Physical modeling and sonorium

I have a question ot put to people on the alternative tuning list, and it is
about physical modeling synthesis.

I read an interesting article in the August(???)1994 issue of KEYBOARD magazine
as to the shortcomings of sampling, and why it wasn't working, sampling being a
static snapshot of an instrument's sound, and not having the expression of a
live instrument such as a guitar or a trumpet.

(Yeah, we all know that, but....).

And the awnser was physcial modeling, that being a mathematical model of an
instrument, and being able to make instruemtns which could not exist in reality,
such as a horn which changed shape as you played it, an unbreakable drumhead,
guitar strings which were as thick as cables, driver/resonator mix-n-match, -get
the picture?

However, the problems with phsycial modeling synthesisers that I have seen is
that they only have presets.

What I need to know is that if anyone has ever heard of any sort of software
that enables you to create physical models "from scratch", that is in building
an instrument RIGHT from the beginining, in 3 dimensional space from a virtual
substance which I supposse that I could call "sonorium".

You could programm the virtual substances reflective and tansmittive propertys,
and sculpt it like virtual clay, or virtual putty in you're computer's virtual
reality enviroment.

I mean has anyone ever done this?, -and also:

Can you hear the shape of a drum, or take the sound from an unknown physical
model and reverse engineer it to make a physical model without knowing its shape
and meachnical properties?

I wounder if you could do this with ALL sounds...

---Any thoughts on the matter?

---Sarn.

Slightly OT, but maybe I can try to answer some of your questions, being one of the first musicians performing on Yamaha VL1 since 1993 (when I worked for Yamaha as Product specialist - still I own 2 VL1, 2 VL1m, EX5 with VL card and 3 VL cards in MU128), for sure the only one in the world who recorded Double CD with improvisations on polyphonic VP1, and owner of some other physical modelling synths (2 Korg Prophecy, Oasys PCI card, Technics WSA1) plus few with analog synthesis modeling... :-)

On 11 Aug 2010, at 2:21 PM, Sarn Ursell wrote:

>
>
> I have a question ot put to people on the alternative tuning list, > and it is about physical modeling synthesis.
>
> I read an interesting article in the August(???)1994 issue of > KEYBOARD magazine as to the shortcomings of sampling, and why it > wasn't working, sampling being a static snapshot of an instrument's > sound, and not having the expression of a live instrument such as a > guitar or a trumpet.
>
> (Yeah, we all know that, but....).
>
> And the awnser was physcial modeling, that being a mathematical > model of an instrument, and being able to make instruemtns which > could not exist in reality, such as a horn which changed shape as > you played it, an unbreakable drumhead, guitar strings which were > as thick as cables, driver/resonator mix-n-match, -get the picture?
>
> However, the problems with phsycial modeling synthesisers that I > have seen is that they only have presets.

All those synths are fully programmable, but only in the frame of fixed mathematical models (pipe, string), fixed way of excitation (jet, lip, bow, plucked driver), fixed resonator's shape, FX processors etc. Which is quite logical as it is imitative modeling based on known existing instruments and uses their elements and principles. Is it at all possible to invent some quite new instrument or way of making sound on it? I think possibilities are not unlimited...
Anyway there's still a lot of programmable parameters :-)

>
> What I need to know is that if anyone has ever heard of any sort of > software that enables you to create physical models "from scratch", > that is in building an instrument RIGHT from the beginining, in 3 > dimensional space from a virtual substance which I supposse that I > could call "sonorium".
>
> You could programm the virtual substances reflective and > tansmittive propertys, and sculpt it like virtual clay, or virtual > putty in you're computer's virtual reality enviroment.
>
> I mean has anyone ever done this?,

What I know, probably not. Even in Korg development kit is always necessary to build instrument from preprogrammed objects. But still there's a lot of room for interesting experiments...

> -and also:
>
> Can you hear the shape of a drum, or take the sound from an unknown > physical model and reverse engineer it to make a physical model > without knowing its shape and meachnical properties?

I can't imagine. How do you want to build physical instrument where air in the pipe is bowed (like in VL1), or plucked saxophone, blown cello, or mallet percussion which continually changes material and shape of tuned bars or mallets etc.? Possible only in virtual world. In my opinion it's not important how the sound was produced, if on acoustic, physical instrument or "only" electronically. All those syncoustic sounds are unusual, interesting, innovative, and in the same time VL1 offers me a great level of expressivity. That's what I expect from musical instrument as a performer. Let's not forget that there are some acoustic instruments with limited expressivity - pipe organ, harpsichord... for example. So it doesn't mean electronically produced sounds are necessarily inferior in the comparison with acoustically produced sounds...

Daniel Forro

>
> I wounder if you could do this with ALL sounds...
>
> ---Any thoughts on the matter?
>
> ---Sarn.

Physical Modelling! This is something I have done a little bit with.

Quoting Sarn Ursell <polyverse2002@...>:
> [snip]
> However, the problems with phsycial modeling synthesisers that I have seen is
> that they only have presets.
>
> What I need to know is that if anyone has ever heard of any sort of software
> that enables you to create physical models "from scratch", that is > in building
> an instrument RIGHT from the beginining, in 3 dimensional space from > a virtual
> substance which I supposse that I could call "sonorium".

What stuff I have done with Physical Modeling has mostly been with writing my own computer programs or using a program called CSound (CSound is basically a programming language system for processing and synthesizing sounds). Most of my models have been fairly simple -- a plucked string or a simple percussion instrument. You can find quite a bit about the math of physical modelling, but like you, I have seen relatively little in the realm of software that lets you just create whatever you want. I was also looking at a program called Tao (http://taopm.sourceforge.net/ ) at one time, but it looks like nothing much has happened with it since 2006 :-( Tao appears to only be distributed as source code and you would have to build it up with software building tools for your computer. Also there is a software library (for software developers) called STK (Synthesis toolkit) that has some Physical Modeling capabilities in it. So, the resources I mentioned are for those people who write program code. I, like you, have not really seen any programs that allow one to "draw out" in a graphical editor of some kind and run the simulated instrument.

I personally believe that, if you can truly capture enough of the variable parameters for a physically modelled instrument then you should be able to generate very believable, live-like instruments. Knowing what all of the parameters one needs to model an instrument is much of the battle.

I have found in my experiments dealing with physical models is that if you don't put the math together in the right way, the results can easily get chaotic (ie, you hear nothing or hear noise out of your computer speakers). This may be perhaps one reason why you see only prepackaged presets -- the vendors may be too worried that if users have too many options they will get frustrated when things easily don't work out the way they intended and give up trying.

I think there should be, for those who are truly willing to spend the time and effort, a program for the computer that allows for the kind of instrument modeling you are talking about -- I'm going to keep my eyes open for something like this. I have not seen it yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't lurking somewhere.

Jay