Zeno’s Music Box

This Pure Data patch is a random sample player. Although quite simple, it can create some beautiful landscapes and generate music infinitely.

It will also automatically fade in & out each sample, which is important to avoid clipping and also lends a more human feel to the performance. The Global Rate will adjust the amount of time until the next sample is triggered and is fun to play with intuitively. The Sample Stop will fade out the current sample and is useful for creating quiet moments. The blue boxes are related to reverb, which are vital to hiding the transitions between samples.

Requires use of Pd-Extended

It's free and open source. Available for Mac, Windows, & Linux.
http://puredata.info/downloads/pd-extended/releases/0.43.4

Watch a demo

Want to add your own samples?

Let's imagine that you have 71 samples you want to input. (Must be WAV's, MP3's not supported)

• Rename the WAV’s to be numbered sequentially and move them into the folder named "WAVs".
  • Example_1.wav, Example_2.wav, Example_3.wav...
• Open the patch within Pure Data: ZenosMusicBox_NilsFrahm.pd
• Edit the ‘open’ message box with the relevant filename.
  • Before: open WAVs/NilsFrahm_$1.wav start
  • After: open WAVs/Example_$1.wav start
• Edit the ‘random’ object box to be the total number of WAV's you're inputting
  • Before: random 48
  • After: random 71
• Done! Just turn up the ‘output~’ volume and click the ‘Begin & End’ toggle to start playback.

Useful Utilities

• Macsome Audio Splitter - automatically cut-up an audio file into small pieces
• Max Converter - easily convert between MP3 and WAV

Credits

I’d like to give a shout out to the amazing musicians which I’ve cutup and sampled in this patch.

• Ayako Hotta-Lister - London No Yoru No Ame (Album: The Japanese Koto)
• Nils Frahm - Part II (Album: Electric Piano)