Original article: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct03/articles/synthsecrets.htm
As we saw last month, there's much to synthesizing a convincing flute sound --- and yet basic analogue monosynths have offered reasonable flute patches for 30 years. Surely the process can be simplified? This is the 54th article in a 63-part series. Read all parts.
Gordon Reid
Acouple of months ago, I described and analysed the sound of the pan flute, and at the end left you with a diagram --- reproduced below as Figure 1 --- which showed, without reference to any particular analogue synth, how you could use such an instrument to create a remarkable simulation of the original pipes. I then told you that I had programmed this to remarkably good effect, but --- partly due to space constraints --- I didn't show you how.
That omission led some readers to ask to see the patch, so it's shown on the next page, as lovingly crafted on my Analogue Systems Sorceror plus part of the RS Integrator that sits alongside it (see Figure 2). It's possible that I (and indeed you) could create something similar on a huge Moog Modular, a fully populated Roland System 700, a wall-sized Roland System 100M, or a well-endowed Doepfer, but I don't own any of these.
This, then, suggests a problem: given the non-trivial nature of this patch, it's not one that you'll be able to create on a basic analogue synthesizer. Yet, as I stated at the time, good flute sounds (as opposed to pan flute sounds) pour forth from basic monosynths well past their 30th birthdays. Last month, I tried to reduce the complexity (and therefore the cost) of producing a flute-like sound, programming a recorder patch using the Oddity software synth loaded on the Apple Power Book on which I'm writing this. As expected, the results were far less than convincing, although they were useable in a 1970s sort of way.
But, just to demonstrate that the complexity and expense of a modular synthesizer isn't always necessary to create a superb sound, I'm going to start by telling you that my favourite analogue flute resides within a small synth that is the antithesis of the Sorceror and Integrator shown in Figure 2. Designed to sit on top of an organ, and to be as much at home in tearooms and dance halls as in rock venues, this is the ARP Pro Soloist, which first appeared in 1972. On the surface, this is a simple VCO/VCF/VCA preset synth that offers the player almost no control over the sounds its produces. But if you delve deeper, you'll find that it's a remarkable instrument that, on another day, might command a complete instalment of Synth Secrets. Unfortunately, understanding the Pro Soloist does not further our understanding of the flute, so we must move on without it. That's because it's now time to look more closely at the flute itself.
The Modern Flute
The transverse flute has been known since antiquity, and has been undergoing a constant process of development and improvement ever since. The current form (shown in Figure 3, below) appeared in the 19th century, gaining the keys and extra holes that allow it to produce (almost) exact semitones without half-holing and all the other palaver that we investigated last month. To be honest, it's still not possible to play a perfect chromatic scale across all the flute's registers, but the modern instrument is close to ideal, so a flute patch played from a keyboard is immediately more likely to be realistic than a recorder patch played the same way.
Figure 1: Synthesizing the pan flute.
Figure 1: Synthesizing the pan flute.