Syntheisizing instruments

I think physical modeling will be better than additive synthesis for your
task. I heard some good examples (not made in max) of physical modeling
here:

http://www-acad.sheridanc.on.ca/~degazio/AboutMeFolder/MusicPages/musicperf.html

There is the modalys external from IRCAM for use in max. I am sure there are
other free libraries also.

Best
Peiman

On 06/08/07, SecretTheatre wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am interested in using Max/MSP to synthesize oriental free reed
> instruments like the sho and sheng. I've used Max/MSP for about 6 months
> now, but I'm not that clear about where to begin with this. I presume I'd
> need some kind of analysis of the acoustic and spectral properties of these
> instruments. I've got a few sound samples, so I'm guessing I could work with
> analyses of these in something like SND or SPEAR. Any thoughts/advice most
> welcome.
>
>
>

Thanks Peiman, I've done a bit of research into physical modelling, but I think that route would probably be a bit too expensive in terms of CPU, etc. My question's much more general and more basic, anyway - I've never tried to synthesize an instrument from the ground up before, so I was wondering (just to fill a gap in my knowledge, really) what would be the first basic steps. Possibly extracting data from a sample via pfft~? Or SDIF analysis?

Thanks

Hi Chris,

Well to be honest I haven't either! I don't think there is a rule, from what
I have read there are two ways around it, you can either model the physical
manner in which the sound is produced (i.e. instrument) as in physical
modeling or model the actual spectral content of your sounds ignoring
altogether the physics of the instrument, in which case you can analyze your
samples using some kind of fft analysis. The problem is -with wind
instruments particularly- that additive synthesis does not recreate the
noise content of your original samples. There are several analysis methods
that separate the sound into noise, and sinusoidal portions, for instance
ATS does this and I have successfully re-synthesized some flute sounds from
ATS analysis-files (but using SC3 as the synthesis engine). Unfortunately I
don't know how you would go about translating the ATS analysis into a
formant readable by max unless you use the csound~ external.

Spear does a similar think (extracting noise and partials) and you could
synthesis the resulting SDIF in max with the CNMAT package. What is your aim
in the end? If you're after some kind of spectral sampler there is a patch
demonstrating this in the max/msp example folder.

Good luck
Peiman

On 06/08/07, SecretTheatre wrote:
>
>
> Thanks Peiman, I've done a bit of research into physical modelling, but I
> think that route would probably be a bit too expensive in terms of CPU, etc.
> My question's much more general and more basic, anyway - I've never tried to
> synthesize an instrument from the ground up before, so I was wondering (just
> to fill a gap in my knowledge, really) what would be the first basic steps.
> Possibly extracting data from a sample via pfft~? Or SDIF analysis?
>
> Thanks
>

Thanks again Peiman, CNMAT seems to be the kind of thing that could prove very useful for me. Oh, and hi to a fellow OM user!

Chris

Hi!

I was doing some resynthesis-from-scratch experiments in Max too. I used SPEAR to feed a small neural network, wich controlled a 10-band additive synthesis. For a flute it's working fine, but if the spectrum is more in-harmonic, it will be difficult to get satisfying results. The biggest problem was, to get sufficient and consistent analysis data. I did this by hand, and it took some hours. Is there probably a way to extract the significant spectral components automatically?

Gerald

Well I've read of Matlab being used in this area, but I've never used it myself so couldn't give you details (I believe there are open source alternatives to Matlab, though I don't know if they'd have the same functionality). All I've used in the past is SND, just to get raw frequency/amplitude lists, which I've then manipulated in Common Music (Lisp-based).

Perhaps Loris or ATS (mentioned above by Peiman) might be worth looking at?

Quote: geraldg@gmx.de wrote on Tue, 07 August 2007 10:20
----------------------------------------------------
> Hi!
>
> I was doing some resynthesis-from-scratch experiments in Max too. I used SPEAR to feed a small neural network, wich controlled a 10-band additive synthesis. For a flute it's working fine, but if the spectrum is more in-harmonic, it will be difficult to get satisfying results. The biggest problem was, to get sufficient and consistent analysis data. I did this by hand, and it took some hours. Is there probably a way to extract the significant spectral components automatically?
>
> Gerald
----------------------------------------------------

There is an easy way to print selected spectral componont data. Then copy-paste it to an exel sheet to convert to ratios, if needed!

If you're using OM you could use the OM-supervp library to do analysis.
Csound also has several analysis utilities that are easy to use (these
include ATS). It allows you to also convert some of them (for instance pvoc
file that is a record of an fft analysis frame by frame) to easily parsed
text files. On mac soundhack is also good for fft analysis.
Best
Peiman

On 07/08/07, alexander wrote:
>
>
> Quote: geraldg@gmx.de wrote on Tue, 07 August 2007 10:20
> ----------------------------------------------------
> > Hi!
> >
> > I was doing some resynthesis-from-scratch experiments in Max too. I used
> SPEAR to feed a small neural network, wich controlled a 10-band additive
> synthesis. For a flute it's working fine, but if the spectrum is more
> in-harmonic, it will be difficult to get satisfying results. The biggest
> problem was, to get sufficient and consistent analysis data. I did this by
> hand, and it took some hours. Is there probably a way to extract the
> significant spectral components automatically?
> >
> > Gerald
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> There is an easy way to print selected spectral componont data. Then
> copy-paste it to an exel sheet to convert to ratios, if needed!
> --
> - Alexander
>

It depends on the type of instrument you want to imitate.

For voice like instruments I would recomend FOF synthesis or some
other type of microsonic technique as there has been a lot of work
done in this area. Imitating the elements of the human voice is not
particularly difficult. it is the articulation between these elements
which is the party. A data driven system is the only way to achieve a
realistic effect. Look at the FTM site and concatenation or mosaic
synthesis. Chant and Diphone do the FOF and additive from a
concatenation, personally I think this is the way to go.

Spear file system I think is in triplets per partial track, I must
look at this again. though you could have a look at the Praat analyser
, the text files of which are not that difficult to decipher. It also
gives you formant tracks which is what you will need for FOF and PWS

For plucked instruments and hit instruments, physical modelling is pretty good.

There are so many synthesis techniques. A couple of good resources is
Microsound by curtis roads. Representations of Musical signals edited
by Roads and the Csound book. There are lot of synthesis opcodes in
Csound and the Csound~ has just been updated. There is a couple of
chapters on FOF synthesis in this book which look at imitating the
human voice.

Pere

On 06/08/07, SecretTheatre wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am interested in using Max/MSP to synthesize oriental free reed instruments like the sho and sheng. I've used Max/MSP for about 6 months now, but I'm not that clear about where to begin with this. I presume I'd need some kind of analysis of the acoustic and spectral properties of these instruments. I've got a few sound samples, so I'm guessing I could work with analyses of these in something like SND or SPEAR. Any thoughts/advice most welcome.
>
>
>

--
www.centuryofnoise.com
www.perevillez.com