The Evolving Oscillator performs a simple genetic algorithm on two wavetable oscillators concurrently. Both start with a randomly generated waveform of the length specified by the user. Positions of that wavetable are then randomly replaced by values of one cycle of a sine wave. The process can be thought of as a crossfade at the sample level. Most of the interest lies in the interaction between the two wavetables as the positions changed are randomly chosen.

The Evolving Oscillator was created as an external for MAX/MSP. The external was programmed in C and the user interface was created in MAX/MSP and finally compiled as a standalone MAX patch.

A follow-up program is in the works that will allow the user to load their own samples and process them in the same way.

A 2 min. sample of the sounds this produces (mp3)

The Evolving Oscillator is currently only for use on Macintosh OSX.
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The Evolving Oscillator is currently featured on ruccas.org