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Bill_McGrath comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm experimenting with reproducing the sound of the really horrible humming in Mathematica. I haven't changed the duration of notes yet, but I've experimented with trying to make things sound as horribly off-key as possible. I've started out with just changing the pitches of the notes by adding normally-distributed noise. So far the main discovery I've made is that for greater effect, the magnitude of the change should be proportional to the length of the note. Any ideas for things to try?
I'm using MIDI sounds, which are the simplest to set up, but also have the drawback that every pitch must correspond to an integral semitone, which limits how horrible things can sound. Also, what is a good standard MIDI instrument for simulating humming?
When I was reading that part, all I could think was "Man, I have to try do that..."
There are ways around this: a program called Scalar allows you to build microtonally tuned scales and set them up to be controlled by MIDI. Also, Native Instruments' Kontakt allows you to change the tuning of instruments and map the new tuning to a keyboard.
Scalar is free but hard to use: I was never actually able to figure out how to set it up to hear the scales I'd built - but my laptop seems to have a grudge against MIDI devices anyway. Kontakt is a lot easier to use but costs a couple of hundred euro.
Also: Most decent DAWs will have a pitch bend function, that might be an easier way again to get around it. I'll check if Reaper can do it, and get back to you. (Also, I might do this myself once the semester is over.)