overtone 2024-01-07

I am extremely chuffed with this church bell sound:

(demo
  6
  (let [freq (midicps 65)
        decaytime 6
        burst (var-saw freq)
        filter-coef 0.3
        filter-coef2 0.4]
    (pan2
     (rlpf
      :in (+
           (pluck burst
                  :delaytime (/ 1 freq)
                  :decaytime decaytime
                  :coef filter-coef)
           (* (line:kr 0.1 0.3 4)
              (pluck burst
                     :delaytime (/ 1 (* 1.01 freq))
                     :decaytime decaytime
                     :coef filter-coef2))
           (* 0.3
              (pluck burst
                     :delaytime (/ 1 (* 2.15 freq))
                     :decaytime decaytime
                     :coef filter-coef2)))
      :freq (line (* 5 freq) (* 1.3 freq) 1.5)))))

🔔 5
🙌 2

Very cool technique! 🙏

Synthesizing bell sounds is notoriously difficult. I've seen FM and additive approaches, but they rarely really satisfy. Bells have a pretty unique mix of resonant and dissonant frequencies that's not easy to replicate with synths.

This however uses pluck, or Karpluss-Strong synthesis, which is usually used for string sounds. Turns out that if you combine a few of them and play a bit with the frequencies and envelopes you can get a pretty nice sounding bell.

Hi @plexus This is unrelated but what is the best way to learn these techniques. How do I know of pluck or the burst. Is there a good manual for supercollider that will help me experiment and learn. I saw this https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Designing_Sound_in_SuperCollider and the mentioned book Designing Sound by Andy Farnell which I plan to begin reading. Would you suggest any other way.