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Chapter 13 Sculpture 306
7 You’ll quickly realize that you can achieve a precise, crisp sound only when you drag the slider
relatively far away from the middle of the string. Move Object 1 closer to the pickup (position
0.15 in the gure below).
8 The low notes are still distorted. You can remedy this by adjusting the Level knob to the right of
the amplitude envelope. Set a value of −10 dB.
Recreate the material properties of a set of round wound strings
Although you can already recognize the sound of an electric bass, it doesn’t sound wiry enough
yet. Now it’s time to focus on the bass strings themselves.
1 Drag the ball in the Material Pad up and down at the left edge. Pay attention to how the
overtones react.
Drag the ball to the lower-left corner. The sound should vaguely remind you of the sound of a
low piano string. Because the overtones sustain too long, the tone sounds somewhat unnatural.
2 Drag the ball upward until you hear an acceptable sound. Try the position shown in the gure:
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 are shifted somewhat higher.
An example of this eect in the real world of electro-acoustic instruments is the low strings on a
Yamaha CP70. This is overkill, but your bass model will benet from a small amount of this eect.