A very late contribution. Multiple resonators (easy with DSP) enhance the violin tone, especially when vibrato used.
I have the following article in print, somewhere, but it's over thirty years since I read it. Let me know if you are still interested and I will start looking! From memory, the result was judged to be of equal quality, although different character, to a Strad.
Electronic simulation of violin resonances
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 53, Issue 6, pp. 1620-1626 (1973); (7 pages)
A study of the resonances of the violin is described. Magnetic pickups attached to the bridge of a violin (sans body) responded to the lateral motion of the strings to produce a signal used to excite a set of electrical resonances. The parameters, such as center frequency, bandwidth, and attenuation of the resonances were adjustable and by means of these variables a variety of tones were produced and presented to experienced subjects from the music world. Subjective evaluation of the various tones indicates that the preferred violin tone is produced when the resonance frequencies are irregularly spaced with respect to the harmonics of the string vibration and the bandwidths have values which achieve a 12‐dB peak‐to‐valley differential in the resonance response curve. A theory of enhancement of tone quality by resonant filters is presented and the construction of an electronic violin is discussed.
© 1973 Acoustical Society of America
I have the following article in print, somewhere, but it's over thirty years since I read it. Let me know if you are still interested and I will start looking! From memory, the result was judged to be of equal quality, although different character, to a Strad.
Electronic simulation of violin resonances
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 53, Issue 6, pp. 1620-1626 (1973); (7 pages)
A study of the resonances of the violin is described. Magnetic pickups attached to the bridge of a violin (sans body) responded to the lateral motion of the strings to produce a signal used to excite a set of electrical resonances. The parameters, such as center frequency, bandwidth, and attenuation of the resonances were adjustable and by means of these variables a variety of tones were produced and presented to experienced subjects from the music world. Subjective evaluation of the various tones indicates that the preferred violin tone is produced when the resonance frequencies are irregularly spaced with respect to the harmonics of the string vibration and the bandwidths have values which achieve a 12‐dB peak‐to‐valley differential in the resonance response curve. A theory of enhancement of tone quality by resonant filters is presented and the construction of an electronic violin is discussed.
© 1973 Acoustical Society of America
Electric violin can be used to make music, but I've never heard one that really sounded like one of those complexly shaped boxes made of wood. That wood box of a high value violin is not just resonating at 2x or 3x the fundamental frequency.
I don't see that you need to invest in a world class recording setup to record your cheap wood violin. Violin solos are all over the classical music market. Pick up a CD, take a sample, digitize it. Edit the master digital file if you have computer software to do that. Determine the frequency of the fundamental tone, then try to model the waveform of the CD sound with an infinite series of functions. Physicists do this all the time when searching for sub-atomic particles, this infinite series modeling. Different models get different sets of coefficients, some of which take less computer power than others. Series of sine waves is fourier analysis, one model commonly used in music, but not the only set of interesting functions. Parabolic and hyperbolic functions aren't used much in mathmatical modeling of repetative waveforms, but euler's functions are.
When you have a mathematical model, you have something that can be put in a DSP or computer program and produce sound excited by a fundamental frequency of your solid body electric violin. The art would be in the mathematical model you develop, the series of coefficients of magnitude and phase of each function . Note the model you develop is copywriteable, so don't give away your model too freely.
I don't see that you need to invest in a world class recording setup to record your cheap wood violin. Violin solos are all over the classical music market. Pick up a CD, take a sample, digitize it. Edit the master digital file if you have computer software to do that. Determine the frequency of the fundamental tone, then try to model the waveform of the CD sound with an infinite series of functions. Physicists do this all the time when searching for sub-atomic particles, this infinite series modeling. Different models get different sets of coefficients, some of which take less computer power than others. Series of sine waves is fourier analysis, one model commonly used in music, but not the only set of interesting functions. Parabolic and hyperbolic functions aren't used much in mathmatical modeling of repetative waveforms, but euler's functions are.
When you have a mathematical model, you have something that can be put in a DSP or computer program and produce sound excited by a fundamental frequency of your solid body electric violin. The art would be in the mathematical model you develop, the series of coefficients of magnitude and phase of each function . Note the model you develop is copywriteable, so don't give away your model too freely.
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Hello Terry P, do you have this paper?
also i found that M. V. Mathews1 and J. Kohut wrote "An Electronic Violin"
is posble to find this one?
Im working in this subjet nowdays i a want to read some proyects of others.
Thanks!
An Electronic Violin
A study of the resonances of the violin is described. Magnetic pickups attached to the bridge of a violin (sans body) responded to the lateral motion of the strings to produce a signal used to excite a set of electrical resonances. The parameters, such as center frequency, bandwidth, and attenuation of the resonances were adjustable and by means of these variables a variety of tones were produced and presented to experienced subjects from the music world. Subjective evaluation of the various tones indicates that the preferred violintone is produced when the resonance frequencies are irregularly spaced with respect to the harmonics of the string vibration and the bandwidths have values which achieve a 12‐dB peak‐to‐valley differential in the resonance response curve. A theory of enhancement of tone quality by resonant filters is presented and the construction of an electronic violin is discussed.
© 1973 Acoustical Society of America
Hello Blacklace, do you have some information ot this topic, i do some filters with matlab without good results.
Do you have the papers of J. Kohut1 and M. V. Mathews ?
THanks
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