Vibration Lab Models Music

It took 14 years for Cynthia Bruyns to discover the name of the CD that changed her life.

Bruyns, a UC Berkeley computer science graduate student, walked into an independent record store in Michigan in 1991 and randomly picked up the electronic music album Volume 1.

"I bought the CD because it had really great cover art and came with a really fat book. I also thought it was cool that it came from London. I listened to it, and thought it was fantastic – I really got into that music," Bruyns said.

Fourteen years later, Bruyns has developed an audio software may soon be used by electronic artists in their trade.

Vibration Lab, a software designed by Bruyns, can generate any sound of a percussive type instrument. The program not only simulates the sound of any instrument like the drums, but also can produce sounds from imaginary instruments.

"The whole point is to generate sound in a way that is musically interesting, and linking that to an environment that will allow for performance and playback of those sounds, either for a music setting, like music composition software, or for people who are actually trying to change the object themselves and see if they like the way they sound," Bruyns said.

The program allows the user to select a point on a certain shape and hear the vibrations produced at that site. By changing parameters, Vibration Lab accommodates a wide range of virtual environments, some that produce sounds not heard before.

"By pushing the boundaries of the model itself, you get to make sounds that are not physical but interesting," Bruyns said.

However, creating the program is not as simple as predicting what sound is made by calculating expected vibrations. Bruyns also had to consider the type of material of the instrument, the interior, such as air or fluid, and the surrounding environment, such as what gases are present and the force they exert on the device.

Although there are other systems that currently exist that also simulate sound, none are as user-friendly as Bruyn's.

"When you're using those programs, it's not intuitive what you're looking at since it's a two dimensional view, one-dimensional object interface," Bruyns said. "Having the actual 3-D object there, reaching in with your mouse and selecting the location where you're going to hit that actual object yourself is something software synthesizers aren't doing right now."

To program her software, Bruyns used modal analysis, a mathematical model, to break down the vibrations and analyze the different features of sound like frequency. In order to complete what she called the most challenging part of the research, Bruyns enlisted the help of UC Berkeley civil engineering professor Robert Taylor, who "is really well known and a pioneer in finite element analysis."

Bryuns' Vibration Lab can be applied to other fields beside music. Animation companies have expressed an interest in using her software to automatically generate sound for animation. Films like Toy Story or Shrek that feature 3-D models have to produce the sounds in the environment, and put the effects in later.

"What they're interested in is instead of having to go in manually and program interacting sounds, is to just run it as a simulation and have the sounds generate themselves," Bruyns said.

However, Bruyns has waved off such interest, as she still hopes that the primary focus of her software will be to aid musicians, a bias most likely stemming from her own involvement in the music industry.

Bruyns runs an electronic music label named Muti Music and is currently involved with another label called Pretention Music. Along with her boyfriend electronic artist Justin Maxwell, Bruyns produces records and releases them in Germany and London.

After college, Bruyns attended Stanford to earn her master's degree during a time when a lot of parties featuring electronic music started to emerge in the Bay Area. Bryuns became involved with throwing events, which eventually led to her record label and a new love, being a DJ.

"At some point, I wasn't satisfied with the music I was hearing at parties, and I wanted to try DJing and became obsessed with it. I was doing it hours and hours a day, and practicing well into the night," Bruyns said.

Because of the intensive courses of Berkeley's graduate program however, Bruyns had to cut back on her time as a DJ and instead currently focuses on balancing her record label, her classes, her software, and working part-time in one of Apple's audio groups.

Bruyns, whose favorite artists include Maxwell and Arc, plans to continue working on Vibration Lab by adding more facets such as the vibrations produced from air enclosed in a percussive instrument and the exterior "free" air that exists in the surrounding environment. She also wants to gain feedback from different artists to determine what features would be useful in the program.

"To me, the best thing to do is to meet with people like Steve (Reinmuth) and interact with people and ask what would you like to have if you were the user," Bruyns said.

Reinmuth is an artist hailing from Oregon whose work have partly inspired Bruyns to create Vibration Lab. His sculptures, which also function as musical instruments, feature exotic and intricate detailed designs.

Bruyns was exposed to Reinmuth's work through Carlo Sequin, Bruyn's advisor and UC Berkeley computer science professor. Sequin designed and built a bell that Reinmuth needed.

Bruyn hopes that when released, Vibration Lab will help artists like Reinmuth to better help in their trade.

Although science has traditionally been viewed as the complete opposite of art, many scientists have combined both loves. As fields become more interdisciplinary and cross disciplines, many are finding ways to incorporate a once separate passion into academics and technology.

"There's a whole generation of people who are into art and science as well...there are people who are trying to find ways to have technology augment and improve art," Bruyns said. "If you think about it, there really is that capability of presenting experiences, displays and environments to people that aren't possible without the use of technology."

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