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TRANSFORMING SAMPLES

Transform Multiplication was a form of synthesis unique to Emu's Emax range of samplers, which used some heavy computational algorithms to combine twosamples in a unique but time-consuming way. The process came up with someweird and wonderful sounds ideal for futuristic timbres and sound effects, but itsuffered from the same problem as many non-real time implementations of synthesis: the process of tweaking a promising first try into a satisfying sound couldtake days. When a typical computation duration exceeds thirty minutes, the problemis not so much that creating a completely new sound from a set of parametersentered takes a long time (although this will deter the superficial user), but that eachminute adjustment of those parameters, or to use the technical term, 'tweak', takesexactly the same time. So to refine a promising sound can be soul-destroying,especially if you are at the experimental stage where you do not know exactly what

recommend experimenting with it, if you have a sampler and a couple of hours to kill.

The real challenge these days for physical modelling is not the perfect recreation of acoustic instruments or even the biggestsounding, most powerful analogue-style synth ever, but making the technology easy to operate by people who have never even learnt the basics of analogue synthesis (none of whom are amongst SOS readers, I am sure). The various solutions tothis, from the increasing use of dedicated front-panel knobs or X-Y pads or ribbon controllers, through to SysEx control bycomputer programs, have helped expand the market for physical modelling, but I still feel that this is just another example of 'dumbing down' technology so it can be sold. For the time being at least, the development of physical modelling seems to beits consolidation into more marketable versions of the technology, and its integration into workstations (see last month'ssidebar on "Combining Physical Modelling with PCM"). So what other contenders are there for the Future of Synthesis?

RESYNTHESISE!

 An old chestnut which periodically turns up is the concept of resynthesis. This is the name given to a generic process wherebyan analysis of the sound (usually sampled) is made in an attempt to break it down into its constiuent parts, which can then berecreated piecemeal from basic building blocks. These building blocks are usually hundreds of sine waves which are used tobuild up the harmonic content of the sound, the sound having been analysed in the first place via a Fast Fourier Transform.Those of you who saw Duran Duran's 'Reflex' video will have seen Fairlight displays of FFTs on its samples, usuallycompared to a plot of a mountain range or the seabed. The Fairlight was not the only system which could produce pretty FFTdisplays. They were even possible on the cult UK sampler Lynex  in the late '80s which ran on the Atari ST. However, all thesesystems had one thing in common; they could produce a lovely picture from a sample, but they wouldn't let you change theharmonic content, because they couldn't actually turn the sound into its constituent harmonics, let alone convert it back to asample.

Because FFT analysis breaks the sound down into harmonic content, it made sense that the first systems which could attempta reconstruction would be additive synthesisers. In fact, one of the earliest commercially available systems was a Dr T'sprogram for the K5 that ran on the Atari. Although there were not really enough harmonics and envelopes available on the K5to cope with really complex sounds, it would produce recognizable versions of simple sounds which made good starting pointsfor sound design rather than having to set all the harmonics manually from scratch (in fact, if anyone out there still has a copyof this software, perhaps they would contact me via SOS as I would love to get my hands on it once again). Of course, if someone were to do something similar for the current Kawai, the K5000, which has a much more flexible implementation of 

additive synthesis, this would probably get a lot closer to a useable resynthesis system.

Perhaps the best resynthesis I ever heard was on the Technox Axcel, a system which came originally came from Canadianacademia, but which went through the inital phases of commercial marketing. It had a flexible additive structure which couldassign more or fewer harmonics to each voice as required (although this meant more complex sounds had less polyphony),and at the Paris show in about 1989 they had got the resynthesizer analysis working. I heard a very respectable resynthesis of a flute sound, complete with the more demanding breath component (a flute on its own wouldn't have been that impressive, asthe pitched component is a fairly simple harmonic series). However, I never got sufficient hands-on time to evaluate thepotential of the system on really demanding sounds. I believe Jean-Michel Jarre bought that unit, but the company went inliquidation shortly afterwards and very few units were actually shipped.

Over three years ago our venerable editor wrote a piece about Oberheim Electronics (now owned by Gibson) havingdeveloped a similar system in conjunction with Berkeley, Stamford, MIT and IRCAM (see the January '95 issue) under theunlikely name of G-Wiz Labs, but we have no more recent information, so either the development process is taking longer than they thought or the project has been abandoned. Again, as its name implied (FAR -- Fourier Analsis and Resynthesis) itseems to have used an FFT analysis of the source sample to set up harmonic components. One potential problem withresynthesis, the recreation of unpitched noise components, was dealt with rather elegantly by comparing the result wi th theoriginal and then creating shaped noise to fill out the differences. At $10,000 plus a Macintosh, it was not cheap, but Paul'sreport mentioned a recognisable line from Suzanne Vega's 'Tom's Diner' being replayed at different pitches and tempos

without any of the normal drawbacks of sampling. Certainly, resynthesis is one of the few systems which seems to have thepotential for synthesising vocal performances.

The appeal of resynthesis is that it would have all the advantages of sampling, in that any sound which can be played in to thesystem could be reproduced, but without the disadvantage of samples playing back at different lengths when repitched. Whena resynthesis is triggered at different pitches on something like the Oberheim FAR system, the replay time would be constantand noise elements in the sound would not be repitched at all. Looping would also no longer be a problem; you would merelyextend the duration of the harmonic series in the sustain phase of the sound. Of course, the repitching would not necessarilyremove all the problems associated with sampling. Sounds which have been shaped by some sort of resonant chamber (human voice, bowed strings, guitars, etc) would have the harmonic boosts/dampening repitched, which introduces the Pinkyand Perky/Carlsberg effect that often forces multi-sampling. This is where physical modelling triumphs as it splits the soundinto the driver (which is usually repitched) and the modifier or resonator (which usually doesn't change).

