Standing Sound guide

Overview

Standing Sound measures every moment of a sound and sets it down in 3D where it belongs: pitch around you, time going away. It records the room as a 1080p, 1440p or 4K video with the sound, free and with no sign-in.

A corridor of ivory points running away from the viewer, a vermilion line of sung notes and faint rings
The house piece in the Corridor: the sung line in vermilion, its partials in ivory, the beat passing through as rings.

About sixty times a second the sound is read twice: a long FFT for the partials, a short one for change and brightness. Each reading becomes points, and every point is a real measurement.

The sung or played note is the fundamental, found with YIN and drawn in the one vermilion. Its harmonics are hollow squares; other partials are filled ones, cooler as the sound grows brighter. Noise is fine dust.

In the Corridor time is depth: what you heard a moment ago stands further away. The pitch class goes around you, so every C sits at the same place on the ring, and the octave is how far from the middle it stands.

A beat is an onset, found where the spectrum jumps; it passes through the room as a ring. The tempo in the reading comes from how often those jumps repeat.

Hold it, and the room stops: turn it, come nearer, and touch any point to hear that moment again. A recorder keeps the last four minutes of what was heard.

Take records the room with what you hear as a video at 1080p, 1440p or 4K (MP4, or a WebM in Firefox), wide, tall or square, drawn at that size whatever the size of your window. It is free: no sign-in, no watermark.

Three sample songs by cyberyogi come with it, Bhakti, Cassettes, Rain and Astral Caravan, free to use in what you record here.

It runs in your browser with WebGL2 and Web Audio. Nothing you play into it is uploaded.

Open Standing Sound Start here

In this guide

  1. StartWhat you need and your first sound in five steps.
  2. Every controlEvery control in the panel, one line each.
  3. Three looksOne sound in the three rooms.
  4. Keep your workThe picture, the take in 1080p to 4K, the JSON and the PLY.
  5. KeysEvery shortcut, and what each one does.
  6. HelpWhat to do when something goes wrong.