Eventually, even the most impassioned synth lover gets bored of mixing oscillators together. You need a little spice in your sound life. You need Karplus-Strong synthesis.
Commonly associated with physical modeling strings, Karplus-Strong can also be thought of as a flexible feedback system of delayed, filtered noise. Okay, that’s a lot more abstract than imagining fake strings, but I say that for a reason – because it’s a system with lots of component parts, you can use it to create a wide palette of sounds. Some might sound like strings. Some might sound more artificial. Some might sound like percussion. Some might sound downright weird. You get the idea.
But alas, finding explanations of this that are easy to follow has been something of a chore. So, we must again look to our friends in Moravia, Czech, to humbly and lucidly walk us through the process as no one else can.
So-called “Patchení Nikol” is back in the latest of the wonderful series put out by Bastl Instruments. (Child of Nikol joins her, too!) And now might be the time to binge watch.
She explains the synthesis concept, then shows you some nicely chosen Eurorack modules for pulling it off.
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