The article makes it sound like this is a very a new idea, but physical models of music instruments, including violin, has been around for over 40 years. Daisy Bell, the first piece of computer music and performed by their model, utilized a physical model of the human singing voice based on measurements of human vocal tract, and that was done in 1962.
Julius Smith wrote pretty comprehensive textbook on the subject of building physical models of musical instruments, available online. Here, for example, is a chapter on modeling bowed string sounds: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/Bowed_Strings.html
Bowed instruments are very cool to model because of the nonlinear slip of the bow against the string. A bit curious why bowing was not discussed or used in the example of a violin, just plucking. Do luthiers test violins more by plucking than bowing?
This is my own speculation, but I am a musician who specializes in synthesis so...
The Karplus Strong technique, a method for simulating string tones, has been around for a long time, since the 80s or so. KarplusStr has done bowing surprisingly well for a while. Plucking, not so much.
Long attack with a short decay/release gives a very convincing bowing sound on nicer synths, but once you increase the attack to create plucking sounds, the synthetic nature of the tone becomes far more obvious.
Not sure if that's news, Audio Modeling[1] has been doing that for quite a long time now. The big plus of physical modeling instead of sampling is disk size - instead of tens of GB of samples, you get a 15MB plugin.
It's much more difficult to use, though - you have to control lots of aspects of the simulation (using automation in DAW or MIDI controllers) to make it sound actually realistic.
OK I guess it seems like this is more of a tool for luthiers than for composers or music producers.
The first version of Pianoteq came back in 2006. There are apparently some exotic mid-90s synths with claims of being physically modeled too, don't know how accurate that is.
I currently use a raspberry pi with Pianoteq as sound output for my digital piano. It got a reluctant stamp of approval from my pianist son, although of course he prefers the physical response of even a poor acoustic piano.
Semi-related?
"Show HN: Anyma V, a hybrid physical modelling virtual instrument" 01-aug-2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41132104 29 comments
"Show HN: I built a synthesizer based on 3D physics" 02-may-2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873074 123 comments
The article makes it sound like this is a very a new idea, but physical models of music instruments, including violin, has been around for over 40 years. Daisy Bell, the first piece of computer music and performed by their model, utilized a physical model of the human singing voice based on measurements of human vocal tract, and that was done in 1962.
Julius Smith wrote pretty comprehensive textbook on the subject of building physical models of musical instruments, available online. Here, for example, is a chapter on modeling bowed string sounds: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/Bowed_Strings.html
Reminds me of this last years siggraph paper about cello playing animation
https://youtu.be/ODR6eQOjm9w
https://github.com/Qzping/ELGAR
It's just fun to see solutions to problems you didn't even know to exist.
it doesn't sound as a real violin at all. A professional violinist would immediately tell that something is wrong.
As an amateur violinist and synth enthusiast it sounds tinny and dry
Someone made a virtual car engine that was able to generate realistic sounds a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT-sKtR970
The coolest thing about this to me is that he managed to plug a trumpet into the same engine and it sort of... Just worked
Bowed instruments are very cool to model because of the nonlinear slip of the bow against the string. A bit curious why bowing was not discussed or used in the example of a violin, just plucking. Do luthiers test violins more by plucking than bowing?
It's probably harder to model and the results "aren't quite there yet".
This is my own speculation, but I am a musician who specializes in synthesis so...
The Karplus Strong technique, a method for simulating string tones, has been around for a long time, since the 80s or so. KarplusStr has done bowing surprisingly well for a while. Plucking, not so much.
Long attack with a short decay/release gives a very convincing bowing sound on nicer synths, but once you increase the attack to create plucking sounds, the synthetic nature of the tone becomes far more obvious.
Not sure if that's news, Audio Modeling[1] has been doing that for quite a long time now. The big plus of physical modeling instead of sampling is disk size - instead of tens of GB of samples, you get a 15MB plugin.
It's much more difficult to use, though - you have to control lots of aspects of the simulation (using automation in DAW or MIDI controllers) to make it sound actually realistic.
OK I guess it seems like this is more of a tool for luthiers than for composers or music producers.
[1] https://audiomodeling.com/
The first version of Pianoteq came back in 2006. There are apparently some exotic mid-90s synths with claims of being physically modeled too, don't know how accurate that is.
I currently use a raspberry pi with Pianoteq as sound output for my digital piano. It got a reluctant stamp of approval from my pianist son, although of course he prefers the physical response of even a poor acoustic piano.