Week 87: Paul Stretch

23 Oct, 2022

12 years ago, while I was studying, I came across an article that described an ambient Justin Bieber song. Sounded like an oxymoron to me, but also intriguing. A few seconds in, I was completely hooked.

I remember taking note that the song was made using something called PaulStretch, but I guess I never investigated further back then. I’ve thought about PaulStretch several times since then, and this week I decided to look into it. Apparently, it’s made by Paul Nasca, and he even put a C++ and python version on GitHub.

I’m always fascinated by people like Paul. He reminds me a bit of Tom Erbe. They seem like people who able to operate at the intersection of mathematics, code, sound in an aesthetic way. And that rather than building just for themselves, are able to provide beautiful sound tools.

One of my piano recordings before stretching:

After 8x stretching:

Next week

Tuesday I’ll be doing a Shader Prototyping workshop hosted by Patricio González Vivo. Really excited to learn from Patricio. He’s the creator of Book of Shaders and I am perpetually in awe of the work he shares in his twitter feed.