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430 Chapter 24 Sculpture
In order to recreate the material properties of a set of round wound strings:
1 Move the ball in the Material Pad up and down at the left edge. Pay attention to how
the overtones react. Move the ball to the lower left hand corner. The sound should
vaguely remind you of the sound of a low piano string. As the overtones sustain too
long, the tone sounds somewhat unnatural.
2 Move the ball upwards until you hear an acceptable sound. As an example, we recom-
mend the following position:
Note: In general, a splaying of the overtones in low wound strings is typical. You can
recognize it by the slightly impure, metallic sound. This occurs because the partials
(overtones) are not exact whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, but
rather they are shifted somewhat higher. An example of this effect in the real world of
electro-acoustic instruments are the low strings on a Yamaha CP70. Although we don’t
want to take it that far, our bass model does need a small amount of this effect.
How to splay overtones in Sculpture:
1 Move the ball in the Material Pad gradually to the right. The sound takes on a more
impure and bell-like character.
2 To realistically simulate the splaying of overtones, we recommend the following
example setting:
The vibration of a bass string does not occur in a vacuum. The antenode of the string
frequently encounters the natural, physical limitations of the instrument. This is heard
as the typical buzzing and rattling that occurs when the strings touch the frets.