Hi folks, I have an interest to create a long drawn double bass or cello sound. I’m aware of the Spitfire Lab packages and might check that out later since I’m on linux.
I tried playing with the Mutable Instrument clones and as good as they are, their GUI/knobs confuses the beejesus out of me and have not got the sound I want. However, I saw a few tuts where FM synthesis can create bow/pluck/blown/bell sounds so I’d like to play with basic VCOs and EGs etc to create these sounds. I might even use Dexter as a laboratory.
In so saying, are there any definitive resources out there that describe the creation of these specific sounds with FM synth recipes and algorithms?
Hi!
Dexter is indeed the way to go, but you can also try the phase distortion oscillators from Animated Circuits. I got some really nice cello like sounds out of those. Here they are - https://www.animated-circuits.com/
Have a go with the Bowd setting on Audible Instruments Macro Escillator - with a bit of modulation you can get a very nice cello sound, esp when you use 2 in parallel.
Hi, thought I’d do a little experiment with two of my favourite tools - which incidentally can also be used in VCV Rack via the Audio outputs - Calf’s Analyser and Robin Gareus’s x42-scope.
I downloaded a double bass background tutorial from Philharmonia Orchestra on Youtube and ran it through said mentioned tools. I noted down the root and first 4 harmonics of the sample E string played in the clip. The root was E2 as expected but
This baffles me a bit as a stringed instrument should have all the partials as harmonic. But they were
E2(root), B2, E3, G#3, B3. But B2 is 1.5 times the frequency of E2 thus is an inharmonic partial - do I have this assumption right?
Regardless, I used 5 separate sine oscillators in VCV and adjusting the levels got - as Roger Waters once said of later Pink Floyd works - a pretty fair forgery. x42-scope gave me the shape of the envelope though I could have used an envelope follower to work one out.
