Literature, Scientific Papers and Analysis of Virtual Instruments

jbuhler said:

I fear this too and as far as release dates go, I’m creating a chronology as I go and may publish that as an appendix. (I’ll likely put it online as well but it has the same issue of likely disappearing.) The release dates for major libraries at least have a lot of redundancy, with reviews, press releases, and chatter on forums and social media that you can usually track it down even if the companies themselves are coy about the information, but each library takes googling and sorting through the hits, which is fine until you hit a library with a common name that makes googling challenging.

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Its not that different than releases for big instrument manufacturers. NAMM events, AES, etc events or close to those industry specific where there will be more eyes on new release news.
Also Per business quarters and for some odd reason Tuesdays at 11am local times. But I've seen Friday work very well for the unfinished and a few others. One month intro sale. Or its "announcement tusdays build on wed and release on thursd.
Also stupid mail chimp newsletter reminding you every few days its the last week, last day, last 2 hours of the intro sale... untill.. hmmm... its extended... (surprise! )
I think you follow sample logics history of releases itll become more aparent. Here is even a nice chart showing when they've made big releases over the past 15years
Its skews heavily on the start of the second quarter and late sept or october.
And no new prodcuts during black friday or holiday season as thats for mega sales and no one expect full price. Plus the intro sale for fall can be extended.
Summer is a dead zone in europe. We all forget europeans have like 2 months off or soemthing crazy like that.
But most importantly...

Is the library done?

cuz fuck man

it takes FOREVER!

PD: if you are really looking into releasing a book maybe reach out to maufaturers for discount codes. Affiliate links etc to make some dough or cross promote the book.

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-sound-and-vibration might have some articles

This seemed interesting : Towards a new approach in the study of Ancient Greek music: Virtual reconstruction of an ancient musical instrument from Greek Sicily Bellia, Angela Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2019-06-01, Vol.34 (2), p.233-243

Hey again guys,
I'm currently in the middle of writing my bachelors thesis on virtual instruments and I'm wondering if anybody here is willing to give feedback as an expert with experience either on the theoretical or practical side of the topic.

It is a rather practical approach to a bachelor thesis with a mixed method, as I am constructing a prototype of a virtual instrument on the basis of theoretical discussions.
Theoretical frameworks on realism and expressivity are discussed in order to create a realistic and expressive virtual violin instrument.

1. I am hoping to find someone who would give me practical feedback on the virtual instrument itself:
- the script
- the sample order
- the user friendlinessetc.

2. I am hoping to find someone who can give me feedback on a scientific level

I know everybody's time is valuable and I can't expect help without anything in return, but I'm sure we can find a way to make the project beneficial for everybody involved.

Time frame: Now (June) until august.

All the best,
Sebastian

The thesis is constructed more or less like this:

1. Theoretical Frameworks
1.1 Realism
1.2 Hyperrealism (as coined by Cassannelles)
1.3. Emotion and Music
1.4 Expressivity through perfomance
1.4.3. expressvity and the violin
1.4.4 gradual use of techniques
1.5 Expressivity through production
1.5.1 Timbre
1.6 Discussion of sampling-synthesis and physical modeling
1.6.1 theoretical approaches to sampling synthesis
1.7 dimensions of a virtual instrument
1.8 sampler
1.9 aesthetic context
1.9.1 Neo-classical aestehtics of string instruments
1.9.2 analysis of "only the winds" by Olafur Arnald

2. Analysis of virtual string instruments in a Neo-classical context
2.1 Olafur Arnalds Evolution - Spitfire Audio
2.2. Tina Guo Cello - Cinesamples

3. Method
3.1 Theoretical derivation
3.2 Analysis
3.3 Prototyping
3.4 Evaluation

4. Prototype development
4.1 first iteration
4.1 first evaluation
4.2 Second iteration

5. Final Evaluation

6. Discussion

7. Conclusion

I am an assistant-professor at a Dutch university (in an entirely unrelated scientific field). I’d be more than happy to critically read one or more iterations of your thesis. If that’s of interest, please DM me.

Indeed. I am a mere Universitair Docent (university lecturer). Internationally that’s an assistant-professor. I usually just call myself teacher. I did not intend to brag or anything. Actually, on the contrary… I only mentioned it because I figured it could help the OP gauge my credentials / experience.

doctoremmet said:

Indeed. I am a mere Universitair Docent (university lecturer). Internationally that’s an assistant-professor. I usually just call myself teacher. I did not intend to brag or anything. Actually, on the contrary… I only mentioned it because I figured it could help the OP gauge my credentials / experience.

