User's Manual

5.3 The Synth Section 41
5.3.2 The Mixer Module
The two Chromaphone resonators can be excited by a mallet and a noise source.
The Mixer module is used to adjust the amplitude of both of these sources. The
Mallet knob is used to adjust the amplitude of the force impact from the mallet while
the Noise knob controls the amplitude of the noise source. Both of these parameter can
be modulated with pitch and MIDI velocity. The noise source can also be modulated
with the LFO module. The two Direct knobs are used to add signal from the mallet or
noise source to the output signal from the resonators. When in their leftmost position,
there is no extra source sound added to the output signal and the source component
that is present in the output sound is the original sound from the sources filtered by
the resonator(s). Turning these knobs clockwise adds an increasing amount of direct
source signal in the output sound.
5.3.3 The Mallet Module
The Mallet module is used to simulate the force impact produced by a mallet
striking an object. The force of the impact is adjusted with the Mallet knob from
the Mixer module as described above while the stiffness of the mallet (related to its
material) is varied with the Stiffness knob. Figure 23 shows the effect of the adjustment
of the stiffness on the output signal. As the stiffness is increased the excitation signal
becomes narrower. The effect of the amplitude of the force impact is also shown in
the same figure. The Stiffness parameter can be modulated with the MIDI velocity and
the note played. These modulation, combined with a corresponding modulation of the
Mallet parameter from the Mixer module are usually used to get a stronger impact
with increasing keyboard velocity and to make the mallet softer as the impact velocity increases, a
behavior one observes, for example, on piano hammer heads due to the non-linearity of the felt.
Figure 23: Effect of the Stiffness and amplitude of the force impact (Mallet knob from the Mixer
module) on the output from the Mallet module.
Noise can also be added to the impact sound allowing for some interesting effects. The amount
of noise is controlled with the Noise control. In its leftmost position there is no noise added to the