#263

that sounds very interesting! so you have the attenuated v/oct on the oscillator we hear right? could it be that formants play a role in this sound result? i’m not exactly sure about how formants really work but as i understand it they build up the resonant body of a sound regardless of it’s fundamental pitch. so with sync the heard oscillator forms the formant and the unheard the pitch (or is it the other way around?) so in your example you have a stable pitch but a detuned formant which maybe makes it sound so natural? again i have no idea about this but it sounds really good!

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#264

Yes, attenuverted rather than just attenuated though.

V/oct > master oscillator (master osc is unheard)
V/oct > invert > attenuate > synced oscillator pitch (synced osc is heard)

It’s hard to say how much I’m attenuating the inverted pitch voltage, but I have the channel of Quadratt I used for this at around 10 o’clock, so the signal is probably between 1/2 - 1/3 of its incoming level. Just play with that and the base pitch of the synced osc until it sounds right.

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#265

ah! ok, that makes it more logical, so the pitch changes but the “formant” or timbre stays approx. in place! that’s really clever, so you dial in the “timbre” you want by adjusting the synced osc to taste and then sort of keep the sound color in a good sounding range by inverting, attenuating the v/oct. very cool, i try that out soon, haven’t done much with sync for some reason. thanks!

#266

I get the premise but I don’t get the example. Are you sequencing your master oscillator on the example you posted? If so, what type of sequence? Does the glissandi phrase come from the sequencer / V/oct or is it the actual effect of the hard sync + attenuversion of the V/oct signal on the synced slave?

Is it a hard or a soft sync?

What oscillators did you use? I’d like to check their specs to see if I can get a better understanding of what’s going on.

The demo sounds really nice! Great find!

EDIT

@smbols Here’s an idea for you, use the same idea on the d0. Clock input could be considered a hard-sync input for the waveguide, and you can use the same attenuverted V/oct at the delay CV input. :crazy_face:

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#267

No sequencer–the pitch voltage source is a ribbon controller going into the master osc’s V/oct input, so the glissandi phrase is just what I was playing on the ribbon. Master osc is a Dixie 2.

The audible oscillator is a Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms Primary Osc and it uses hard sync. The basic effect has worked with my keyboard synths too so I think it should work with any hard sync osc.

That’s a good thought about the d0, I’ll have to see what happens with that later today!

#268

I’m proud to present to you the fresh ADDAC 215, a really neatly packed module which seems bread&butter but can do RoC superbly, using just a clock input and an incoming CV.

http://www.addacsystem.com/en/products/modules/addac200-series/addac215

ADDAC215_front_6655
ADDAC215_front_6655.jpg959×1600 157 KB

Both me and @smbols got sucked into studying patch applications of Rate-of-Change in July, and we both expressed the desire for a simple module that can pull off RoC without the complications of patching it up. This is what came off from this obsession! I like how ADDAC approached the concept, keeping the internal workings of the module open for the user to repurpose as they see fit, instead of closing it up into a single purpose module.

I’ve tried both T&H + Slew and Dual Trigger Delay and S&H methods to get RoC (as well as other methods) and I have to say I’ve been happiest with the T&H method that this module utilizes. I don’t have to change my clock speed at all works great.

Obviously the module allows for you to work with it how you see fit! Continuing the discussion above, I’m also very excited about the Average output, which allows you to control an extra parameter by changing the position on your controller.

Hope you like it.

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Sequencer strategies
#269

The Haken Continuum has an amazing physical model of a violin and tanpura.

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#270

I’m curious to hear the peoples’ thoughts on various filters in the path of a d0 or other short, tuned Karplus-Strong delays.

I only have 2 filters currently: Three Sisters (24db cutoffs in crossover mode) and the Timo Rozendal Steiner-Parker (12db cuttoff).

Sisters is too resonant to use reliably in my experience. Even if I find a nice balance point where things start to sound good and stable, the slightest variation in frequency of the incoming impulse or of Sisters itself shoots the thing into self-resonance.

The Steiner-Parker has a very slim gain window where feedback will produce balanced, ringing notes but it sounds excellent and remains stable within a nice frequency range once that window is reached. I’ve gotten especially nice results by feeding each channel of the D0 into the low and high pass inputs. This really increases the amount of time notes can ring out without hitting self-oscillation, and I’ve actually been able to get surprisingly nice reverb sounds using this method too. It creates nice, warm sounding string and membrane tones with no resonance and more metallic tones as you increase the resonance, and has been my main filter for Karplus-Strong patches.

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#271

I have limited experience so far, but QPAS is a great filter for physical modeling patches. It sounds great at higher resonance settings and doesn’t self-resonate, so can really push it without worrying. The radiate controls really help add a nice sense of space to the body.

#272

What are the differences and advantages of an analog approach to physical modeling, if it can be generalized - maybe there are domain-based advantages? - to a traditional digital approach?

#273

Was super inspired and fascinated after stumbling across this thread and @kilchhofer’s music and soundcloud experiments last week. Recently acquired a Bela Salt and decided to try to use it as a delay to try and reproduce some of these sounds. After a bunch of trial and error over the weekend, I managed to get some decent “flute” sounds.

