On Friday 20 February 2004 21.27, Paul Winkler wrote: > On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 02:34:54PM -0500, Pete Bessman wrote: > > At Fri, 20 Feb 2004 18:23:52 +0100, > > > > David Olofson wrote: > > > > Tricky. To get crunchy hard-rock guitar sounds like Pete's > > > > (nice track pete!), you'll have to realistically emulate > > > > palm-muting, which I've never heard in a synth. And how would > > > > you control the amount of muting? Map it to a CC and play a > > > > slider? > > > > Don't think realistic. Think like a synth. If I was a synth, > > how would I play guitar? > > if I were a synth, I would not be able to play guitar, lacking > fingers; but since I am myself, I can play guitar or synth > depending on what I want ;-) > > I guess I misjudged the direction of the conversation. > I do think it's interesting to think about realistic synth > emulation of guitar, but not very practical - it's just so thorny. > Palm-muting is just one of the many tricky issues. > Think of the variables introduced by common picking techniques: > at the least you have to consider stiffness of plectrum (or > finger), force of pluck, and distance from bridge.
How about *recording* it instead of trying to emulate it? That is, separate the excitation impulses from the string resonance, and use that to drive a plucked string synth. The next step would be to resynthesize the impulses. Not trying to understand them or how they're generated; only replacing the sampled audio impulses with something more compact, while still sequencing them like percussion sounds or whatever. > Much more practical, I think, is to do as you suggest: > invent synth sounds that capture something of the character > and attitude of a given guitar sound without trying to > duplicate it sonically. Yes, that would be the first approach, given that it's really about creating something that sounds good. Starting out with emulation might be a good way of "inventing" new, interesting synth sounds, though. In fact, I'm more interested in finding expressive synthetic alternatives to guitars than I am in accurately emulating guitars, or any other instruments for that matter. However, if I can't hear the exact sound I want in my head, the best bet is to start with something that can at least serve the same purpose as that yet to be heard dream sound. Or I can just hope that I'm lucky and accidentally run into the next Holy Grail(TM) of sounds. ;-) (Electric guitar, distorted guitar, TB-303 filter sweeps,... what's next?). Even then, the chances are probably a lot better when doing something. Doing insane and/or generally weird stuff probably improves the odds. :-) //David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate .- Audiality -----------------------------------------------. | Free/Open Source audio engine for games and multimedia. | | MIDI, modular synthesis, real time effects, scripting,... | `-----------------------------------> http://audiality.org -' --- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---
