soundgarden

Back to index

Sound: Ocean and Bass

The ocean sound consists of three parts: noise, two melodic voices sounding together, and a bass voice.

Whenever a new wave cycle is triggered, the pitch of the two melodic voices is randomly selected from the given music scale. The second voice will only select remaining pitches that are higher than the pitch of the first note, ensuring that two different pitches are always heard. Wave cycles vary in length, which is constantly modified by Perlin noise. Each wave cycle will trigger a low pass filter sweep that will fade/in out the melodic voices and noise by adjusting the filtered out frequencies.

The bass sound is also generated by this module and is faded in/out like the melodic voices and waves It takes the note of the lower voice of the two melodic voices and transposes it down by one octave. The bass can be heard in most parts of the island, not only close to the ocean. Two audio sources for the bass are placed underneath the island, the idea being that there is some basic resonance caused by the ocean waves that can always be heard. Whenever the player comes closer to the ocean, the notes of the waves come together with the sounds of the bass, forming a chord. The sound is attenuated: Moving to the northern tip of the island or the hillside outlook will noticeably reduce its volume.