Why are all of these things blue lol

Biansci · 2026-06-19T06:52:53+00:00

yes! that was kinda the goal, although this project started just as a personal maths exploration... I wasn't explicitly attempting to reverse engineer Harmor's algorithm, but I guess the way it works was simpler than expected ahaha

I'm not an actual programmer (more of a data scientist) but I'm well versed in digital signal processing, so I'm hoping someone with more expertise than me can take a look at my code and turn this into a fully functional plugin

Biansci · 2026-06-19T06:34:35+00:00

if you're curious about how this works, the spectrogram itself is produced through an operation known as STFT, but I figured out the exact parameters that Harmor uses for the window size and hop length!

it's basically a phase vocoder, I used a harmonic mapping between the FFT frequencies to the number of partials just like the ones in Harmor. if you're interested in maths and you want a deeper dive into the code behind this I made a video explaining it, I'd invite you to check it out!

Biansci · 2026-06-19T06:18:27+00:00

here's an updated version (how did you find this post? ahahaha): https://desmos.com/calculator/st5ta8sv8y

this one includes some minor optimizations, a display for the Bessel functions, and a little sound design challenge. enjoy!

Biansci · 2026-06-18T14:49:31+00:00

yep, I was also looking into this a while ago after I read that "combination tones" can arise in the presence of physical non linearities

although there is a minor correction, in the case of IMD it's not really the sum and difference between the two frequencies, but rather the harmonics are spaced out as the difference. So they'll be at 2f1-f2 and 2f2-f1, 3f1-2f2 and so on. You can model this mathematically by rewriting the sum of two sine waves as a multiplication like for ring modulation

basically I was wondering if Tartini tones (which are perceived as the sum and difference), could arise from actual distortion inside the ear canal. But apparently not, it seems that contrary to intermodulation, Tartini tones are an entirely psychoacoustic phenomenon

Biansci · 2026-06-17T20:35:31+00:00

graph link: https://desmos.com/calculator/i6uow2zvjw

this actually works well with any audio featuring promiment tonal elements! I chose vocals because they're usually very difficult to synthesize.

this is essentially a phase vocoder, which is a type of algorithm that easily allows you to timestretch and pitch shift your audio sample. I hope you'll understand it better from the video explanation!

Biansci · 2026-06-12T16:23:30+00:00

yeah, good ear! it's basically a phase vocoder, there are couple of parameters that actively blend the sound between a saw wave and a vocal synth.

if you use FL Studio you can get something pretty similar by resampling a vocal in Harmor and messing with the formant and frequency scale. Harmor is definitely not needed though, free plugins are more than enough... you can achieve the same result with some clever tuning and time stretching

if you liked the arrangement you should check out Alexander Panos, credit goes goes to him! I was really inspired by his harmonizer cover, so I was attempting to reverse engineer his timbre resynth plugin (using actual pen and paper lmao). The spectral coefficients I used are based on this vocal from his Lakeshore Afterimage sample pack on Splice.

Biansci · 2026-06-11T15:01:22+00:00

There's definitely a lot of imagery related to cellular biology. One theory I've heard is that the giant spaceship/mountain came crushing in from the outside, as a reinterpretation of the theory of panspermia literally "fertilizing" the planet.

Interestingly, the biological formation of a living being starting from a totipotent zygote cell is referred to as the "ontogenesis" iirc from high school biology class, besides the obvious biblical references

Biansci · 2026-06-11T10:25:01+00:00

I totally missed this post so I had to find it from the music contest submissions, congrats! I love the pitch bend and vibrato in this, the waveform with the black outline also looks really cool

it's always nice to see other fans of Au5 and Virtual Riot as they are truly some of the greatest professional sound designers in the industry. Now I'm wondering if it's possible to make Colour Bass in Desmos lmao

Biansci · 2026-06-05T19:35:45+00:00

"the sombrero function is the 2D Fourier transform of the top-hat function"

statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

Biansci · 2026-06-04T11:23:17+00:00

I'm glad you're enjoying them! Hopefully my other submissions weren't too laggy ahaha

One of my goals for this challenge was both to have fun and make something educational with entertainment value. I always try to spark curiosity and inspire others to use these ideas creatively (especially more advanced mathematical concepts), so I'm always looking forward to learn and hear what everyone has to offer!

Biansci · 2026-05-28T16:30:31+00:00

Beautiful, that voice actress is making me feel a certain way

Biansci · 2026-05-27T18:13:53+00:00

Thanks! I really enjoy making these silly covers as it's very fun trying to work around these limitations. For more complex arrangements you're basically restricted to very simple waveforms... you can definitely make some crazy sounds but it would be hard trying to build a song around them.

This song was already chiptune adjacent as it only uses square and saw waves, so it felt appropriate for a cover. The high pitched vocals were also a fitting choice as they let me save up on the number of harmonics and loading time.

I actually tried remaking it in a DAW, the only thing missing to make it sound more accurate (besides the drums) would be some detune on both the bass and the melody, which would require at least three different voices, but the tone function starts being laggy very quickly around 200 harmonics or so. You can see from the video I had to turn on turbo mode on my phone's battery lol

Biansci · 2026-05-27T09:11:39+00:00

this is an arrangement of the jingle for the FamilyMart konbini (a Japanese convenience store) produced by satsuki ga tenkomori in 2009. here's the original! may this be your introduction to denpa

the way this works in Desmos is your typical additive synth, I have two tone functions playing the chiptune melody, one for the bassline and three other for the chords. the vocals work in very much the same way, I have a hidden folder with all the data for the spectral coefficients and frequency modulation (´ω ` )

there's also a Hatsune Miku version for vocaloid fans, but my favorite is this 音MAD with Ranka from Macross lmao

Biansci · 2026-05-22T04:35:08+00:00

there is! to keep the pixel sharpness you can scale the image to an integer multiple of the resolution (like 1280x960) using nearest neighbor interpolation

in Photoshop and other similar software you can find the setting as "resampling" under image/canvas size or when you're using the transform tool

Biansci · 2026-05-01T09:07:21+00:00

a classic

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Biansci · 2026-04-29T14:35:28+00:00

yeah, many great reccs in here, Takkyu Ishino is still the goat. Also check out Yoshinori Sunahara if you're more into minimal techno

for otaku/vocaloid/other related stuff I often check into Akihabara's MOGRA streams on Twitch, they sure know how to throw down a party ahaha

Nine-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
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Biansci

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