Dead Air FM
This is Mumu’s project documentation for The Code of Music, Week #4.
Showcase First!
Play it urself!
Inspiration
This has always been one of my favorite terminal-based animations. I even ended up becoming Discord friends with the creator. What really draws me to this piece is its atmosphere and narrative—whether it’s Frums’ music or Plaao’s animation, there’s something deeply immersive about it.
Frums - Credits EX: Original animation in command line
Now, I want to create something similar, but with my own take on it.
What I’m After: The Feeling of a Distant Broadcast
A forgotten radio station still running tirelessly, transmitting fragments of sound, distorted signals, ghostly echoes into the void. Uncertainty, incompleteness, and fragmentation, like the residual imprints of a cassette tape played too many times.
Sound Design
Same old friend Splice came through again. This time, I focused on: glitch, radio, ambient, and drone. Initially, I wanted to find vocal samples, since a lot of my inspirations use chopped voice fragments. But everything on Splice was either women scream or deep voiced men whispering seductively. What I needed was something fragmented, broken, or words that are barely comprehensible. So I gave up on the vocal thought.
Final Selection:
- Four longer ambient sounds for texture.
- Several sub-one-second samples that can be used as percussive elements.
I also found an amazing sample pack & highly recommend it to everyone!! (If I ever seriously get into making music, this is the pack I’d definitely use.)
Visuals
Discarded Ideas
Initially, I wanted to explore a mounting effect, inspired by something like this one below:
But it didn’t quite align with my current theme. Hopefully I can use this idea for something else in the future.
Process
Variable BPM and Time Signature
I added a BPM input adjustment, as shown in the video below:
You can see from the color palette that I built this on top of Professor Luisa’s code with modifications. I also added time signature adjustments, but changing it refreshes the entire pattern.
Ambient Sounds
Coding the visuals
Happy Accidents:
Initially, I wanted to use VT323, but I forgot to include the CDN. Turns out the default monospace font looked good enough, so I just left it as is.
