Modalys, a physical modeling synthesizer: More than twenty years of researches, developments, and musical uses.
Résumé
In the early 1990s, the software was initially created as an open environment with the purpose to serve as a virtual instrument maker workshop. Indeed, the modal formalism offers several interesting advantages, among them the uniform description of numerous mechanical or acoustical systems allowing easy hybridizations. Wildest virtual instruments may well be imagined, played, and manipulated. As there are very few acoustics volumes or mechanical structures tractable by an exact analytical solution, numerical methods, such as FEM, have been programmed for complex geometry for both structures and fluids. The usages are now extending from the virtual repro- duction of existing instruments to industrial prototyping. This diversification as the necessity to further improve performance made it necessary to rethink many parts of the software, from the core synthesizer to the numerous interfaces: textual, MAX/MSP, OPENMUSIC, and MATLAB. To control physical modeling synthesis, it is necessary to specify the physical,low-level details of how to play an instrument. Consequently, several recent studies have focused on the study of instrumental gesture and its modeling, thereby increasing the realism of the synthesis. This presentation will review the current possibilities of the software which will be illustrated by examples. Work in progress will also be presented.