MATConcat: An Application for Exploring Concatenative Sound Synthesis Using MATLAB

The author has developed an application in MATLAB implementing concatenative sound synthesis (CSS) using feature matching. CSS is a process of combining short pieces of recorded sound to construct new sonic forms. Historically, CSS was developed for text-tospeech synthesis, but recently it has been explored as a musical sound synthesis method. The results have been called ‘musaics,’ the sonic analogue to mosaics made from small pieces of colored tile. Though this MATLAB application is less sophisticated than other CSS algorithms, it is meant to be a free and open application for demonstrating and experimenting with the process. The author has used this application to create many interesting and entertaining sound examples, as well as compositions. The application, and many sound examples, are available at http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/∼b.sturm.