I figured out how to make percussive noises with feedback. The trick is to shut the level of each feedback channel way down whenever it makes a noise, and boost it way up whenever it doesn't. To make a rhythm, I added a delay so the boost waits for a specified time before starting another cycle.
Some notes on running the Supercollider patch: In order to reduce duplication, I've moved some of the code into a class called FeedbackMatrix. To run this episode's patch in Supercollider:
- Download FeedbackMatrix.sc and eyeballsun_060603.sc.
- Go into your SuperCollider directory, and create a subdirectory under SCClassLibrary. Call it eyeballsunClasses.
- Put FeedbackMatrix.sc in eyeballsunClasses.
- If Supercollider is running, recompile the libraries.
- Open eyeballsun_060603.sc in Supercollider and execute each block in order.
