Ambitor
Overview
Figure above shows the overall appearance of user interface display for Ambitor.
It is based on the concept of ice-cream with toppings. You can choose the flavours and the toppings you prefer.
The parts with numberings 1, 2 and 3 (red box highlighted) are the main sound input which are the "flavours" of the ambient music that you can choose from.
The "toppings" will be the number 4 and 5 which are the Game of Life (cell automaton) and sequencer.
User's Manual
Main Sounds (Flavours)
There are five selection for the main sounds which are sound file that you can choose from your computer, built-in sounds which are collections of raw sounds in the app library, drone, noise and oscillator.
Sound File
You can choose your own track and load into the app by simply clicking the option shown above. After that, adding effects such as filters, panning, delay and reverberation or change the playback speed and pitch shifting to get the ambient sound.
Built-in Sounds
There are collection of sound files that can be found in the built-in sound library from the app that you can experiment with. The categories are brass, percussion, strings, woodwind, natural sounds and other miscellaneous sounds. The effects that can be applied on the sound is similar to sound file (previous selection).
Drone
Drone is an essential element in ambient music therefore, it is included in the app. Various of effects offered in the app define the texture and timbre of the drone. Such effects consisted are randomness for the pitch changes, frequency cutoff and bandwidth; filter and reverberation.
Noise
Noise is also the part of the main sound input! Two types of noises which are white and pink that can be choose from the app and effects such as filters, equaliser, delay and reverberation to gain different sound effects which can be unexpected.
Oscillators
Oscillators have the electronic texture which can enrich the sonic qualities of the ambient music. Users can choose the waveform shapes of sine, triangle, square and sawtooth to decide the output of the signal. Other effects such as frequency controller, filter, equaliser, reverberation and a classic vocoder for the control parameter.
Game of Life (Toppings)
Users just simply draw whatever they want on the black blank space provided and various sound will be produced based on the location of the cells that the users drawn. The colours shown in the figure above indicate the volume of the sound from the location of the cells which can be controlled through the sliders. After the cells have been drawn, click the "X" button to make the cells move and control the speed of the cells to move through the control parameter located at the top. There is default setting of the cells' shapes that can be chosen below the drawing space.
This life algorithm is developed by John Conway from Princeton University which is based on the following rules:
- A cell is either alive or dead.
- If a live cell has two or three live neighbours it remains alive, otherwise it dies.
- If a dead cell has exactly three live neighbours it becomes alive again, otherwise it stays dead.
Sequencer (Toppings)
The step sequencer is like a synthesiser and users can draw on the pitch, velocity, duration, filter cutoff and panning. Other control parameters included reverberation, delay effect and tempo change.
Others
To begin with, select the Audio Setup (besides the Master Volume) before making some sound from the app. Choose the suitable sampling rate based on the CPU's performance. Both of the vector size for I/O and signal advisable to adjust 128 and above to get better playback sound quality.
Make sure the loudspeaker icon on the Master Volume is turned on before using the Ambitor (red colour indicates volume has been turned on). It is located on the right hand side of the app.
If you are ready to record your work, click the "Save as" button and select your file destination, name your file before you click on the recording button. To stop the recording, just click the "X" button again. Be alert that there are 3 steps on recording the work successfully and if missed one of the steps, your work will be lost!
The video tutorial below will further explain the features with sounds output for better understanding before downloading the app.