Ingenious little device. Use it often.

It's a long way off the guitar synth of my dreams, but sonic are onto something, taking the physical modelling idea as a start point instead of the usual synth/sample route.

Anyone else got anything to add/share on this unique little freebie?

True it's not free ... but the demo is so quick to programme that you can lay it off to audio in one quick session, without the need to save (or buy the full version).

Once in audio, give it fx, distortion, frohmage, delay etc to get a decent sound ... like strumming chords on a guitar.

I don't think Sonic are exactly pinning their hopes on Plucked String, but maybe some enterprising designer could ask Sonic for the code, and build on it from there.

Plucked String could be the basis for something really different.

Have you tried the Tassman by AAS? It's all physical modelling, and has a plucked string as one of it's basic modules. It's not quite as much fun or as easy to use as the sonic one, but if you spend some time with it you can create a lot of crazy stuff.

Oh, and it's pretty exspensive too, luckily I got an NFR

I went to the TASSMAN site and found a flash nightmare.

But between the waits for pages to load, all I saw was a Reactor-type degree in nuclear physics.

Yeah, tassman is a modular synth, so it's very reaktor-ish to work with. The difference is that instead of offering sampling, they went with acoustic based physical modelling (actually, they left out FM and granular synthesis too). I wish tassman had a sampler in it, but it's still neat to play around with building your own acoustic instruments, even if right now the program seams more like an expirimentation lab than a playable instrument. Anyway, the point is that if you like the plucked string vsti, and want to take it a step further, the tassman will let you, but ya deffinitely gotta go through the tutorials in the manual before attempting it. (great tutorials btw)

Thanx for the info

Very cool people, btw, I went to the Tassman booth at the last winter NAMM & it was easy to tell that they were a bunch of guys that loved tinkering with sounds in a scientific sense. They reminded me of the couple that does Kyma, in fact, I bet they'd all get along quite well.

speaking of Physical modelling...whadda you guys think of Electric cowboy 3000 ?
www.tobybear.de

I tried the Tassman 2.0 demo hoping it would be an improvement on earlier versions. Aside from being extremely processor-hungry and prone to crashing, I was really disappointed by the sounds it made. I went through most of the included pre-made instruments and was really surprised by how dull they sounded. As far as modular software goes, I think Reaktor is a million times better. Even Sync Modular, which I've always thought had a thin sound, has far more depth than Tassman. It could be that the presets just suck and the software has more potential, but if that's the case, I'll never know.

Hi mminnich
I purchased Tassman 2.0 when it came out
and I to am dissapointed with the instruments
that come with it . It promotes itself as a physical
modeling synth which indeed it is and thats why I brought
it. I was hoping for some nice acoustic orchestral instrument
emulations that could be more expressive and realistic
than conventional sampling and synth methods.
Out of all the instruments that come with it only about
5 are acoustic (apart from some marimba type things that
could be done with sound fonts) they are OK-ish but far from
perfect, and the other physical modeling things are weird
and no use to me .A large portion of the instruments are
analog that don't even come close to the standards of Reaktor.
In this respect I think the physical modeling side of Tassman
is wasted in what is essentialy a good program with potential
but with a library that does not do it justice. I could build an analog synth with Tassman easy enough, but why ? when Reaktor does it better and to build a physicaly modeld violin is technicaly beyond me.
conclusion = If Reaktor had Tassmans physical modeling (bowed string module etc) Tassman would be out the window
regards
Raven

Well, I started playing around with the plucked string again tonight to see what kind of distorted lead sound I could come up with, and I think I found a pretty decent one. The chain is like this:

plucked string -> ruby tube -> steinberg quadra fuzz -> sonic foundry flange-wah -> emagic logic chorus -> emagic logic silververb -> waves q10-paragraphic eq

I put up a small mp3 (about 175k) at:
http://www.ma.ultranet.com/~keham/synthguitar.mp3

any comments?

Neat. Were boths the chords and the lead lick done with plucked string?

sorry mate but that is so spoony. You guys using all this hi tech gear for soft rock software demo's ?

To kevvvvv:
Yup, same track too. It plays a "power chord" for a bar, then a 16th note arpeggio lick for a bar. Quadrafuzz is great for stuff like this since it lets you have different tones and distortions in different ranges. I'm a "prog rocker" so I was going for a shredder type tone. Didn't really get the exact sound I was looking for, but it's pretty cool anyway.

To Towny:
I'm not sure exactly what "spoony" is, but I suppose I am. We can't all be techo musicians.

tassman rocks!

tassman really cant be compared to reaktor. it's a very very different beast. i have both bits of software and love them equally.

there are sounds achievable in tassman that cannot be created with reaktor and vice versa.

even when making an analogue synth you get very different results...

Tufif de' Siks- there is a sampler module in tassman and as of version 2.1 it streams audio from the hard drive! whahey!

and raven... why on earth buy software before you are fully aware of what it does??? aas never promised you an orchestral synth. get creative and original with tass and you will start to love it. there is nothing else like it.

but then if all you want is presets you may as well go play with your gm sound module....

i've noticed recently that people tend to complain about complicated software without fully understanding it or even being prepared to spend time learning about its potential.

making original music takes a lot of time and effort and can be very complicated. it's inevitable that the best software mirrors that fact.

i quote from the reaktor manual (but this applies to most of the modular software synths available today...):

quote

Quote:

by the way, we will dispense with trying to tell you that reaktor is a very simple affair and that within a few minutes you will have programmed your own physical modeling synthesizer. that would be a lie. the fact is that reaktor is a complex program that offers complex functions which allow you to achieve complex things. and if that's just what you want to do, you won't really get around an intensive initial learning phase. AFTER ALL, REAL SUCCESS NEVER COMES EASY.

sorry to rant on.

andy

quote:

---

Originally posted by andy_wheels:

Tufif de' Siks- there is a sampler module in tassman and as of version 2.1 it streams audio from the hard drive! whahey!

---

I know there's a way to play wav files in it, but is there a sampler that lets you bring in a piano sound or something and play it with a MIDI keyboard? It would be so cool to play samples through it while they resonate off of the tassman plates and strings and stuff.

the

i dont know if this is what you mean (but its fun anyway!)...

use a sample player module and feed it into a pitchshifter module with the pitch being controlled by a keyboard module (midi keyboard...). it is mentioned in the manual but its worth pointing out because its so useful if you want to use samples as a starting point for an instrument. the pitched sample can be used to resonate a plate or string maybe... or both!

it would be nice to have a multi-sample module though.. hmmm.


andy