Tentacle Monster Oscillator
lyonbeckers
This is a simple electroacoustic instrument which is controlled by the tentacles of the monster. Each tentacle controls 6 different oscillators. Wowee! Each of those oscillators are passed through a main oscillator for some neat additive synthesis. Gee! That oscillator is in turn passed through a lowpass filter! All of these things are controlled by what the monster does. Spooky! To Control The Monster: Hold R + Scrollwheel: Adjust the main gain node. Default value is 0. Don't forget to turn it up! Hold W + Mouse movement: Wiggle! This activates the wiggling. Hold Q while wiggling: All of the tentacles will move in unison. Hold S + Scrollwheel: Allows you to adjust the gain of each of the tentacles' oscillators, which is visually represented by the size of the tentacles. Let go of the S key and the tentacles go back to their original size, while the oscillators keep their new gain values. Neat! Hold D + Scrollwheel: Make those tentacles go faster! Or slower! Click and Drag: Give that tentacle monster a spin! The faster it goes, the higher the pitch! Hold E: Activate camera controls! This is where things get tricky: you can pan the camera's pivot point by clicking both mouse buttons and dragging. You can also zoom in and out by scrolling. Arrow keys also pan, kinda! The camera rotates around the pivot point forever and ever, so play around with giving the monster a sense of orbit or make it disappear mysteriously into the fog! Esc key: Fullscreen! Also to get outta fullscreen! Technical Things: What the heck is happening here? Well lemme tell you: When you're controlling the wiggle of that there monster, the mouse's X position on the screen controls the bones of the tentacles to do a quaternion rotation on their X axis. Likewise for the Y axis. Each bone's rotation is updated one at a time unless you're holding down Q while you wiggle. The frequency of each of the tentacles' oscillators is controlled by the Y rotation of the tentacles' bones. Those oscillators are then passed through another oscillator whose waveform is shaped by the X rotation of the bones. Confusing, I know! It'll make more sense once you try it! Known issues: -Sometimes the monster gets lost when the camera controls are used too liberally. Don't hold it against him, it's awfully foggy where he lives. Follow me on twitter: @lyonbeckers