Perhaps the ideal resynthesis system would be one which does not simply reduce each slice of sound to its constituentharmonics, but would instead look for the effect of a constant resonator in a longer sample of an instrument playing across itsrange, and would then recreate the harmonic spectrum of the driver separately from the resonant amplifier of the modifier. Itmight be referred to as 'remodelling'.

One drawback with resynthesis or 'remodelling' is that would leave

nothing for the programmer to do.Just play the sound in, let thecomputer do its number-crunchingand hey presto -- your sound can beplayed back from the keyboard. Of course, if the sound has been brokendown into constituent harmonics,then the levels of these could beedited or adjusted in real time for creating new sounds or addingexpression, but it still reeks of theincreasing dominance of factorypresets and lack of user editing andpersonalisation of the sounds.

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each of the parameters will do. Changing a parameter in the 'wrong' direction or altering the 'wrong' parameter altogether means that you have sentence yourself toanother long wait just to get back in the right direction. Indeed, to become asfamiliar with Transform Multiplication as I am sure many of you are with the other forms of synthesis we have looked at might well take a lifetime, unless someonecomes up with a real-time implementation. Perhaps Gerry Basserman, who did thedemos for Emu for years, might well have reached the stage where he wasconfident of the effect that individual parameter changes to Transform Multiplicationwould have, but I suspect that there are precious few others. My experimentationwith this technique often produced some fascinating results, but I never really feltlike I was doing anything more than randomly combining samples which sometimeshad serendipitous results. I certainly never felt completely on top of the method.However, if Emu or anyone else were to come out with a real-time implementation

of this style of synthesis, you can bet I'd be first in the queue to master thetechnique. Sadly, the cynic in me suspects that the market for synthesis styleswhich create new sounds rather than attempt to duplicate old ones is not largeenough to prompt Emu or anyone else to produce the expensive hardware thiswould need (probably leaving physical modelling far behind in terms of the rawhorsepower required). In the meantime, if you can get your hands on a Emax SE,Transform Multiplication will certainly satisfy an appetite for new weird andwonderful sounds.

'Remodelling' would be better as youcould adjust the parameters of themodel to make new sounds. But still Ifind I miss the challenge of 'pure'synthesis, where you have to be thebrains and do the analysis of thesound yourself and then recreate itwith the parameters available (or even make up a completely newsound).

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GOTOMORROW?

So if you are interested in synthesisand sound design for its own sake,rather than having specific timbres torecreate or gigs to do with theminimum number of synths, thenwhere are the new frontiers? Wherecan you rediscover the thrill of findinga new way of doing things, or even atechnology to misuse or trick intodoing something unique? The answer to this question, as with so many these days, seems to concern computers and theInternet. In fact, most new types of synthesis since the '80s have been developed at their theoretical and experimental stagesthrough computers. Generally speaking, a designer/engineer had an idea or came across a phenomenon when doingsomething else which he thinks has potential. The cheapest way to investigate further was to set up some computations on ageneric system, ie. a computer, which can be programmed to simulate (often not in real time) the effect which will be producedwhen certain novel configurations and/or processes are tried. He then took this to an electronic music company and tried topersuade them to take it a stage further. This sometimes took the form of developing specific hardware which is fast enoughto do things in real time (like Yamaha's development of John Chowning's FM) or, alternatively, adding it to an exisiting genericproduct like a sampler. A good example of this latter is Emu's addition of Transform Multiplication as part of the SE software

upgrade to their Emax samplers (see 'Transforming Samples' box opposite).DIY SYNTHESIS

So back then to our own computers and their umbilical link to the repository of human knowledge that is the Internet. Modernpersonal computers' CPUs are now so fast that they rival the computational power of systems that only major manufacturersor universities could afford 10 or 20 years ago. You also now have a direct link to the people in educational establishmentswho are trying to push back the boundaries. Lacking any other public forum to publish their ideas, many academics now posttheir ideas and sonic experiments on the Internet, just for the satisfaction of airing their concepts to a wider audience who cantry their techniques out (indeed it is difficult to see how some of these methods could be implemented into a traditioncommercial synthesizer). As a result, you can get into more or less esoteric forms of sound generation at the leading edge of academia via that PC or Mac sat in the corner of your living room. One that has been coming to SOS's attention over the lastfew months is Granular synthesis, explained elsewhere in this article.

The main lesson however, is that it has never been easier to get into weird and wonderful forms of synthesis yourself. With acomputer and an Internet connection, you can do your own research, download examples and descriptions and then with asampler or generic synth you can recreate some of the things described and try them for yourself. New types of synthesiswithout expensive new keyboards -- sounds great to me. So Synth School is not exactly coming to a close but transferring tothe Internet (a sort of Open University  for the new millennium). Get your search engines in gear and you can try threeimpossible methods of synthesis before breakfast.

 And so we reach the end of the final instalment of Synth School. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this series and I amparticularly grateful to all those of you who have cornered me at t rade shows or product launches and been kind enough tosay how they have found it useful. Perhaps the most important message I have tried to put across is this: refuse to use factorypresets and make up your own sounds using whatever tools come to hand -- your music will be the better, or at least the moreindividual, for it. If you have been led by any of these articles to try out new ways of creating sounds, (or even return to someold ones you thought you had left behind) then these articles have done their job.

Published in SOS October 1998

 

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