Compose yourself

The Gong folder is only needed for the sound “Gong”: unpack it, put the folder Gong anywhere and show it to JCself once in the tab “Klang” › Gong with “Gong-Ordner wählen …”, see Manual › Gong. The recordings are friction tones on tuned gongs, played by Peter Heeren. If you already have the folder: it has been restored with Update 105 – please download it again and replace the old one.

Terms of use for the folder “Gong”. The recordings are protected by copyright (© Peter Heeren). You may use them free of charge with JCself – including in pieces you compose with JCself and then publish, perform or sell. You may not pass on or sell the recordings themselves, nor offer or use them – in whole, in part or edited – as a sound library or instrument outside JCself. A credit “Gong: Peter Heeren” is appreciated but not required.

The program itself is in German. The manual gives every German label with an English translation.

New in Update 113

Mosaik. A new Csound sound from snippets and grains of a recording: every note plays a piece of the recording, as long as the note, brought to its pitch – the reading position wandering, random or at the beginnings of the sounds and words, or the recording lies on the frequency axis of the field and the melody reads it forwards and backwards; plus clouds of grains (granular synthesis). Transposition as a slider – compressed against the “mouse” effect –, “keep the colour”, the recording as in the Spektrum, own recordings up to 60 seconds. The pieces “Nikolonie” and “Nikolade” under Listen are made with it. In the manual.

New in Update 112

The small gong as a choice. The “Aufnahme” card of the sound “Spektrum” has three choices: the great C (default), the small gong – how the Spektrum sounded at first, for example in “Narrentrio” under Listen – and a recording of your own. Settings from Update 107 to 109 with the built-in gong sound with the small gong again.

New in Update 111

Levelling. The gong grains of Bronzofof and Bronzofof grande are equalised along the envelope of the recording – no grain is loud or quiet by chance any more, depending on where the voice reads in the recording – and follow the hearing curve. The hearing curve raises low tones by at most 6 dB. The output stage of all Csound sounds takes long loud passages back, raises quiet ones only a little and keeps the bass in check.

New in Update 110

The great C. Peter Heeren’s great C is built in – as “JCself-Gong · großes C” the recording of the sound “Spektrum” (until now a smaller gong) and as the new FOF sound Bronzofof grande, gong grains from the great C beside the existing Bronzofof (“Bronzofof grande” under Listen). The “Aufnahme” card has choices: “JCself-Gong” or “Eigene Aufnahme …” (WAV, AIFF, now also MP3 – Csound converts it).

New in Update 109

Equalisation in the bass. In the sound “Spektrum”, variant Landschaft filtert, the equalisation of the partials is capped in the bass: below 100 Hz weak partials are raised by at most 9 dB, increasingly up to 250 Hz. Low partials of a recording no longer beat roughly against each other, and the noise between them is no longer raised – for own recordings and for the built-in gong alike. A piece made from it: “Gongschaft” under Listen.

New in Update 108

Stretch and transposition. The sound “Spektrum” stretches a recording as you choose – ×1 to ×100, or so lang wie das Stück (as long as the piece): a gong of twenty seconds becomes a piece of minutes without getting lower – and transposes it in semitones without making it faster or slower. Both apply to all variants, in duet, trio and ensemble too. Plus the fourth variant Die Aufnahme ist das Stück (the recording is the piece): the recording sounds without interruption, and the composition is the way through it – its main tone glides onto every note of the main voice, where the piece is lively the pointer moves faster, at the peak the sound freezes, in Neuland it blurs. More in the manual › Spektrum.

New in Update 107

Spektrum. A new sound in the tab “Klang” under Csound: sounds from a recording with the phase vocoder. JCself analyses the built-in gong or a recording of your own – a gong, a singing bowl, a voice – once with pvanal into its spectrum and makes its sounds from it without playing the recording back. Three variants: the recording becomes the landscape – every note is a mountain from the spectrum of the recording, and with “Teiltöne der Spektrum-Aufnahme übernehmen” JCself composes exactly on its partials; the landscape filters – the stretched recording sounds without interruption, and the mountains of the weight distribution are the mask, sound and picture belong together; the recording as an instrument – every note is the whole recording at its pitch, time and pitch separate, frozen at the peak, blurred in Neuland. After the synergy like the gong, the dynamics along the equal-loudness curve (high notes not shrill), in duet, trio and ensemble for every field. Csound is required. More in the manual › Spektrum.

New in Update 106

Without clipping. In the tab “Klang” under Csound there is the choice Anhören (listen): sofort (at once) as before – or erst rechnen, ohne Übersteuerung (compute first, without clipping). Then Csound renders the piece first, JCself measures the highest peak and sets the whole piece to −1 dB before it plays; nothing is limited or distorted any more, not even with fourteen voices and the gong or a large swarm. Saved WAV files now always sit at −1 dB. Plus the field Dynamik: natural, balanced or strong – quiet passages come closer, loud ones stay. Both also apply in duet, trio and ensemble.

Zapping in a swarm. With “each field × 100” the zapping listener now hears templates: all copies of a field are one field to him, he zaps between the swarms A, B and C and hears the whole swarm each time. Before, he zapped between the three hundred copies one by one, two seconds here, two seconds there – and the file was fifty decibels too quiet on top, because the level was computed for all copies at once. With “sofort” the mix gets a look-ahead limiter before the soft ceiling.

Cello and violin legato. A bow now carries ten seconds instead of six, it bridges small gaps of up to half a second, and a tremolo continues the bow instead of starting anew. New on the cello card: the Tremolo-Neigung (tremolo tendency) – wenig, mittel, viel.

