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Is it possible to generate a musical instrument's sounds using only algorithms? or can it only be done via pre-recorded sound samples?
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How do instruments make sound? Instruments produce a sound when a part of it vibrates, producing sounds that are loud enough to be heard by the human ear. These sounds, or musical notes, are produced differently in each of the four main families of instruments: Woodwind, Brass, String, and Percussion.
Musical instruments create sounds by making something vibrate. For example, guitars make sound when their strings vibrate. Most instruments are “tuned” to make a range of sounds of particular frequencies, which we call notes. These notes are made in a particular sequence to play a piece of music.
Idiophones are instruments whose bodies vibrate to produce sound. The class contains most of the pitched percussion instruments. These include instruments made of wood or other organic material, such as xylophones.
A kazoo player hums, rather than blows, into the bigger and flattened side of the instrument. The oscillating air pressure of the hum makes the kazoo's membrane vibrate. The resulting sound varies in pitch and loudness with the player's humming.
Wavetable synthesis (PDF) is the most realistic method of real-instrument synthesis, as it takes samples and alters them slightly (for example adding vibrato, expression etc).
The waveforms generated by most musical instruments (especially wind and brass instruments) are so complex that pure algorithmic synthesis is not yet optimised enough to run on current hardware - even if it were, the technical complexities of writing such an algorithm are huge.
Interesting site here.
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It is completely possible - that is one of the things synthesizers do.
It being possible doesn't mean it is simple. Synthesizers are usually expensive, and the amount of algorithms used are complex - the wikipedia page I linked before has links to some of them.
Pre-recorded sounds are simpler and cheaper to use, but they also have their limitations - they sound more "repetitive" for example.
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