Vintage nerd plugin for the legendary Isao Tomita-Bells

[Bellock]

Hi folks, this is a super simple, small and handy plugin for exactly one sound, created by the Japanese electronic music pioneer Isao Tomita.

Technically, any synth could reproduce it, but for many people the biggest challenge is finding the right bell harmonics. I've fixed them in this synth according to Tomita's recipe, while you can shape the bell's character by adjusting the levels of the five VCOs. There's also an ADSR envelope, and that's it. The faders can be operated with the mouse or mouse wheel.



The attachment contains separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Let me know if it works on your machine or if you encounter any bugs. When you load the plugin in your DAW, all faders are already set to the correct positions for Tomita's signature bell sound.

By the way, there's a kind of hidden Easter egg. It shouldn't be too hard to find if you're one of those people who clicks on everything in a GUI just to see whether it crashes...

Have fun tomiting!

[Korg Supporter]

Did you code it from scratch? I’m excited to try it when I’m home. I’m a sucker for all sorts of synth bell sounds, and this would be perfect! I wonder if it uses ring modulation or exponential FM. Analog audio rate modulation is underrated, even outside of Moog and Prophet territory!

Edit: Also wanted to say, rest in peace, Mr. Tomita.

[Bellock]

Did you code it from scratch?
I wonder if it uses ring modulation or exponential FM.

Hey! For the GUI I used GIMP. Since this synth has nowhere near as many controls as today's typical synths, creating the interface was fairly straightforward. The code was written in Visual Studio, so yes, it's built from scratch. My buddies Claude and GPT helped me a lot, though.

Since Tomita used additive synthesis for most of his bell sounds, I chose the same approach for this synth. It was briefly shown in a Red Bull Music Academy video on YouTube, so luckily I had the exact frequencies needed for the recreation.

The first VCO generates the fundamental frequency, while VCOs 2-5 add lower and higher harmonics. This lets you create different kinds of "materials", from ceramic to metal. The ring modulation method is easier to implement and basically requires only two VCOs, but the harmonics can't be controlled independently. That may have been what made the additive approach so attractive to Tomita, but that's just my guess.

If you're interested in more weird Tomita stuff, I have lots of sound recreations on my YouTube channel, @AvaFelsenstein.