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Chapter 13 Sculpture 298
Create a percussion sound
Percussive sounds, such as drums, tend to share a similar type of envelope. They contain a
strike element, where most of the sonic character is exhibited, followed by a short decay phase.
The release phase will vary depending on the instrument itself—a snare drum as opposed to
a woodblock, for example—and depending on the ambient space it is placed in—a cavern, a
bathroom, and so on.
1 Load the #default (or your vanilla) setting le.
2 Set Object 1’s type to Strike.
3 Activate Object 2, and set its type to Disturb 2-sided.
4 Set Object 2’s Gate mode to Always.
5 Object 1’s Strength should be about 0.84.
6 Object 2’s Strength should be about 0.34.
7 Drag the Media Loss slider up and down while playing to hear its eect. Find a suitable setting.
8 Similarly, you can change the Material Pad ball position—although its eect on the overall tone
of the sound is heavily reliant on the Media Loss value.
9 Activate the Body EQ and Filter, then adjust the settings to taste.
10 Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu and save the setting with a new name.
Stringed instrument programming examples
The tasks below provide programming guidelines, tips, tricks, and information to assist you in
creating particular types of acoustic instrument sounds in Sculpture.
Create a bass sound
1 Load the #default (or your vanilla) setting le.
2 Choose the +1 Oct. parameter from the Transpose pop-up menu at the top of the interface, and
play a few notes around C2.
The general color of an acoustic bass is already there
3 You can certainly drag the ball on the Material Pad toward the Nylon corner, but rst choose Pick
from Object 1’s Type pop-up menu.
4 Play your keyboard, and adjust the ball position while doing so.
5 Take a look at the Strength, Variation, Timbre, and VeloSens parameters of Object 1, and adjust
each in turn, to taste.
6 You may also wish to adjust the amplitude envelope’s Release parameter (the vertical R slider in
the section to the right of the circular Material Pad).
7 To make your bass more woody, adjust Object 1’s pickup position toward the right (drag the #1
slider in the Pickup section, which is at the left side of the interface). At extreme positions (the
left or right end), you’ll nd that the bottom end of your bass is lost. Try it out.
8 Adjust the position of Pickup A and Pickup B by dragging the horizontal sliders. As you’ll hear,
you can quickly recreate a picked acoustic or electric bass sound.
9 To instantly make the sound a hybrid (or full-on) synthesizer bass, click the Waveshaper button
(directly above the circular Material Pad and choose one of the types from the Type pop-up
menu above the button.
10 Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu and save your settings with new names
as you go.
You’ll probably come up with several new sounds in just a few minutes. Each of these can be
used as is, or as templates for future bass sounds you will create.