demagogue on 6/7/2020 at 03:51
Well alright, let's get this party started then: (
https://soundcloud.com/user9513654/bell-sample)
I'm hitting four consecutive notes (e5, f5, g5, and a5. The FM is really going crazy with the pitch. Outside of those notes it starts going haywire above and below, which this version shows after the first four notes: (
https://soundcloud.com/user9513654/bell-sample-other-notes). But those first few notes sounded pretty good so I stuck with it.)
Method (not entirely sure what's going on myself, but here's what I thought I was doing):
I making this in Absynth. Two oscillators. I read that ringmod and FM are used to make metal clangs and bell like sounds, and I read that ringmods work like wave-packets, so I kind of ran with all three ideas to see what I came up with.
So the first oscillator is a wide sine wave-packet with only 3 smaller waves in the bigger one that I drew by hand (so kind of hand-made ringmod), transposed up 40 halfsteps. Then I turned ringmod on it which I believe mods it with the base sine wave for the note, which I guess double-ringmods it? Then the second oscillator is just a sine wave transposed up 22 halfsteps, but then I ran it through a filter that was set to an FM. (Vanilla FM mods a wave by another wave; I think the filter is letting the first wave pass by the 2nd wave. Anyway, the FM filter keeps a little more of the body of the original sine wave because I wanted some of that body resonance to come through and sound just a little clangy but not too much, and it did that job.)
And then each oscillator has its own envelope, both of which have attack at 100% right at the hit, and then the decay comes down concave, like a 1/x^2 skislope, sharp at the top but then leveling off a half-second in and coasting slowly down to zero after about 3 seconds. The decay curve is sharper for the higher pitched oscillator so it goes down pretty quickly, and it's flatter for the lower pitched oscillator so it rings out louder for a bit longer and falls off more gradually like a kind of faux resonance of the bell body.Aja on 6/7/2020 at 04:31
That's a decent sound! Nice and harmonically rich. I'd like to hear it with some reverb, too. I'll try to patch one up tomorrow morning and post it.
Aja on 6/7/2020 at 04:37
Also, can you explain what a wave packet is? I've never heard that term.
demagogue on 6/7/2020 at 05:12
I tried reverb but then it sounded clearly artificial, and I wanted it to sound as realistic as I could. But I'll try to find a good reverb setting that sounds nice anyway.
A wave packet just means smaller waves inside a larger wave. When you do ringmod, the base wave is the wavelength of the larger guy, and the mod wave is the wavelength of the smaller guy. Then ringmod fits the smaller wave into the larger one as repeating wave packets.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/iqv1FIa.pngEdit: "Wave packet" is the term they use in quantum physics for the probability amplitude wave of a particle that looks like this. It might not actually be the right term here; it's just what I wanted to call it for lack of a better term.
PigLick on 6/7/2020 at 09:11
so kinda like nested tuplets then?
Aja on 6/7/2020 at 16:32
Here's my entry.
(
https://soundcloud.com/dimedancing/july-6-bell-tone/s-zcGBzcX3ujp)
The Shapeshifter sends out a sine wave from its primary oscillator, which is then both frequency modulated and phase modulated by its second oscillator, also a sine wave (and which is set at a precise harmonic interval. Being able to quantize the second oscillator to harmonically useful FM intervals is one of the nice features of the Shapeshifter; it makes melodic FM much easier). That gets sent to a mixer along with five other sine waves of various related frequencies, and all of that gets sent into a low-pass gate, which is opened with an exponential-shaped envelope. It still sounded a bit harsh, so I sent the final mix into a low-pass filter, then on to the reverb and delay (for the second half of the clip), the latter of which is set to a very short frequency to add a little extra, I dunno, depth.
Aja on 6/7/2020 at 21:08
Quote Posted by demagogue
Edit: "Wave packet" is the term they use in quantum physics for the probability amplitude wave of a particle that looks like this. It might not actually be the right term here; it's just what I wanted to call it for lack of a better term.
Right, that makes sense. I don't fully understand how ring modulation works, but in practical terms I think of it as the sound that results from basically running a tremolo at audio rates (which is kind of what your diagram shows, a waveform varying in amplitude).
Jason Moyer on 7/7/2020 at 04:44
I rotate synths in and out constantly, so the only hardware I have out ATM to try this is my Poly D. This is just VCO's 1/2/3 on triangle waves at different pitches and VCO4 frequency modulating them at audio rates with a thin pulse wave.
(
https://soundcloud.com/jason_moyer/poly-d-bell)
Aja on 7/7/2020 at 05:14
You sold your Voltage Research Lab?
Jason Moyer on 7/7/2020 at 07:05
Nah, I just currently live in a place where I can't keep most of my gear out. Partially because of space, but mostly because it's facing a major road and has a serious dust problem.
