The Eat at Joe's Kawai K5000 Message Board Digest Out of Series Harmonics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ sound (re-)creation Thursday, 27-Nov-97 08:17:06 Message: 194.109.41.238 writes: I've read a lot about sound-synthesis lately and discovered that the best way (and the most logical) is additive-synthesis. So naturally I turned my attention to the K5000s'specs. I don't know if they were true, but it said that you could do only whole numbered harmonics!!! Well I have two explanetions for that:1. The engineers at Kawai are complete morons. or 2. It's too hard for the k5000s' 32bit processor. So I hope the last, because if I told you that most of the acoustic instruments have not-whole numbered harmonics (that is the harmonics are not a whole numbered mulitple of the fundamental=pitch\note) (yes even a pianosound !!) you would probably say too that those Kawai guys could have made the perfect synthesizer! So to make the Kawai perfect we could rewrite the K5000 internal soundengine-software. To do that you should be probably a genuis in programming (since the K5000 works realtime you must write it in it's processor-code!). What I would like to see implemented is: 1. non whole numbered harmonics which can be tuned very, very precise about 1/100 of a hertz 2. detailed pitch envelope 3.detailed phase envelope and 4. (optional) a second LFO if, of course, the k5000 first LFO isn't a hardware LFO... So Anyone out there who can do that? Maybe you could even make money with it?! (Hope that's a good motivation) Now I have a request.... could someone mail this message to some sites? I've just started working with the internet 2 months ago and still don't know a lot of things and thus also don't know how to publish this message over the internet. I would appriciate it!!! Think of that great potential this intsrument has and could gain!!! For further information about synthesis look for "syntheszer technique" (and others) compiled from Keboard Magazine (USA) Paul (Holland) xeon@freemail.nl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: sound (re-)creation Thursday, 27-Nov-97 17:27:25 153.37.15.218 writes: You can get harmonics that aren't in the series, but you need to add another source (another set of oscillators) which contain the harmonic(s) you want in it's series. Then you take out all of the harmonics in the harmonic level screen and only add those (in)harmonics you want. If you detune the second source low enough (or use the 65th-128th harmonics), the harmonics should be so close to each other that you can get most of what you need (especially by fine detuning the envelope, giving further accuracy in semitone percents). Granted this is definately a work around of what could be implemented much better in a system rewrite, and you'd need to do some math to get it right, but still I think with six sources you could create a very complex waveform.... kenjib@rocketmail.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: sound (re-)creation Friday, 28-Nov-97 00:46:02 199.86.47.8 writes: The answer is 3.neither; you _can_ do non-whole number harnmonics. While each additive generator "only" makes 64 whole-number harmonics, you can combine up to 6 additive generators and they can start from 6 different fundamentals. Each of the 6 generators has its own pitch envelope. There's no phase control, but you can apply LFO in many ways, even to individual harmonics. Each harmonic has it's own volume envelope. Funny that you mention the piano--one of the guitar patches uses three additive generators that start from different fundamentals (not octaves) and have different pitch envelopes. leiter@skypoint.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Combining Harmonics of Related Notes Friday, 28-Nov-97 00:26:34 Message: 199.86.47.8 writes: I’ve been getting some interesting sounds by combining the harmonics of different notes, something that was suggested here. Generally, take 2 ADD generators, remove the first few harmonics of the second one and offset it’s pitch by some inverval. I’ve found that, to get a good sound, you have to be selective with the harmonics. If you leave in too many of the harmonics on both generators it sounds like playing an interval, instead of a single note with strange overtones. With close intervals, it sounds like car horns in heavy traffic. Also, tuning the interval can make a big difference. For example, if you tune the 2d ADD down a major third, (-4 semitones), the 5th harmonic of the 2d ADD almost matches the 4th of the primary note. In "just tuning", they would be exactly the same, since the frequency of a major third is exactly 5/4 the frequency of the tonic. But in the equal-tempered scale, they’re off by 14 cents, which is around 16 on the K5k’s fine tuning adjustment, so they sound out of tune. When it’s tuned, all of the new harmonics are in whole-number ratios to the fundamental, like natural harmonics are. The tuning doesn’t matter as much with intervals of 4ths and 5ths because these are only off by 2 cents to begin with. The easiest way I’ve found to tune the interval is to turn down all the harmonics except the two that should match and then tune them by ear (which is very easy with pure sine waves). There are some weird combinations you can get this way, e.g. matching up the 8th harmonic of the 2d ADD with the 7th of the primary, or 7 with 6, etc. leiter@skypoint.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Inharmonic Tones Saturday, 27-Jun-98 17:29:51 209.160.126.117 writes: This is a trick many of you probably already know, but I thought I would pass it along anyway. According to a book I have, "The Accoustical Foundations Of Music", vibrating bar instruments, like the marimba, produce tones at the fundamental (1), 2.76 times the fundamental, and 5.40 times the fundamental. In order to create this with my K5, I used two sources. I set the fundamental of one source to the highest amplitude setting. I set its envelope to have a short percussive decay. I then tuned the second source down 28 semitones. This had the effect of dividing all of its harmonics by 5, so 5 became the fundamental, 10 became harmonic 2, 15 became harmonic 3 and so on. In order to get the inharmonic tones, I turned up the 14 harmonic of the second source, which is now 2.8 times the fundamental (not exact, but close enough). I then turned up the 27 harmonic, which is 5.4 times the fundamental. I gave each harmonic a percussive envelope like the fundamental only with shorter decays. To fine tune the sound, you may want to raise the second source about 1/4 of a semitone. Since you're only dealing with three harmonics, It's not hard to experiment with setting them to different ampitudes till you get what you want. You K5k owners out there can probably add attack transiets to spice up the sound. There are probably other sounds that can be created this way as well. Let me know if you know of any. Leslie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: Inharmonic Tones Saturday, 27-Jun-98 20:00:11 199.86.40.80 writes: It's good to see someone else is taking the textbook approach! You could also set the fundamental of the second ADD to 2.76 times the fundamental of the first. You can turn the 2.76 ratio into cents like this: log(base 1.00057779)2.76 = 1758 cents That's 18 half steps (course tuning) minus 42 cents, which is 42*63/50= 53 notches of fine tuning. [1.00057779 is the ratio for one cent. Multiply a frequency by that number and you move up one cent. It's equal to 2 to the 1/1200th.] leiter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------