alt Hacker NewsIn this area of research, there's this classic trap that many fall into (including myself, many times). You focus on modeling things like the vibrating string, the resonant body, etc. to perfection. But it still sounds, uh, not great, because the more important and difficult part is modeling detailed control and the human/instrument interface. Air fluctuations around the violin sound like a fun experiment, but I don't think you'll get much additional realism from that, compared to a simple/classical impulse response model.
Even in this case, they're choosing the easy path (plucked, pizzicato), but the human/instrument interface is still audibly oversimplified while the resonant body has an unnecessary amount of "realism". The sound of pizzicato has a distinct character because the player's finger/skin slides a bit on the string as they're plucking, among other factors, which sounds like it's missing here. This can be tricky to implement because it's not necessarily a one-way impulse. The string is already vibrating and affects the finger, hence "interface".
This applies 10x more with bowed strings.
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I'm a working jazz bassist. Plucking a string is an art unto itself. What struck me about the clip was it sounded like the strings were plucked by something other than a finger.
Put differently, it takes years of practice to get a decent sound out of a real violin.
If your model doesn't sound like someone's strangling a cat then it's probably not realistic.
i think its kind of funny, simulating this must be incredibly tedious while there are many songs with good fake violins...
you mention a few details theres so many more if you think about it..the human-instrument interaction has all sorts of imperfections.
tension in shoulders can make u bend the neck a bit. tension in fingers too much might pull out of tune. pushing not 100% straight along the bow might shift it sideways a bit changing how it crosses strings. Then ofc at what position is the bow on the strings (closer/futher from bridge).
humans are not perfect machines but in those imperfection lies the beauty. A perfectly played instrument is played by a human and has this 'humanization' across all areas where human and instrument and music itself interact imho.
if you produce music digitally this instantly will show, because all your instruments will sound flat and boring if you dont humanize.
Every physical model has its strengths and weaknesses. In this case you're correct that no emphasis has been put on the human-instrument coupling, but they've worked harder than usual on the air/instrument coupling which makes sense givwn their goal of helping violin makers. However there are plenty of research work on physical modeling between human and instrument (Serafin, Woodhouse, Chaigne etc from 1-2 decades ago) esp for violin. For string plucking & striking specifically, the coupling is modeled in a few commercial products (Pianoteq is a popular one) [disclaimer: I used to sell a guitar software doing this as well and met some of these acoustics experts a long time ago - these were fun times going down the rabbit hole of physical modeling]
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The point of this research doesn't seem to be to generate a nice sounding digital instrument, but to give violin makers a rough idea of what the instrument will sound like for different shapes / materials. This is useful for comparing designs, even if you don't simulate a human performance with complete fidelity.
So I don't know if your criticism makes much sense.