[LAU] Real-time percussion modelling 'demo'

[Len Ovens]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2018, jonetsu wrote:

> A few times in the past, and even recently, there were some comments
> regarding the lack of a technology that could translate relatively well
> the percussion gestures done by hands.

I'm one for sure.

> That technology exists and is quite affordable.  It comes from
> Standford University and was licensed by Yamaha.  The Korg used it to
> make the Wavedrum.
>
> Since I connected mine today I thought of doing a quick 'demo', just 1
> minute in which:
>
> - fingers are brushed
> - nails are brushed
> - fingers are tapping
> - nails are tapping
> - pressure is applied
>
> and variations thereof.
>
> The Wavedrum is connected to the usual stereo tube preamp and
> compressor used for acoustic guitar, but with different settings, and
> then a bit of reverb was added.  The Wavedrum currently has a Remo drum
> skin.
>
> Sound On Sound calls it 'true physical modelling'.
>
> https://soundcloud.com/nominal6/wavedrum1

First it sounds very nice. I went looking for some other recordings and 
they are nice too. Yes the technology to take the input from a drum head 
and pass it to a synth seems to exist, but I do not see any output for 
midi, OSC or proprietary control protocol so that the _performance_ can be 
recorded and the synthesis done later even using the same synth built into 
the wavedrum itself. This makes me wonder if this is true synthesis (which 
in my mind means input a voltage, number that has no audio in waveform 
itself in it and create the audio from scratch. This system seems to mean 
take the audio in and then add resonance, change frequency or other DSP 
process that just changes the original sound that comes from a known 
drumskin.

So there are two things missing that I see:
 	1) controlability -being able to record and edit the performance
 		before it becomes audio.

 	2) proof that there really is synthesis happening and not just
 		digital shaping of the original audio.

Neither of these points should be considered a putdown of this technology. 
This is good stuff. But rather a clarification of the offered usability as 
compared to what I would be seeking. That is, this is not a 
controller/synth pair but an electronic drum. (quite a nice one) I suspect 
the technology in the DSP could be used quite successfully to come up with 
a "MIDI" controlable drum synth. I suspect that it would not be impossible 
to have a controller that could send enough information for any one stroke 
to enable such a synth to sound very life like. I would suggest one MIDI 
channel per drum would work nicely.... editing the midi stream might be 
interesting :)  So anyway, 16 MIDI drums per MIDI port.

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net