[sdiy] questions on string synthesizers

[Elain Klopke]

okies, I have Measured Tones: The Interplay of Physics and Music by Ian
Johnston. I'll see what's in there.

On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 2:13 AM, Kylee Kennedy <kmkennedy at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I have a book titled Music, Physics and Engineering that shows the
> harmonics created by a few instruments. The Welsh Synthesizer Cookbook does
> it for subtractive synthesis. Basically any book that examines the physics
> and harmonics of musical instruments should cover some of that theory. I
> believe a lot of instruments in String Synth are created by interpretation.
> I mean the violin and cello usually sound very similar to me on the ones
> I've played it's just the bandpass filters are set differently but in
> reality you'd have different harmonics and overtones coming from the real
> instruments because of their size and shape. This is more what Modal
> Synthesis covers.
>
> Kylee
>
> P.S. the Music, Physics and Engineering book has probably a more current
> more comprehensive replacement...I found it in a church book sale and I
> always come back to it for random things I'm researching. It has a large
> section on soundproofing that I recently looked up, but the computer sound
> creation information is way outdated.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 11:32 PM, Elain Klopke <functionofform at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> >I think they are essentially the same as old organs - the basic
>> approach is to generate a square wave for each note, then optionally use a
>> fixed filter (often just a resistor and a capacitor/inductor) to produce
>> various different tones, then optionally combine those tones for each key
>> to produce different timbres.
>>
>> Is there anywhere that shows what filter frequencies to use for what
>> instrument?
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 7:08 PM, Adrian Corston <eidorian at aladan.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I think they are essentially the same as old organs - the basic approach
>>> is to generate a square wave for each note, then optionally use a fixed
>>> filter (often just a resistor and a capacitor/inductor) to produce various
>>> different tones, then optionally combine those tones for each key to
>>> produce different timbres.  The details of how this is done (which is what
>>> you're actually asking about) varies from machine to machine - older
>>> designs used multiple poles on the key switches to allow the tones to be
>>> combined; newer designs used note keying chips which did the combining
>>> internally.  There are almost certainly other techniques I don't know about.
>>>
>>> Many stringers also had effects such as phaser circuits, BBD-based
>>> chorus, and vibrato (achieved by varying the clock on the top octave
>>> generators) to produce the classic "string machine" sound.
>>>
>>> Fun fact: some organs produced white noise for their drum machines by
>>> combining many unrelated (dissonant) tones (somewhat like the TR606/DR-110
>>> cymbal sound that was generated by combining 6 square wave oscillators).
>>>
>>> The one thing I haven't been able to fully understand is how they did
>>> fully polyphonic A/R envelopes.  I've been meaning to have a look at some
>>> schematics at some stage but haven't gotten around to it yet.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> A.
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From:
>>> "Elain Klopke" <functionofform at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> To:
>>> <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
>>> Cc:
>>>
>>> Sent:
>>> Sun, 19 Feb 2017 15:31:17 -0600
>>> Subject:
>>> [sdiy] questions on string synthesizers
>>>
>>>
>>> How do the selectors for the various sounds work? Like with the violin
>>> and cello, trumpet and tuba tabs or stops, you press the button and you
>>> hear an aproximation of a violin sound, and you can add in the rest of the
>>> sounds to get something orchestral. How is the string synth taking the raw
>>> output from the top octive chip and subsequent dividers and transforming it
>>> into the various instrument sounds? I assume there's some sort of filtering
>>> going on, but I can't quite wrap my head around it.
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> -Ian
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
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