Hi all--
I'm currently working on a project for controlling my granular synth patch using a control stream derived from various feature extractions from an input signal (soundfile or live). Currently what I'm working with is the spectral centroid, which I've implemented as a PD patch.
I'm wonding if people have other ideas for perceptual features that can be reliably extracted from an audio stream using the FFT or otherwise. The input is not necessarily pitched (might eventually want to analyze its own granular output as well, in addition to noisy and unpitched sounds) so I'm not that interested in pitch tracking, etc. rather more high level sonic features. For example, how might I detect a period of sharp attacks on a wind instrument? Maybe by using some sort of peak threshold with the spectral centroid? "Smoothness" of a sound? Continuum of pitched to unpitched? Etc.
Also if there are any PD implementations (abstractions or externals) of this sort of stuff please inform me; I haven't found anything as of yet.
I'd very much appreciate any input!
Best, Jacob