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It is a very generous offer indeed.

Bee_Abney said:

It's not polite to speak loosely about the professional titles of academics. In Doc's case, maybe he doesn't like to brag; plus there are a whole different set of titles in Dutch.

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Hmm I always thought Doctor came from the medical term not so much as an academic title. I mean, not that I think @doctoremmet is an actual medical man or anything.

I never thought he was bragging either...

I guess my stupid joke was interpreted very differently than what I intended. I'm sorry Temme. I will delete my post.

Pier said:

Hmm I always thought Doctor came from the medical term not so much as an academic title. I mean, not that I think @doctoremmet is an actual medical man or anything.

I never thought he was bragging either...

I guess my stupid joke was interpreted very differently than what I intended. I'm sorry Temme. I will delete my post.

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I took it as a joke! No need to delete anything!

doctoremmet said:

I took it as a joke! No need to delete anything!

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It's done.

Gone.

Forever.

I'm a Dutch doctor in Misfit Fiddle VSTs at 8Dio University - got the receipt and everything. Does that count?

Street barrel organ culture is unique to the Netherlands.

S.M.F said:

Hey,

I didn't really know which category was the right to post this thread, so I'm just going with the Welcome to VI one.

I'm currently doing a lot of research on the matter of Virtual Instruments for my bachelor thesis, and what I can find is very limited or outdated.
There is lots of literature on analogue or software synthesizers, most a bit outdated, but overall very little I can find regarding sampled, hybrid and virtual orchestral instruments.

Does anyone know any literature or good databases for extensive research?
Hope to hear from you guys.

All the best,
Sebastian

Click to expand...

To be honest, very little progress has been made in the last 20 years regarding virtual instruments underlying technologies. (I still maintain that my Korg Z1 was the most advanced synth I ever owned, and I currently own a Kronos ... ) Just because, say MODO drum and bass didn't exist 20 years ago doesn't mean that their underlying code didn't [in this actual example, it was very old code released to the public, by steinberg, that very few were making use of, that a company [IK] decided to finally make use of. That's how this typically works].

Companies decide to pay the programmers for the work to actually do something (turn into a product) with innovations that stopped short of having their papers published -- or they don't, and that's how you get thousands and thousands of different kontakt libraries instead of innovation.

I've read physical modeling papers going back to the 60's, they're literally written on typewriters, and I can guarantee you way more people were active in the field of trailblazing on that side of the 20th century. In my opinion you'd have an easier time writing about how much progress has stagnated since the late 90's on anything 'remotely' novel in the field of digital audio and audio DSP.

I seriously challenge anyone to show examples of any modern trailblazers today in terms of DSP and the innovation of processes which have already for years now been far out of the uncanny valley.

The cost of getting away from samples in terms of research and development is huge, and none of these audio companies really want to foot the bill for that level of R&D.

JSTube said:

To be honest, very little progress has been made in the last 20 years regarding virtual instruments underlying technologies. (I still maintain that my Korg Z1 was the most advanced synth I ever owned, and I currently own a Kronos ... ) Just because, say MODO drum and bass didn't exist 20 years ago doesn't mean that their underlying code didn't [in this actual example, it was very old code released to the public, by steinberg, that very few were making use of, that a company [IK] decided to finally make use of. That's how this typically works].

Companies decide to pay the programmers for the work to actually do something (turn into a product) with innovations that stopped short of having their papers published -- or they don't, and that's how you get thousands and thousands of different kontakt libraries instead of innovation.

I've read physical modeling papers going back to the 60's, they're literally written on typewriters, and I can guarantee you way more people were active in the field of trailblazing on that side of the 20th century. In my opinion you'd have an easier time writing about how much progress has stagnated since the late 90's on anything 'remotely' novel in the field of digital audio and audio DSP.

I seriously challenge anyone to show examples of any modern trailblazers today in terms of DSP and the innovation of processes which have already for years now been far out of the uncanny valley.

The cost of getting away from samples in terms of research and development is huge, and none of these audio companies really want to foot the bill for that level of R&D.

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Maybe another factor is academic institutions don't want to license their stuff?

For example I think UVI is the only private company using stuff from IRCAM like their timestretching. Pretty much all other companies are using the Elastique Pro algo by Zplane.

