MOTM

When people speak of "Hollowness" in a sound, it tends to mean weak
even-order harmonics. Clarinet voices often get the same description.

Are you starting with a sawtooth wave? You might want to try some squares or
pulses stacked at every other harmonic instead.

For instance, a full-strength square at C', a quarter-strength triangle or
sine at G" (skipping the C" at the octave), etc.

Of course, this is just off the top of my head; I'm not sitting in front of
my machine right now.

Envelope and vibrato/tremolo will have a lot to do with the realism, too, as
well as velocity/pressure sensitivity and your playing style. Eventually you
start sweating over spectral formants and the like, but you should really be
able to get to 80% of a decent cello sound quickly with a minimum of
modules.

But try experimenting with various pulse waves. As you sweep the Pulse Width
control on a VCO, some really fantastic things happen to the harmonic
spectrum (which is why PWM sounds so interesting), and there are points
along the way that you might find interesting and close to what you're
looking for. I seem to remember making a fairly reasonable cello once by
staring with a 25% duty-cycle pulse and stacking one more VCO on top of
that. A little LPF and some envelope tweaking and you're there.


		-----Original Message-----
		From: Brousseau, Paul E (Paul) [mailto:noise@...] 

		I suppose my question should be, then, how do I synthesize a
cello sound (i.e., without using a sampler)?  It sort of feels like it has a
"hollow" sound-- notch filtered?  The sound pitches downwards for each note,
but I don't even know what sort of waveform to begin with.

		Thanks again!

		--PBr