What whaaaaaat

Been obsessing over the intricacies of synthesising Stringed instruments these last months.

Please enjoy my old fat fingers combined with stock footage in this showcase of my latest moog one project.





How to synthesise realistic string sounds


get reference material
- I used the excellent philharmonia youtube page.
They have videos of individual instruments just do a search within their channel
https://www.youtube.com/@philharmonia_orchestra

synthesis setup and signal flow

This is the basic setup for the One:

OSC 3 is sending FM to OSC1
OSC 3 is hard synced to OSC2
OSC 2 will control the overall pitch of the system

all oscs set to triangle

OSC 1 is the only oscillator in the audio mix pre filter
I send that to a self oscillating band pass filter (SVF)

the SVF also has FM from any one of the oscillators

because OSC 1 is passing through a self oscillating filter which is also being fed FM from an OSC the GAIN of OSC1 in the mixer makes a huge difference to the tone

It gets way more complex, but that's the basics.

Wow, that is amazing! Such glorious sounds, please do share them at some point... ❤️

EDIT: never mind, just saw the link on YT. Will get them today.

Thank you kind sir!

I didn't include the link because this thread is not about selling my sounds... but don't let that stop you!

Wow, that's very cool, and if you use Moog One like you do, it's definitely worth it.

What do you think of my this strings sound?
I create by listening to real string instruments and relying on my ears.

Instruments: Sequential PROPHET-10 Rev.4


Instruments: Sequential PROPHET-10 Rev.4

WOW. Shockingly impressive!

Hey I bought all you other sound packs, this one is a no brainer!

Hot damn, I would totally have believed these were real strings. Incredible work.

Cool! Well done

I’ve been doing something tangentially similar with the obx . Scoring strings winds and brass with the thing but I’m intentionally having it sound like an obx. But it’s part writing instead of keyboard playing and using portamento, legato etc… to get the articulations right.

Wow, this is awesome! Love the sounds! Thanks for sharing

Now I'm getting Memorymoog flashbacks - the Moog DNA that does this sort of thing well appears to still be there.

It used to make good use of an envelope to pulse wave for a useful sort of grind for attacks, and if it had had velocity, probably for some of the playing dynamics as well. The keytracked Osc3 on Low to Pulsewidth also gave a good texture on even simple string-type pads.

That said, the FM and Sync is getting there anyway, but I mention it in case it might offer some added variation.

Great Stuff! One thing that struck me in the first piece, some notes sound very stringy and others not as stringy, somewhat woodwindy. All good though.

Thank You for filming the pitch bend wheel for the REBAB! Now I finally have an idea of what to do to get that same bendy sound.

VIOLIN & CELLO, amazing!

Simply spectacular!

From a musical point of view I am always a bit ambivalent using synthesized "real" instruments. But then again I do not have the luxury of a string ensemble just waiting in my studio should I suddenly feel the urge to write a string arrangement.
For that I am using sampled instruments. I am pretty sure, layering sampled strings with these synthesized Moog One strings will result in really nice textures.

I will definitely buy the sounds.

Thanks!

Yes I agree 100% with that point of view. Sampled instruments are far superior and the best option if you want a totally authentic sound.

However, synthesised string sounds have a quality you won't get from anything else and it's why we love analogue synths! And Indeed layering with samples will sound stunning IMO.

Thank you,

Yes it's a mostly quirk of analogue FM combined with wave angle on the moog. Key track centre (accessible from the LHC screen) also has a massive effect on the sound when using FM.

There's a 'realism sweetspot' in different places depending on the patch. The violin has the widest sweetspot- it goes right down into cello territory.

I had to do quite a bit of work using keypitch to modulate various destinations to expand the sweetspot in many of these presets to keep these sounds in check and playable.

Regarding the Rebab:
there's some unseen use of the modwheel in that sequence - that performance was recorded to midi first to allow me to add modwheel. (I only have 2 hands) the modwheel adds allot to the realism.
The rest of the expression is how you see it - pitch bend and AT.
A note on the pitchbend - it's ONLY bending Oscillator 2 - that's how I got that realistic string bending effect. As I mentioned in the first post - OSC2 governs the overall pitch of the system. In some patches some OSCS may not track 100% by design - OSC2 is doing most of the pitch work, the others mostly effect the harmonics.

outstanding.

sounds HUGE. love the sounds, love the composition.
Not to take away from that, but what converters are you using my man? also what's on your master bus?

Indeed, I had a Memorymoog and the One side by side for a year or so. The mm is extremely powerful in terms of synthesis for the day, outshining the likes of the Prophet 5 and Jupiter 8 in that regard. I finished a sample library synthesis project last year (not released yet) involving the mm and the mO and yes you can get the same flavour from each - I found myself recreating sounds from one to the other. The major tonal differences are the mO's superior filter configurations and waveform options vs the brute force of the mm's tone. Which is unbeatable and comes in my opinion largely from the amps in the audio chain. If you push the levels on the mm you get an audio body-slam - absolute beautiful raw power. On the mO on the other hand you simply don't. Not to say that pushing the mO's mixer is not without uses - if you're careful: most of the sounds in my demo have a touch of internal clipping - it's a major factor in what gives these string sounds their 'woody' realistic quality - going to the edge of distortion and back using modulation to control the osc mix level.

regarding PWM, all of the sounds in Analogue Strings are made with the triangle. there surely is a whole untapped landscape of string tones accessible via the square wave .

HOLY COW, what an inspiration!
Using the suggested starting point, I came up with this string patch. Tweaked it for a few hours and I'm loving this. Low range is more of a cello, but higher octaves are useful too. This is really incredible to me-- had the One for years and made hundreds of sounds and never got anywhere close to this. To me, it sounds as close as some Karplus Models I've seen over the years.

Named it the STRINGULATOR.txt
Rename it STRINGULATOR.m1p and load it in your One!

Curious to try this out, but I'm away from my synth until next week. Will deffo import it then and get back to you... have you also heard my drum kits and 'human' patches?

Just had a chance to try it out. very nice! very playable, I like the effect the velocity has on the filter - because all of my 'analogue strings' presets have high resonance, I couldn't really play around with velocity to cut off but it works well in your patch.

I played around with it a little and thought I would upload it back to you.

It's basically the same, I changed the env a little, split the SVF peaks and made it series- added a touch of noiseFM to the attack and put it all through the resonator. unfortunately it screams a little and breaks on the high notes, it's a function of osc sync to FM loop. that's why I usually sync osc3 from osc2 and FM to osc1