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> narrow your scope and focus on one synth... make sure it’s subtractive. For my part I went with physical modeling first. It quickly gives results that are al
by cousin_it 5y ago
> narrow your scope and focus on one synth... make sure it’s subtractive.
For my part I went with physical modeling first. It quickly gives results that are almost impossible with subtractive. Here's a track where I made all sounds using Apple's Sculpture (mallets, an acoustic guitar, and something like a bowed flute): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkUs-BdxtN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkUs-BdxtN8
I wish there were more synths like this, where you could design sounds of imaginary physical objects. There's Sculpture, there's Mutable Instruments stuff, and then everything else is a notch below in sound or versatility. For awhile I was toying with the idea to make a new open source synth for bowed and wind type of sounds, but realistically I don't have the skills.
- SeanLuke 5y agoI think physical modeling is a poor choice. The advantage of subtractive synthesis is that each of its elements (oscillators, filters, amplifiers, modulation, effects) has an impact on the sound more or less independent of the others, and so their parameters can be understood and modified independently of the others. In other techniques, notably FM and physical modeling, the parameters and elements are very tightly coupled and nonlinear: the particular effect of parameter X changes depending on the setting of parameter Y. As a result you can't study the pieces separately, but instead must understand the dynamics of the entire system as a global unit. This is what made FM nearly impossible for musicians to wrap their heads around: and it also plagues physical modeling. The other problem with physical modeling is that there are many physical modeling methods and architectures, and learning one doesn't help all that much with regard to the others.