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Chapter 24 Sculpture 417
Bells
At a basic level, bell-like sounds are quite easy to produce with Sculpture. The creation
of truly interesting bells involves a little more effort, but the harmonic richness and
detuning during the decay/release phase makes all the difference …
• Load your “plain vanilla” patch.
• Set Object 1’s Type to Strike.
• Move the Material Pad ball to the very bottom of the pad, and place it pretty much
halfway between the Steel and Glass entries. If you play a few notes, you’ll hear that
the sound is already more “bell” like.
• Now grab the Media Loss slider, and drag it nearly all the way down. Again, play a few
notes, and you’ll hear that the release phase of the sound is considerably longer.
• Drag the Resolution slider all the way to the right.
• Drag Pickup A’s position to around halfway (0.48).
• Drag Object 1’s pickup position to a value of 0.10. We’re starting to get pretty bells
now … play a few notes.
• Now click on the Stereo Delay button to activate the Delay unit.
• Click the (Delay) sync button, and drag the Delay Base Time slider to a value of 20 ms.
• Increase the (Delay) Wet Level to 66%.
• Activate the Body EQ by pressing the Body EQ button. Ensure that the Lo Mid Hi
model is selected.
• Adjust the Low level to 0.55, the Mid to 0.32, and the Hi to 0.20.
• At this point, you will have a working bell sound—BUT—you’ll probably find that
there is a tuning issue below C3, in particular. We took this approach to
programming as the harmonics of the sound are most noticeable after all other
parameters have been set. The solution to the tuning issue primarily lies in the Inner
Loss and Stiffness KeyScaling parameters. To adjust, first select the Keyscale button,
then click-hold on the green horizontal line (within the Material Pad) for low notes, or
the blue horizontal line for high notes—and drag up/down to the desired position.
• Save Setting as… with a new name, and use it as the basis for new bell sounds, or
your next Christmas album.