Waveform City Episode 11 Make Noise by waveform city
An interview with Tony Rolando of Make Noise via Waveform City. This is pretty big news for the synth history and the synth community. You might remember the Make Noise mystery module from this video and this video. It turns out it will be the first voltage controlled physical modeling module. It gets mentioned eleven minutes into the interview. For those of you familiar with some of the major milestones in the history of synthesis, this is significant. If you take a look at http://120years.net/ you will find a number of electronic instruments that lead to what we define as synthesizers today, but most think of it all starting with the first analog modulars from Moog and Buchla in the 60s. These made way for self contained analog synths in the 70s and eventually digital synths in the 80s including FM synthesis, samplers, sdditive synths like the Kawai K5 and K5000s, and the mass of PCM/Sample based synths. The next major breakthrough didn't come until the 90s when Physical Modelling arrived with the Yamaha VL1 (1994) and Korg Prophecy (1995). The first analog modelling synth was the Clavia Nord Lead (1995). The Make Noise mystery module will be the first to bring physical modeling to the modern modular world. That's pretty significant when you think about it. See Waveform City for more podcast interviews with makers in the modern modular market.
Monday, May 21, 2012
3 comments:
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Well Ron Berry developped a nice Physical Modelling Analog Modular Synth some 20 years ago. Check it at :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ron-berry.co.uk/page17.html
Is it the same? I need to dig in deeper after I'm caught up with the morning's posts, but from what I can see it looks like it's more of an extension of analog synthesis with the goal of modelling real world instruments, rather than the new software "physical modelling" tech. He mentions physical modelling via digital means and states, "At that time, in the digital world, the modelling of the acoustics of real instruments using large programs running on big mainframe computers had just begun. Nice, if you had access to these expensive esoteric machines but I didn’t."
ReplyDeleteAs for his modules, he has:
"SPECIAL DELAY LINE MODULE" - "It's really a voltage controlled analogue delay line with an output filter and a feedback loop."
"CVP MODULE" - "The other slightly unusual module I have is a CVP. It stands for Control Voltage Processor. It’s really a modified standard VCA (voltage controlled amplifier)."
Both are extensions of analog technology and techniques used to further model physical instruments. The same can be said for other technologies including digital FM synthesis. Remember FM's claim to fame when it arrived was the ability to mimic real world instruments more-so than analog. The new physical modeling technology was something different. It was directly modeling the physics behind real world instruments including the components behind analog synths.
But, this brings up an interesting point. What does Make Noise's module do? Is it analog physical modelling in the same sense of Ron Berry's, or is it software based physical modelling like the VL1? I'll see if I can find out.
I could be wrong, but listening to the video and his explanation it sounds like the physical modeling is similar to Karplus-Strong string synthesis. It's usually used for synthesizing plucked string sounds. You typically use an impulse as your envelope and the feedback amount of the delay line determines the decay. Though, if you don't use an impulse you get a more washy/noisy sustained sounds (although still pitched).
ReplyDeleteI doubt the ??? module is just this, but that's kind of what it sounded like to me. I don't know if there have been Karplus-Strong modules in the past.