New in Update 105

SuperCollider. Besides Csound, JCself can now sound with SuperCollider, a second free sound synthesis program. The sounds there arise from the weight landscape of the piece itself – from the same mountains from which JCself chooses its notes. Crescionda lets the landscape be heard as modulation, Velobronzo as the resonance of a second gong behind a veil, Gemellobronzo and Nebbiabronzo take an own recording for it, and Attrattore lets every note run its own orbit on an attractor – Lorenz, Rössler, Mandelbrot, Duffing, Intermittenz or Gabelung – with initial conditions that JCself computes by its own principle. In the tab “Klang” as the fifth card, in the ensemble under “Anhören mit”; “Anhören” and “WAV speichern” as usual. SuperCollider is free for Windows and Mac: supercollider.github.io/downloads – installing is enough. More in the Manual › SuperCollider.

The gong soundbank, restored. In 29 of the 54 recordings only one channel carried the signal – which is why some notes were heard on one side only – and after the decay room noise went on and stopped abruptly at the end of a piece. Both are fixed, noises in the tail are removed, no recording is shortened. If you already have the folder Gong, please download it again. The gong now plays natural by default – every recording as it is, nothing transposed – and lets all notes ring out; and with “Tonhöhen des Gongs übernehmen” in the tab “Komposition” JCself composes exactly on the 46 pitches the gong has.

Also. Numbers can be entered everywhere with a point or a comma; the display uses a point. From Update 104, which no longer appeared separately: no more artificial limits on fields and swarms – up to 2047 fields in one Csound file, and JCself warns instead of forbidding. JCself runs on the Mac, tested with Java 21, Csound and SuperCollider.

Installation

The package contains the folder JCself with the program, a start file each for Windows and Mac, and the manual. In full detail with all notes: Manual › Installation.

Windows

1. Install Java 8 or newer if it is missing, for example Eclipse Temurin, free of charge.
2. Unzip jcself-gipfel-en.zip and put the folder JCself somewhere you are allowed to write, such as “Documents”.
3. Start JCself by double-clicking JCself-start.bat.
4. For the Csound sounds, additionally install Csound (recommended); for the sound “Gong” the folder Gong from jcself-gong.zip, for the orchestral instruments the VSCO library, for the sounds from the landscape SuperCollider – each as described under Setting up Csound, SuperCollider and VSCO.

Mac

JCself runs on the Mac – tested under macOS with Java 21, Csound and SuperCollider.

1. Install Java 8 or newer, for example Eclipse Temurin as a .pkg (Apple silicon: aarch64, Intel: x64).
2. Unzip jcself-gipfel-en.zip and put the folder JCself in “Documents”, for example.
3. Start JCself by double-clicking JCself-start.command. If macOS stops the file the first time: right-click › “Open”, or choose “Open Anyway” under “System Settings › Privacy & Security”.
4. For the Csound sounds, additionally install Csound for macOS; gong folder, VSCO library and SuperCollider as on Windows – see below and Manual › Mac.

Setting up Csound, SuperCollider and VSCO

Csound and SuperCollider are programs of their own, the VSCO library is a collection of recordings. None of them is part of the program package; JCself finds Csound and SuperCollider by itself once they are installed, the gong folder and the VSCO folder you show it once.

Csound

On csound.com/download take the version tested with JCself, 6.18.1 (under “Previous release”). Windows: unpack Csound6_x64-6.18.1-windows-x64-installer.zip and run the installer – default folder C:\Program Files\Csound6_x64; if Windows says “Windows protected your PC”, choose “More info” › “Run anyway”. Mac: open Csound-MacOS-universal-6.18.1.dmg and install the package inside (right-click › “Open” if macOS stops it); it runs on Intel Macs and Macs with Apple silicon. JCself looks for Csound in the Program Files folder, on the search path and, on the Mac, in /usr/local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin and the CsoundLib64 framework. Should it not find Csound: tab “Klang” › Csound › “Csound auswählen …” (Windows: csound.exe in the subfolder bin). Csound 7 is new and not yet tested with JCself.

SuperCollider

On supercollider.github.io/downloads take the current version (3.14.1). Windows: run the installer SuperCollider-3.14.1_Release-x64-…exe (Windows 10 and 11); it creates the folder C:\Program Files\SuperCollider-3.14.1. Mac: open SuperCollider-3.14.1-macOS-universal.dmg (macOS 11 or newer), drag SuperCollider to “Applications” and open it once so that macOS allows it. Nothing more is needed: JCself finds sclang there by itself and runs it in the background. Should it not be found, a text file supercollider.pfad in the working folder Gipfel-Daten (next to jcself-gipfel.jar) with the full path to sclang (Windows sclang.exe) is enough.

VSCO 2 Community Edition

The free collection of orchestral recordings (Versilian Studios, licence CC0). On the page of the SFZ version 1.1.0 download the Source code (zip) under “Assets” – about 2.5 GB – and unpack it; this gives the folder VSCO-2-CE-1.1.0 (3 GB, 3168 recordings). Put it in a permanent place and show it to JCself once: tab “Klang” › Csound › an orchestral instrument (for example the cello with “VSCO Cello-Ensemble”) › “VSCO-Ordner wählen …”. JCself only reads and writes nothing into it; the choice holds for all instruments. Without the folder all other sounds are available. More in the Manual › Instruments.

The gong

Unpack jcself-gong.zip, put the folder Gong anywhere and show it to JCself once in the tab “Klang” › Gong with “Gong-Ordner wählen …”.

Older version

The Gipfel version replaces the earlier package jcself.zip with the folder PHS. Both can exist side by side. If you put your old jcself.sav into the new folder JCself before the first start, JCself takes over its settings.

Terms of use

JCself is freeware, but licensed. The licence permits private use on up to five computers and use in sound installations and music productions. Copies are permitted for backup only and must not be passed on to third parties. Details under Licence.