fibonacci tonescape [4 mins]	LMS LS L fibonacci tonescape [4 mins]	music for a wild polynesian party [4 mins]	oboe and kalimba tscape [4 mins]
piano major and minor chords tonescape [4 mins]	tone scape a [4 mins]	Waiting for the cows to come home [4 mins]

top

(1 minute ) (4 minutes )

up - top

To find out more

Most of the tunes can continue endlessly (for all practical purposes). So, in these recordings, they fade out at the end of the clip.

To find out more, see Tune Smithying.

* Note, some of these clips may not play correctly in your web player, especially if you use Quicktime - seems to be some sort of an issue to do with the exceedingly short notes in them. You may get stuck notes or notes left out altogether They play fine normally on soundcards and synths, and play fine in real time in Tune Smithy. It's mainly an issue with the quicktime embedded player.

up - top

Bookmark this page: - and many more - What are these?

All downloads on this web site are free of spyware etc