Shepard Tone / Endless Riser

Tips & Tricks
1

been trying to achieve this effect in renoise for 2 hours now:

And yes, I know this effect can be achieved with The Endless Series by Oli Larkin or maybe even with the Shepard Tone By mda but I wanna do this without those…

what i’m doing at the moment is:

white noise – > flanger --> render sample (256 lines)
put the sample on 3 three tracks,

track1(low) C1
track2(main) C2
track3(high) C3

Automating all 3 tracks 12 semitones up with an pitcher vst…

automating volume on:

track1(low) -INFdB to 0dB
track3(high) 0dB to -INFdB

result: pure shit.

can anybody help this poor fella out? :wacko:

2

i never got it to be seamless either :confused: i tried with more parallel tracks though i think and with sine tones.

3

That video gotta be tricked in some way right??? I mean… the same note is struck, only the pitch bend is automated… tf happens?

4

Anyway here’s a riser from outta nowhere I guess you can flange chorus whatever it
It’s pretty endless in a way that you’ll have to know how long it’ll need to be then you can set the lfo frequencies.
riser

5

nope. look when he edits the notes in the pianoroll.

thanks dude… but uh… that’s not endless/seamless <_<

6

Lol I mean everytime the thing loops… 3 same notes then? same chord? :P duh

yeah I know. Ask the guy from the vid then. and don’t forget to ask how endless it is. Can he render the same vid for 3 minutes and it keeps rising? very curious. ;)

7

“sorry nicky”. assume that refers to Nicky Romero’s track, from the Future Music dvd… hmm…
I tried to make a standard 8-sine shepard rise in renoise as well, in 8 octaves, but couldn’t quite understand how they should overlap. a bit frustrating, indeed :)

8

A while back, I made a song with this effect using single-cycle waveforms, and seem to recall that a harmonically rich waveform is much more likely to produce a convincing result.

Probably has to do with the psychoacoustic effect where each tone (there are always multiple tones) has to cover a frequency band wide enough to “cover up” the effect

The theory behind a risset/shepard tone is actually quite simple. Consider the following

  
  
 / / / / / / / / / / / / /  
 / / / / / / / / / / / / /  
 / / / / / / / / / / / / /  
/ / / / / / / / / / / / /

This graphical pattern would give the impression of a steep angle. If we converted it into sound (going from left to right), we would actually hear an endless rising tone.
The trick is to find a sound that has the right harmonic content (make the stripes “fatter”, so to speak). Or alternatively, add more stripes.

  
 ///////////////////////  
 ///////////////////////  
 ///////////////////////  
///////////////////////

Also, it’s important to balance the amplitude (fade sound in from the bottom, fade it out is it approaches the top), so your ears does not pick out any specific frequency at any time.
Another aspect is the tempo, how often the signal will repeat itself, If we study the previous text pattern closer, we’ll see that it repeat itself for every 4 characters

  
 /| / /| / /| / /| / /| / /| /  
 / |/ / |/ / |/ / |/ / |/ / |/  
/ /| / /| / /| / /| / /| / /| /  
 / |/ / |/ / |/ / |/ / |/ / |/

When time is mapped to an axis along with frequency, you could say that the tempo corresponds to the “angle” of the stripes.
It’s not possible for me to visualize a less steep angle with just text, but imagine that those stripes were repeating for every 16th character, or going down instead of up?

Once the theory is established, you’ll find that it’s possible to create endless chord sequences based on these phenomena.

9

So it’s a barber shop pole with phase cancellation? ;)

10

I tried to do it with ring modulators but it “pops” at the beginning of every cycle :confused:
XRNS

11

Why don’t you post that excerpt of your song…
Perhaps we can learn from it…

12

I only tried it in reaktor and almost got there but not 100 pct , but cutting of highes and low freq’s on the master with a gentle roll off. really improve the overall effect

as danois said earlier , verry important
quote
Also, it’s important to balance the amplitude (fade sound in from the bottom, fade it out is it approaches the top), so your ears does not pick out any specific frequency at any time.
end quote

13

Why don’t you post that excerpt of your song…

Download: risset.xrns (7kb)

When you play it, notice how the “building harmonics” part will gradually sound more and more smooth.

Also, the instrument comes with a pitch envelope which, when enabled, would make the effect “truly smooth”,
but since my experiment was actually about creating the chords at the final patterns I have turned it off (otherwise, you wouldn’t hear them biggrin.gif)

14

i really love those shepards. 1st one made with renoise:
http://scene.org/file.php?file=%2Fparties%2F2008%2Fevoke08%2Floopcompo%2Fcosmiq-infinite_up.zip&fileinfo
http://scene.org/file.php?file=%2Fparties%2F2008%2Fevoke08%2Floopcompo%2Fwayfinder_-_way_up.zip&fileinfo

play them looped.

15

Wayfinder’s loop gets me every time. I remember the first time I heard this it blew my mind. I’d heard the Risset tone illusion before, but never done in such a funky and creative way.

16

Here’s mine. 8 voices each an octave apart.Pattern long LFOs control the frequencies of ring mods, LFOs control the volume of each track, fading in at the low freqs and out when the high frequencies come in.
To do this yourself just create one track for the first voice and get the settings right, then duplicate the track 8 times and juxtapose the LFO resets as I have here (Thank god for collapsable tracks and groups).
You have to let the first pattern bring in all of the tones, then the pattern loops on the next pattern. Might be worth mapping a hydra to all of the LFO, but you would have to wait for the first pattern to complete (I think?)
I imagine you could do this with a sample and pitch shift too, but aliasing would become a problem, could probably get around it with a filter.

Edit: see next post for a good one

17

I’m sorry guys (not really), but you’ve got to hear this!

Ok so I added a speed control via hydras, and improved the volume enveloping (to my ears atleast).
I also dropped a cabinet simulator in the effects.
Never ending accellerating Ferrari, hayabusa, V8, Death Mobile!!! :drummer:
I can’t stop listening to this!
help me!
Better Sheppard tone!

18

awesome! nice gearing-action in there too hahah…
wow, gotta check this out in detail over the weekend, nice job!