PHYSSOUNDrings bars and stringsPHYS
PHYS models things that ring when struck, plucked or bowed: bells and bars, strings, drum heads, and a string with sympathetic strings ringing along.
rings bars and strings
- Half
- SOUND
- Reach it
- white key C5 in the wheel
- ALGORITHM
- MODEL
- Engine
- PHYS
- Factory sounds
- 9
Playing it
MAIN starts with MODEL, the kind of body; the other three shape it. STRC is its structure: on a bell or bar it stretches the partials from harmonic to clangorous, on a string it moves from a buzzy, sitar-like bridge to a stiff, piano-like one. BRIT keeps the high partials ringing and brightens the strike. DAMP is the decay; at the top the body rings on. POS, on EXCT, is where it is struck or plucked, which changes which partials sound.
PHYS is not on the default wheel: pick it on the PAIR page (hold HOME, tap GLO, KNOB 1) or give it a key with the slot picker (The wheel). Its sounds are also in LIBRARY.
MAIN
| Knob | Label | Range | Starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MODEL | MODAL STRNG MEMB SYMP | MODAL |
| 2 | STRC | 0% .. 100% | 55% |
| 3 | BRIT | 0% .. 100% | 79% |
| 4 | DAMP | 0% .. 100% | 83% |
Pages
BODY
MODEL picks what rings. Some knobs take a different name when the model changes; the screen always shows the current one.
- MODAL: a bank of resonant modes for bells, bars and plates.
- STRNG: a plucked string (an extended Karplus-Strong string, a delay line fed with a burst of noise).
- MEMB: a struck drum head. HARM blends an ideal head (inharmonic, like toms and timpani) into a loaded one with harmonic overtones (closer to a tabla), and BEND drops the pitch after the strike.
- SYMP: the plucked string plus three sympathetic strings, as on a sitar. CHRD tunes them to an interval or chord above the note, SYMP (in POS's place) sets how much they take from the string, and BUZZ is the curved bridge.
| Knob | Label | Range | Starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MODEL | MODAL STRNG MEMB SYMP | MODAL |
| 2 | STRC | 0% .. 100% | 55% |
| 3 | BRIT | 0% .. 100% | 79% |
| 4 | DAMP | 0% .. 100% | 83% |
EXCT
EXCT sets how the body is played. ACC is the accent at full velocity: a brighter, longer, louder strike, scaled by how hard you play. BOW (MODAL and STRNG) sustains the sound with a stream of tiny random hits, so a bell or string can be bowed or blown instead of struck; MEMB puts BEND on this knob and SYMP puts BUZZ there. EXC mixes in the exciter itself, the mallet or the pick.
| Knob | Label | Range | Starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | POS | 0% .. 100% | 9% |
| 2 | ACC | 0% .. 100% | 79% |
| 3 | BOW | 0% .. 100% | 0% |
| 4 | EXC | 0% .. 100% | 5% |
Factory sounds
- BELL TREE
- MARIMBA
- PLUCK
- BOWED METAL
- KALIMBA
- HAND DRUM
- TOMS
- DRONE STRING
- HARP
Where it comes from
firmware/src/eng_phys.c, Felucca's engine (GPL-3.0), by Leo Kuroshita, Hügelton Instruments. Its DSP is ported to fixed point from DaisySP (Electrosmith, Emilie Gillet, MIT) and from Rings' sympathetic strings (Emilie Gillet, MIT).