MATCONCAT: An Application for Exploring Concatenative Sound Synthesis Using MATLAB
The author has developed an application in MATLAB implementing concatenative sound synthesis (CSS) using feature matching. CSS is a process of combining short pieces of recorded sound to construct new sonic forms. Historically, CSS was developed for text-to-speech synthesis, but recently it has been explored as a musical sound synthesis method. The results have been called ‘musaics,’ the sonic analogue to mosaics made from small pieces of colored tile. Though this MATLAB application is less sophisticated than other audio mosaic algorithms, it is meant to be a free and open application for demonstrating and experimenting with the process. The author has used this application to create many interesting and entertaining sound examples. It has also been used to create several electroacoustic compositions. The application, and all of the sound examples presented here, can be downloaded for free from http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/˜b.sturm.