Physical modelling synthesis of a harmonium
Ninad Vijay Puranik, Gary P. Scavone · Proceedings of meetings on acoustics · 2022
In this paper we present recent work on the development of a physical model of the hand harmonium, a bellow driven free reed instrument popular in South Asian music. Western free reed instruments like the accordion, the harmonica, the reed organ, etc. share many similarities with the hand harmonium in their physical structure and sound timbre. Previous models and experimental works on western free reed instruments are studied and revisions are proposed to the minimal model of free reeds described by Millot and Baumann (2007) to suitably match the physical setup and the sound timbre of a hand harmonium. The proposed changes allow the physical model to have the bellows pressure as a control parameter. A source-filter structure is suggested to model the acoustic effect of the wooden enclosure of a harmonium, which allows the realization of different timbres in the simulated sound.