Together with Richard we worked on the real-time sound synthesis using Csounds. Richard is an experienced musician and also a programmer. He’s creating an interface in Python for working with Csounds.

We had to know how long the sounds should be to create a breath soundscape. On the internet we found that the average breath rate is between 12 and 20 breath cycles per minute. My average breath rate is 6 per minute and when I’m very calm it is 3 per minute:

To be on the safe side we also recorded Richards’ breathing pattern which was indeed more towards the average:

On Richards’ graph we also printed the temperature values (the yellow line) which is good for indicating breathing in and out.

From the very start I had the idea to do something with the sound of bamboo wind chimes. I like their soothing sound when the wind makes them bang together. The idea was to create a chime from our breaths. As we started experimenting with the Csounds bamboo file (which is just code by the way) unexpected and fascinating sounds came out: