Sloth canons

Click on the name for the mp3 (rendered to audio with the Roland Sound Canvas).

Intro - About this type of tune - mp3s and midi clips - To find out more

Intro

These mp3s were rendered to audio with the Roland Sound Canvas. It has sounds similar to those on the wave table soundcards you get on many computers nowadays.

You can DOWNLOAD your free trial of Tune Smithy to play any of these tunes endlessly - and by varying the parameters you can make them into new tunes of your own. To find out more, see Play & Create Tunes as intricate as Snowflakes - First steps.

What is a sloth canon, and what makes these canons fractal?

In a sloth canon, every part plays the same tune, at different speeds. The sloth canons you make with Tune Smithy are special, since, as well as sloth canons they are also fractal in time - they use exactly the same architecture at many different time scales.

If you leave out the first, fastest part, then speed the rest of the tune up a bit so that the second part reaches the tempo of the original first part, then it will play exactly the same notes as before (perhaps octave shifted). The old third part will now play the notes originally played by the second part, and so on.

The first three examples (3, 4 and 5 beat fractal tune) take this a bit further. Each faster part is quieter then the next slower part and the fastest part is almost inaudible. If you play the tune faster and make it so quiet that the first part becomes inaudible, then the entire tune sounds exactly the same as before, just a bit quieter.

Also the tunes "almost repeat" - if you listen out to any section, say one minute of the tune, then wait long enough, you will eventually hear it again. But the entire tune never repeats. This also is a result of the fractal construction of the tune. This approach gives one way to make a possible musical analogue for the Koch snowflake fractal.

For more about this, see Play & Create Tunes as intricate as Snowflakes - Sloth Canons and Seeds and Fractals

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Mp3s and midi clips

For the midi clips, click on the red or blue notes below. Or click on the name below for the mp3 again.

3 beat fractal tune [4 mins]	4 beat fractal tune [4 mins]	5 beat fractal tune [4 mins]	amble thirteen limit harmonic fragment [4 mins]	approaching instability [4 mins]
arabic 17 tone maqam Iraq [4 mins]	arabic 17 tone maqam ussaq [4 mins]	ascending above the clouds [4 mins]	away on a long journey [4 mins]	Bells of Faerie [4 mins]
cello flute pentatonic [4 mins]	Cheerful panpipes [4 mins]	echo effects in rests [4 mins]	echoes [4 mins]	eleven limit pentatonic [4 mins]
eleven limit pentatonic tubular bells [4 mins]	eskimo hexatonic [4 mins]	experimental [4 mins]	fiddle tune [4 mins]	flute and guitar with non melodic perc [4 mins]
flute recorder bell partials [4 mins]	flute3 with accompaniment [4 mins]	fractal percussion major chord [4 mins]	guitar not polyrhythm [4 mins]	happy sad [4 mins]

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hawaian scale [4 mins]	impressionist palette [4 mins]	Islands fiddle playing [4 mins]	java [4 mins]	jazz scale [4 mins]
Journey through unknown territory [4 mins]	kalimba showcase [4 mins]	koto and shakuhachi [4 mins]	long melody [4 mins]	major and minor scales fractal [4 mins]
major chords round the cycle of fifths - Bach temperament [4 mins]	marimba with string quartet [4 mins]	modern pelog scale cello music box and perc [4 mins]	music for a summer's evening [4 mins]	Navigating the pacific by stars, wind and waves [4 mins]
oboe piano [4 mins]	oboe trombone and flute harmonies with guitar [4 mins]	old indian gamut [4 mins]	orchestra [4 mins]	orientalish [4 mins]
partial reflection [4 mins]	piano bassoon with ocarina glock [4 mins]	pigmie scale [4 mins]	Playing the shakuhachi on a rocky shore [4 mins]	quartet [4 mins]

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recorder and guitar melodic minor [4 mins]	recorder quintet [4 mins]	restful atonality [4 mins]	sense of ceremony [4 mins]	seven limit slendro harp [4 mins]
shakuhachi + marimba with rests [4 mins]	shakuhachi and koto [4 mins]	shakuhachi with sea waves [4 mins]	slendro with detuned octaves [4 mins]	slendro without detuned octaves [4 mins]
snow falling on a sunny day [4 mins]	sparse scale - jazzy [4 mins]	string quintet [4 mins]	String trio harmonic minor and septimal minor with honky tonk piano [4 mins]	strolling outside the pagoda [4 mins]
Upside down harmonics+12th harmonic upwards [4 mins]	Upside down trumpet [4 mins]	very way out [4 mins]	virtuoso violin with flute [4 mins]	wind quartet with viola [4 mins]
windchimes scale [4 mins]

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(1 minute ) (4 minutes )

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To find out more

Most of the tunes can continue endlessly (for all practical purposes). So, in these recordings, they fade out at the end of the clip.

To find out more, see Tune Smithying.

* Note, some of these clips may not play correctly in your web player, especially if you use Quicktime - seems to be some sort of an issue to do with the exceedingly short notes in them. You may get stuck notes or notes left out altogether They play fine normally on soundcards and synths, and play fine in real time in Tune Smithy. It's mainly an issue with the quicktime embedded player.

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