noch einen nachtrag, den ken mich bat auch zu posten:
P
noch einen nachtrag, den ken mich bat auch zu posten:
Per Mattsson writes:
Thanks Ken!, both for the synthesis research + putting this up online.<<
xavier tribolet writes:
Your explanations and examples are really interesting and incredible!<<
Howard Moscovitz writes:
Do you mind if I repost your message on the electro-music.com forum.<<
Thanks for the compliments. And by all means, if there are other message boards that you think want to know about this stuff, just cut and paste the messages there to. Anything that's posted on a message board is already out in the public so there is nothing to hide. Other people post my posts elsewhere too, and I find some of my AH posts ending up on a Hungarian site where I can't even read what they're saying.
Chet Singer writes:
I especially liked the Baroque ensemble. The fast bow scratches were just right: audible, but not synthetic.<<
Yeah, that takes some programming to get that to sound natural. I of course can crank it up to sound vulgar, or take it away all together.
Given your talents, you might want to consider the purchase of a G2. I'd
guess you could fit your entire filter array into a single G2 patch. A
monophonic audio-processing G2 patch can span up to two DSPs, one in the
VA area and the second in the FX area. You could create different
"instrument bodies" by detuning the entire array up or down slightly with
a single control. And by assigning the filter amplitudes to the G2 front
panel knobs, you might be able to eliminate the post-processing EQ.<<
I had originally planned on buying a G2. But they still don't have all the modules implimented. It's not as much as an improvement as I thought. It's another big chunk of cash to spend when I'm not working right now. Plus the Creamware Modular costs less and does more, so I'd almost rather go that way. But I also have Reaktor, and I was alway planning on moving it all over there, as there are a number of things the Nord just can't do realistically G2 or not, such as convincing violin portamento. Also, my main driver patch is at 98% usage, and all my three string filter slots are at 100% usage, so unless the G2 is a minimum of twice the speed, It probably won't fit in a single G2 patch. The post processing EQ won't be needed after I make many filter adjustments.
Also shifting the filters up and down is a no-no. Just shifting one semitone up or down and the overall sound can be dramatically different and quite unattractive. Tiny changes in resonance and the effect can disappear fast. I'll be doing custom filters for each type of instrument and they will be quite unrelated to each other. To change from a violin to cello with require loading in a new filter set. This was later done in my "adjusting to real instrument" demos, though I still need to make one of two more passes beyond those.
Ian Sayer writes:
This is exceptional work. I know you must have invested considerable time in this, but I for one, would love to see the string filter patch.<<
It takes days to try different filter configurations to even get something that sounds somewhat like what I want. Then it's another long miserable period of time analysing real string samples, taking FFT's (sometimes animated ones of instruments sliding up a string), trying to determine all formant peaks and dips in the harmonic spectrum, and trying to set up filters that mimic them, and sweeping sine waves through my filter bank to see what it looks like and why some many unpredictable things seem to happen when moving the filters around which I have to fight with. And all the pain in the ass to get the high freqs to sound unsynthetic (another big pain). It's hell, and as with most of my sounds and want them for my use, as opposed to flying around the net and showing up in other people's recordings and them getting the credit.
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Posts related to second set of demos:
Wan Kemper writes:
These are stunning sounds again. Each time i think it can't be any better, and you just do that. Never ever heard such realistic violin sounds from an electronic device.<<
Rodge writes:
Thank you for posting these, they are absolutley astounding. It makes me want a G2 just for this one sound. Incredible!!<<
Thanks again for the compliments. Remember that these were done on the original Nord Modular, not the G2.
Ville Gustafsson writes:
He also posted some string recordings on the nord modular list a couple of years ago which he claimed was done on the NM1but in reality FAKE, ie processed acoustic recordings. Unless Mr. Elhardt cares to post his string patches for us all to try out, I think we can safely assume these are FAKE FAKE FAKE.<<
This is all news to me. I'd like to know what those recordings were, and why it is necessary to process acoustic recordings that already have all the proper body resonances with additions cavity formants, which would sound awful.
Chet Singer writes:
I've had a listen, and these are just fantastic. I'm especially impressed with the bow noise and bow-scraping attack, such as the viola slide and some of the other hard-attacked notes. Can you reveal how that's done?<<
My slot 1 string generator patch uses two oscillators. You're always hearing a hardsync'd oscillator, but since most of the time it's in perfect sync with the master oscillator (that you don't hear) it just generates a sawtooth wave. But on the attacks, I hit that sync'd oscillator with a burst of filtered noise which causes it to bounce around, yet at the same to try to sync to the master oscillator. This is kind of what a string does as the bow starts to pull it, but it randomly slips prematurely before its cycle is fully complete generating smaller shorter waveforms, but still overall kind of syncing to the overall pitch of the master osc. The freq of the attack noise, the length, and the depth can be adjusted to taste. I believe the depth of it is under velocity sensitive control.
As for additional bow noise, to get a coarser sound overall, I'm using a wavewrapper, and modulating the CV input of that with some noise. This also adds brightness to the sound like an exciter and gives a more complex and moving higher freq content to hide the potential synthetic sounding high freqs. That and the sweeping delay lines animate the higher harmonics to act like a real instrument up there. If both of these were taken out, the upper end would sound too sawtooth/synthetic, or if my filters are too resonant up there, it sounds too digital, like a digital wavetable oscillator. But the wavewrapper's sound is very dependent on what's fed into it, and that takes fooling around with so as not to sound brittle and digital. In my patch, it comes after two LPF's (combined for 48dB cutoff). All this is very sensitive, as changing one thing can affect others. For instance, if my sweeping delay lines are too fast, it diffuses my vibrato, and I can't get a strong vibrat!
o. The driver patch is kind of balancing on a razor's edge. (Note that my string patch also uses kybd velocity and an EV-5 pedal to control dynamics).
Davepnord writes:
But the fact that you went to such extremes to convince people it (the Sage) actually existed makes any of your sub<a href="https://www.sequencer.de/specials/sequencer.html">Sequencer</a>uent claims suspect. What did you expect?<<
That's because that was a hoax, and to complete a hoax, one has to fess up to doing it. There's no point in faking Nord patches. The nord patches are already fake, because they are electronic, not acoustic. I don't think one can fake a fake sound. And by me showing what the raw unprocessed sound vs the process sound, sounds like, it's plenty clear it's all a synth. Besides, I've posted patches to other realistic sounds I've done such as my Piano Crash and Recorder sounds.
Wout Blommers writes:
Today I get the feeling things like the Sage story work against you, which isn't a nice thing. It takes away the real value of the achievements you made.<<
Actually, I don't think it works against me. I know people are just bringing it up to try to force me to post patches. I can see right through it. But perhaps next time I'm at my Nord computer, I'll do a screen dump of all four slots and post a very small picture for you to see. Also, if I do give in
and do a Wendy Carlos style "Secrets of Synthesis" CD, I will give up the patches on just about everything I've done. Just have to decide if there is enough market for such a thing.
BTW creating a violin sound isn't that difficult, although not so good as yours
<<
Anybody can patch up a sawtooth wave with vibrato and call it a violin sound, but it's not. Creating a realistic violin sound is very difficult and requires filtering almost beyond what can be done in analog, not to mention all the subtleties in it's dynamics and the driver portion (mine is about 100 modules total). I'm trying to create string sounds real enough that they can be played right within a real acoustic ensemble or replace a real instrument in an ensemble, and virtually nobody could tell it's fake. For instance, take the real violins out of Kansas' song "Dust In The Wind" and replace them with mine, and mine would sound like real violin replacements.
-Elhardt