I'm learning percussive sound synthesis, particularly the FM synthesis. These 2 papers by the same authors have helped me a lot. They expained how FM synthesis works so well and proposed an improved model called loopback FM. I'm trying to implement it in python.

fan455 said:

I'm learning percussive sound synthesis, particularly the FM synthesis. These 2 papers by the same authors have helped me a lot. They expained how FM synthesis works so well and proposed an improved model called loopback FM. I'm trying to implement it in python.

[PDF] ON PHASE AND PITCH IN LOOPBACK FREQUENCY MODULA- TION WITH A TIME-VARYING FEEDBACK COEFFICIENT | Semantic Scholar

Beginning with the familiar expression for frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, a system is examined/analyzed whereby the carrier frequency is modulated by “looping back” the output signal, with a feedback coefficient determining the amount of frequency deviation. “Loopback FM” is reminiscent of...

www.semanticscholar.org

[PDF] Percussion Synthesis using Loopback Frequency Modulation Oscillators | Semantic Scholar

In this work, we apply recent research results in loopback frequency modulation (FM) to real-time parametric synthesis of percussion sounds. Loopback FM is a variant of FM synthesis whereby the carrier oscillator “loops back” to serve as a modulator of its own frequency. Like FM, more spectral...

www.semanticscholar.org

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Why is python your language of choice for implementing this? It's really not tailored to synthesis or realtime audio. I recommend C++ and JUCE for anything to do with realtime audio dsp and getting off the ground quickly.

JSTube said:

Why is python your language of choice for implementing this? It's really not tailored to synthesis or realtime audio. I recommend C++ and JUCE for anything to do with realtime audio dsp and getting off the ground quickly.

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Well, I'm not a computer student and I learn python because my accounting professor needed me to do so. Thanks for your recommendation. So I want to learn C++ when I have more time in the future.

I've uploaded my python implementation code that can run now on github.

S.M.F said:

Hey,

I didn't really know which category was the right to post this thread, so I'm just going with the Welcome to VI one.

I'm currently doing a lot of research on the matter of Virtual Instruments for my bachelor thesis, and what I can find is very limited or outdated.
There is lots of literature on analogue or software synthesizers, most a bit outdated, but overall very little I can find regarding sampled, hybrid and virtual orchestral instruments.

Does anyone know any literature or good databases for extensive research?
Hope to hear from you guys.

All the best,
Sebastian

Click to expand...

The literature may be outdated, but are books and databases really all you need? There are some excellent producers here with a lot of experience. Some of them started long time ago and dealt with the first synthesizers. You could benefit from their knowledge.

Just an idea.

fan455 said:

Well, I'm not a computer student and I learn python because my accounting professor needed me to do so. Thanks for your recommendation. So I want to learn C++ when I have more time in the future.

I've uploaded my python implementation code that can run now on github.

I wrote a code to implement a new FM synthesis approach!

Hi there, FM synthesis is a powerful way to synthesize percussive sounds. Recently I read the paper "Percussion Synthesis using Loopback Frequency Modulation Oscillators" written by Jennifer S. Hsu and Tamara Smyth and tried to implement the loopbackFM approach they proposed to synthesize some...

vi-control.net

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probably a good idea to check out some of the speakers at their conference. it might give some ideas.

JSTube said:

To be honest, very little progress has been made in the last 20 years regarding virtual instruments underlying technologies. (I still maintain that my Korg Z1 was the most advanced synth I ever owned, and I currently own a Kronos ... ) Just because, say MODO drum and bass didn't exist 20 years ago doesn't mean that their underlying code didn't [in this actual example, it was very old code released to the public, by steinberg, that very few were making use of, that a company [IK] decided to finally make use of. That's how this typically works].

Companies decide to pay the programmers for the work to actually do something (turn into a product) with innovations that stopped short of having their papers published -- or they don't, and that's how you get thousands and thousands of different kontakt libraries instead of innovation.

I've read physical modeling papers going back to the 60's, they're literally written on typewriters, and I can guarantee you way more people were active in the field of trailblazing on that side of the 20th century. In my opinion you'd have an easier time writing about how much progress has stagnated since the late 90's on anything 'remotely' novel in the field of digital audio and audio DSP.

I seriously challenge anyone to show examples of any modern trailblazers today in terms of DSP and the innovation of processes which have already for years now been far out of the uncanny valley.

The cost of getting away from samples in terms of research and development is huge, and none of these audio companies really want to foot the bill for that level of R&D.

Click to expand...

Hear, hear.