Design your own waveform synths?

[Ethan Duni]

>    You are absolutely correct.  While the dynamic changes are very important,
>you can filter what's not there, obviously.  So the raw material you are
>filtering can certainly make a better instrument sound if the harmonics have
>some proximity to a real instrument spectrum.  You win!  Three cents beats two
>cents.

-as a side note; i remmeber reading an article by Bob Moog (who else?) about
how the frequencies of the harmonics of real instruments (specifically the
piano) aren't exactly whole-number multiples of the fundamental.. with the
piano specifically he had a chart showing how the harmonics increase in
frequency (above the expected linear value) as you increase the wave number.
he claimed to have made a synth patch with fairly simple enveloping,
filtering, etc. that used this harmonic structure and one with lots of
complex enveloping and filtering to mimic a piano, but with linear harmonics
and to then have played the two for people and had them rate the one with
nonlinear harmonic frequency as more realistic (no more details than that
unfortunately).. 

just thought it might be of interest.. anyone know of any non-linear
materials we could use to make a transmission line that would detune the
harmonics of a signal passing through it according to some (preferably
voltage controllable) function? perhaps some sort of all-pass network being
modulated in a creative way?

Ethan