{"id":68153,"date":"2022-04-21T10:37:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T14:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/?page_id=68153&preview_id=68153"},"modified":"2025-02-28T15:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T20:07:10","slug":"ezdsp","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/life-at-peabody\/career-services\/student-alumni-stories\/creative-wire\/ezdsp\/","title":{"rendered":"Apr. 26, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\n\n\n\n

EZDSP: From Production to Programming<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Apr. 26, 2022 | by Garrett Eckl
Edited by Carolyn Dzul<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My journey into the world of music technology began with a simple question: how can I make a completely unique sound? I started by creating music with the presets built into my DAW (digital audio workstation). I tweaked those presets to make more personalized sounds, and I eventually began making my own presets from scratch, but in the end, I was still always working within the confines of an instrument that someone else had made.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

EZDSP (Easy Digital Signal Processing) is a project that I conceived early last year at the height of pandemic lockdowns. As I sat in my room tinkering with a song for the 10th straight day, unable to recreate the sound in my head, I thought to myself \u201cI really wish there was a straightforward way to create my own fully customizable sounds.\u201d I had been through the process of creating digital audio plug-ins before and knew how time-consuming it was to create even the most basic of effects. I went to my advisor, the always helpful Dr. Geoffrey Wright<\/a>, who pointed me in the direction of SOUL, a new and groundbreaking programming language designed specifically for audio programming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SOUL<\/a> is a fantastic language that allows you to write digital signal processing code that is both fast and memory safe (it can\u2019t easily crash or mess up your computer\u2019s hard drive). The thing that makes SOUL so unique is that it comes with a runtime environment that can optimize your code based on the host system\u2019s available processors. This means that applications you make with SOUL can customize themselves to run most efficiently on the hardware your users have available. For example, someone with a dedicated DSP processor could harness their advanced computing power, while anyone using their computer\u2019s built-in processors wouldn\u2019t get left behind. Win-win. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I began experimenting with SOUL, I started to really enjoy it, but I began to run into the same issue I had with almost every audio programming language I\u2019d encountered: how could I apply this technology to my own music? At the time, I was applying my SOUL effects to audio via the command line, and I think most people who have used the command line would agree that it\u2019s not a particularly inspiring place to create music. No matter what software I tried, it always seemed like there was a compromise between customizability and compatibility, with limited options for someone wanting to make popular music with advanced production techniques. I started researching potential ways to bridge this gap, providing users with a way to apply granular audio processing in a traditional DAW setting.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what exactly is EZDSP? It\u2019s a fully customizable (and fully free!) plug-in that allows the user to modify its own source code from directly within the plug-in itself. Want to create a delay effect that changes based on what key signature you\u2019re in? Sure thing. Want to make a filter that processes each measure of music in a different way? No problem. Want to waste ten hours creating a mediocre equalizer instead of just admitting to yourself that you\u2019re a bad mixing engineer? This is the plug-in for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an example, here\u2019s a \u201cwobbly delay\u201d effect that I created with EZDSP, where the delayed signal is scaled based upon how close the playhead is to the nearest 8th<\/sup> note. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guitar riff before EZDSP:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n