Description

6 note polyphonic, physically modelled acoustic plucked string synth.

CPU Usage - reasonable for a physical model.

Instructions

To install simply unzip and copy the dll to your VSTI plugins folder.

Controls for this synth are as follows:

• Master - controls the overall volume level
  
  
• Width - controls the amount of the stereo field covered by the tone
  
  
• Pan - controls the placing of the tone in the stereo field
  
  
• Speed - how fast/slow the string is 'excited', low values are similar to strumming while high values are like picking or plucking - please note this is a subtle effect
  
  
• Damp - this controls how quickly the string will be stopped - higher values equal greater damping
  
  
• Slide - a subtle portamento control to imitate sliding into notes - higher values are good for country music
  
  
• Filter - the filter consists of 1 high pass and 1 low pass filter chained in series, the high pass filter's cutoff being set lower than the low pass filter's - Q is resonance, bandwidth is the difference between the high pass and low pass cutoff and keytrack is the amount of the note's frequency that is sent to the cutoff of each filter - the filter can dramatically alter the tonal quality of the string even create picked electric guitar tones
  
  
• Modulation - sets the LFO rate (frequency) and level (depth) - the LFO has no effect on the output unless a modulation wheel or aftertouch is used - String Thing needs to be set to use MIDI CC for this to work
  
  
• String & Body - the effect of these controls can be very subtle so please experiment with them to get your desired sound
  
  
• Tone1 and Tone2 - these control a combination of analogue oscilators that are used to provide the initial impulse for the physical model
  
  
• Character - this mixes the output of tone 1 and tone 2
  
  
• Warmth - this controls the amount and type of noise introduced into the initial impulse
  
  
• Thickness - the initial impulse consists of several tones combined including two pulse waves and white/pink noise - this control detunes the two pulse waves against one another - the effect rather than being a chorus or beating effect is a 'thickening' of the overall sound
  
  
• Velocity - controls the amount that key velocity affects volume level, speed and various tonal characteristics.
  

Tips

• String Thing is best suited to folk and world music
  
  
• tuning will begin to run flat at higher frequencies so play within a couple of octaves of middle C if you wish to stay in tune - I hope to be able to fix this at a later time
  
  
• for more realistic and natural play, always set the velocity setting quite high and always set up MIDI CC
  
  
• with mid to high damping String Thing is very good for strummed guitar, but remember that this needs patience to produce convincing results
  
  
• don't play rapid repeat strikes or trills as there are no note stop/string groupings, to prevent the same note sounding out more than once.