Hybrid sound synthesis

Abstract

Most general purpose digital computers are not fast enough to directly compute musically sophisticated sound waves in real time. A hybrid system in which a computer controls an analog synthesizer can generate interesting sounds in real time. The computer supplies three main services. It senses the gestures of the performer. It provides a memory for storing these gestures as time functions. It computes the time functions which control the synthesizer as a complex combination of the real time gestures of the performer and the time functions in memory. The hybrid system is a good instrument with which to study the real time interactions between a performer, his instrument, and the sound he is producing. At present, the precision, quality, and range of timbres which can be obtained from a hybrid system are limited by the analog synthesizer. Shortly these limitations will be removed by replacing the analog device by a special purpose digital synthesizer.