HNW Generator

Description

Generate a Harsh Noise Wall album and its artwork cover.

In short, here what is happening when generating a track :

Generate noise source
Apply some EQ and / or pitch change with FFmpeg
Do 1 and 2 multiple time (one for each layer of noise)
Mix all the layers

You can of course release the output like one of your album, if you do so, please include a link to this page in the album credits.

Releases

The Windows release contains JRE 15 and two executable, hnwgen-gui.exe and hnwgen.exe (this one is a lot heavier than the other)
The other release contains two jar files, hnwgen-gui.jar and hnwgen.jar, it works on Linux and on Windows.

Both zip archive contains this README on markdown format

Getting started

Dependencies

This project requires the following dependencies:

FFmpeg
Java JRE 15

Windows Environment

If you use the Windows release, you can skip this section.

To run this project on a Windows environment, make sure both FFmpeg and Java JRE 15 are included in your system's PATH.

Download and install FFmpeg from the official website: FFmpeg
Download and install Java JRE 15 from the official Oracle website: Java JRE 15

After installing both dependencies, here's how you can add them to the PATH:

Open the Start menu and search for "Environment Variables" and select "Edit the system environment variables".
In the System Properties window, click on the "Environment Variables" button.
In the "System Variables" section, select the "Path" variable and click on the "Edit" button.
In the "Edit Environment Variable" window, click on the "New" button.
Enter the path to the FFmpeg installation directory (e.g., C:\path\to\ffmpeg) and click "OK".
Repeat step 5 for the Java JRE 15 installation directory (e.g., C:\path\to\java).
Click "OK" to close all the windows.

Linux Environment

If you are using a Linux environment, you can install the dependencies directly without modifying the PATH.

Open the terminal and execute the following command:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg openjdk-15-jre

Usage

Download the zip in /release/ and extract it on your computer.

The release zip contains 2 jar files or two exe file + dependencies if you download the Windows release:

hnwgen-gui.jar|exe is the GUI version, it's really basics right now, but it's enough for generate an album.

hnwgen.jar|exe is the CLI version, you can use it in a terminal with the command line below (and all the parameters we define in the next section)

To launch the jar files, use these commands in a terminal:

java -jar hnwgen-gui.jar
java -jar hnwgen.jar launch the generation with default parameters
java -jar hnwgen.jar -h display the help

The album generated will be in a "generation" folder, in your home directory or in the .jar directory

Command line parameters

-h --help display the help

--gui display gui

--length=<int> total duration of album in minute

--nbTracks=<int> number of tracks in album

--nbLayers=<int> number of layers for each track

--pitch enable pitch changer in layer generation

--variation enable wall variation in layer generation

--taintCover enable the tainting of generated cover

--onlycover only generate the cover

--onlytributecover=<file> only generate the tribute cover, based on the file

--tribute=<directory> directory of original wav file for tribute album, the track will have 10 minutes length

--tributetitle=<string> title of tribute, for cover generation

--withcover enable the generation of cover for tribute album. Need a file named "cover.jpg" in tribute directory

Configuration file

Beside the executable file, you can put a file hnw.conf with the data below.

Configuration key :

Key	Description
project_name	Name of the project. If it's empty, the name will be "unknown"
album_title_template	Template for the title of the album. If it's empty, the title will be "untitled"
cover_album_title_template	Template for the title on the cover. If it's empty, this will be %%PROJECTNAME%% - %%ALBUMTITLE%%"
track_title_template	Template for the track title, if it's empty, the title will be "untitled"

Here is the template possible value :

Template	Replacing string
%%PROJECTNAME%%	Name of the project
%%ALBUMTITLE%%	Title of the album
%%RANDHEX%%	Random hexadecimal number

For example, here the configuration file I used for testing:

project_name=getStatic();
album_title_template=data_%%RANDHEX%%
cover_album_title_template=getStatic(%%ALBUMTITLE%%);
track_title_template=segment_0x%%RANDHEX%%

Authors and acknowledgment

Special thanks to JLIAT for authorizing me to use its noise generator.

Source code

The source code is available on Framagit

Licence

This work is licenced under GPLv3 licence.