Hybrid percussion : extending physical instruments using sampled acoustics
Roberto Aimi · 2007
This thesis presents a system architecture for creating hybrid digital-acoustic percussion instruments by combining extensions of existing signal processing techniques with specially-designed semi-acoustic physical controllers. This work aims to provide greater realism to digital percussion, gaining much of the richness and understandability of acoustic instru-ments while preserving the flexibility of digital systems. For this thesis, I have collaborated with percussionists to develop a range of instruments, to refine and extend the algorithmic and physical designs, and to determine successful models of interaction. Conventional percussion controllers measure and discretize the intensity of strikes into discrete trigger messages, but they also ignore the timbre of the hits and fail to track more ambiguous input. In this work, the continuous acoustic output of a struck physical object is processed to add the resonance of a sampled instrument. This is achieved by employing existing low-latency convolution algorithms which have been extended to give the player control over features such as damping, spectral flattening, nonlinear effects, and pitch.