Sounds

A track makes sound by naming it. Each stem names its sound after its colon: stem kick: club for a drum kit, stem bass: pulsebass for an instrument. This page lists every name the model is told about. All of them work in the code view and in the stems view’s inspector.

The tables are read from Songcode’s sound catalog, so they match the app.

#How sounds are named

stem kick: club {
  kick [x... x... x... x...]
}

stem bass: pulsebass {
  rhythm [x... x... x... x...]
  notes  [c1 c1 eb1 g1]
}

• A kit is the sound of a drum stem.
• A drum is a row inside it, named for the drum: kick, snare, hat. The same name gives a different drum in each kit.
• An instrument is the sound of a stem that plays notes.

A name that is not in the catalog fails the check, and that stem is left out. See errors.

#Drums

A kit stem holds one row per drum. The 14 row names are the same in every kit.

Not every kit has every drum; the tables below list what each has. A kit asked for a drum it lacks plays its nearest one, and the check says so once.

#Drum kits

Songcode’s own kits: 4 synthesised, 3 recorded. A synthesised drum is an instrument: decay 150ms shortens it, velocity changes its tone, and a kit stem that holds one drum can tune it with a notes row.

Every kit here has all 14 drums. The drum kit control in advanced asks for one of these or one of the kits below by name.

#More kits

18 more kits, each with its own set of drums. Every drum is synthesised by Songcode, and no recording of any drum machine is used.

#Instruments

53 instruments built by Songcode. Each is a finished patch with a range it sounds right in. Notes outside the range still play, with less character. Velocity is expression, and a ~ after a pitch slides into the next note.

bass

leads and stabs

keys

pads

plucked strings

transitions

#Singers

6 singing voices built by Songcode. A singer is a sound like any other, and it also sings words: a lyrics block puts words on its notes, one syllable to a note. Without words it sings “ah”. See lyrics.

Each voice is formant synthesis: a pulse at the note’s pitch stands in for the vocal folds, noise stands in for breath and consonants, and five moving resonances stand in for the mouth. It is computed in your browser, like the other instruments. No recording of a singer is involved and no model was trained on one. It sounds like a synthesizer singing, in English.

#Oscillators and noise

Raw waveforms, for when a patch is built by hand from filters and envelopes.

#Recorded instruments

Sampled instruments: short recordings of single notes. Some sounds, here and among the General MIDI instruments, were recorded played more than one way (plucked, bounced, tongued short, muted). A word in a line or the technique setting picks one: see ways of playing.

The sounds with more than one way of playing:

Every pitched sound also takes the styles of playing, which need no recording: stacc, marc, ten and port, or in plain words short, punch, held and pushed. Bowed strings add spic (bounce). On bowed strings, winds, brass and choirs each note is shaped by the player, and the bow and breath settings set how.

#Percussion

30 hand drums, shakers, bells and blocks, each with several recorded takes. A stem on one takes a rhythm row and no pitches. take 3 picks a take, counted from 0, and take [0 2 1 3] picks one per hit.

#Textures

Recorded and synthesised noises for atmosphere. Takes work the same way.

#Ambience

8 beds for the air around a track: rain, a record’s surface, tape, birds, crickets, a stream, the sea and a fire. Each one is worked out in your browser, in stereo, and goes round with no seam for as long as a note holds it. None is a recording.

stem air: rain {
  rhythm   [x]
  take     1
  highpass 300hz
}

One hit a bar keeps a bed going through the track. take picks the kind, counted from 0: rain runs from a drizzle to rain on a window, vinyl from a clean record to a dusty one. Set its level low in the mix table, around -16db, so it sits under the music. thunder, under textures, is one roll and plays once per hit.

#General MIDI instruments

34 instruments in the General MIDI set, for brass, reeds, strings and the like. Most are recordings of single notes, and a few are synthesised. They are plainer than the instruments above and useful when a track calls for an acoustic colour.

trumpet, muted_trumpet, trombone, french_horn, brass_section, flute, pan_flute, shakuhachi, clarinet, oboe, violin, cello, string_ensemble_1, tremolo_strings, choir_aahs, voice_oohs, accordion, church_organ, steel_drums, music_box, sitar, banjo, koto, electric_guitar_clean, electric_guitar_jazz, overdriven_guitar, distortion_guitar, slap_bass_1, fretless_bass, taiko_drum, orchestra_hit, reverse_cymbal, pad_warm, pad_halo

#Where the sounds come from

• The synthesised kits, instruments, singers and ambience are defined in Songcode’s catalog and computed in your browser.
• The live and rock kits, the recorded instruments, the percussion and most of the General MIDI set are recordings from open sample libraries, served by Songcode. songco.de/licenses credits each library.