I programmed my Bela to be a delay (a sort of d0 clone) using SuperCollider. Feedback loop running through a self resonating Three Sisters filter. Oddly enough, I didn’t find any impulse noise to be necessary. Triggering Maths as an envelope generator using a midi keyboard (via Hermod) and then controlling the tone with the span knob of sisters. Additionally, using the same Maths envelope to slightly FM Three Sisters, which I think makes the attack and decay sound much more realistic as the pitch changes slightly.

Happy to post the SuperCollider code once I get home if anyone is interested. Have been very happy with the Bela so far and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to experiment with designing their own digital modules.

I’ve got a Mungo d0 in the mail and am excited to compare my Bela delay to it once it arrives.

8 Likes
#274

cool! i have a salt too since a few days but i’m unable to connect it to the IDE so i haven’t tried to program things (mainly pd in my case) but i also thought about using it for physical modelling patches, this sounds promising!

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#275

Awesome! Excited to see what you can do with it. Does the IDE just not load in your browser? Sometimes it takes a little while for me to get it to load after plugging the Salt into my mac.

Have you managed to figure out why changes in the filter cutoff produce the octave jumps in this kind of patch?

#276

One note regarding my SuperCollider patch: I found that unless I rounded the delay time (in this case to the nearest thousandth or ten thousandth of a second if I remember correctly), the output signal would sound very noisy and fuzzy. Not quite sure why this is. Additionally, without any sort of lag/slew, changing the delay time during use resulted in some pretty harsh/clicky noises. Adding even just a little slew to smooth this out fixed this.

#277

yeah it doesn’t load but i can’t establish this usb-ethernet connection anyway, it doesn’t show up on my imac, i tried everything on bela’s troubleshooting page but no success so far…

so in your example the filter is self resonating? in my d0 experiments it is always the delay that creates the sound, the filter doesn’t oscillate.

i believe the filter acts as a pseudo “embouchure” where the resonance is “forced” to a certain register, if you change the cutoff you force the resonance to an overtone, not just octaves. especially illustrative is it with a bandpass filter. so by adding a pressure cv to the cutoff (in addition to 1v/oct) one can simulate overblowing.
you will see that on the d0 the slew is also very important, especially for these sounds i add quite some slew.

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#278

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it I don’t think the filter was self resonating in this example, but I’ll investigate tonight and report back. I did do some testing though where I had the resonance turned up all the way (into self resonance territory) and was able to get some comparable, but less desirable sounding sounds. Is it possible for this to have worked for me without self resonance given that I was able to make these sounds even after eliminating the white noise I was initially using as an exciter?

Why is slew important for these sounds? Do you modulate delay time for this kind of thing?

Good to know about the bandpass, I’ve got a Doepfer SEM with a bandpass output that I’ll have to experiment with!

#279

noise isn’t necessary, just for the blow sound it can be useful, or to make the sound more fluttery and unstable. so you actually don’t need an exciter. the simplest patch for this is a oscillating delay, the filter and a vca in the feedback loop, i can then use the vca with whatever i want to play the feedback.
i modulate both delay and filter with pitch cv, 1v/oct. i’m not sure why slew is so important here, on the d0 it is critical to avoid noise and glitches. the filter inside a delayfeedback is more important than the delay itself i think, in flute or also string sounds the character comes from the filter and/or waveshaping inside the loop. testing filters for these sounds never stops :slight_smile:
i’m an absolute amateur with physical modelling, as soon as i start reading papers about it i realize i’m not really interested in accurate imitation, i just enjoy the experiments with these feedback loops and find it to be the most interesting synthesis method!

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#280

Thanks for all of the wisdom! Where does the sound actually come from then if there is no sound source and the filter isn’t self resonating? Is it just random noise from the circuitry that gets amplified by the feedback loop?

I’m also not really interested in accurate imitation. I love how this style of synthesis really blurs the lines between sounding acoustic vs. synthesized. There is so much to explore in that middle ground. These experiments are super fun :slight_smile:

Have you used any of these kinds of patches on your albums?

#281

from the delay, the feedback creates an oscillating tone, just like the filter would.
i think this is the start of so called waveguide synthesis, a more refined form of the karplus strong algorithm. and yes i use physical modelling in all my music, it’s almost obsessive :slight_smile:

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#282

I’ve been working on getting a nice Karplus-Strong string patch out of my Pro 2 for quite some time now and I’ve finally gotten it to a place I really like. Most of the Karplus stuff I’ve heard from this synth is pretty harsh and unmusical and for a while that was all I could get out of it too, but if you keep working with it you can get to be really balanced and nice sounding. It took a lot of adjusting the feedback, drive, envelope shapes, and filter settings according to velocity and note number but the synth has more than enough modulation routings to handle this and it resulted in a patch that’s really dynamic and responsive.

There’s a bit of reverb on this but the stereo spread is actually from panning the Pro2 delays which are set up to act like a body resonator.

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