mmmt-tools / Synthesis / scanned synth
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Scanned synthesis

Mathews and Verplank's idea, and a quietly radical one: take a physical object that vibrates slowly — a ring of masses on springs, oscillating well below hearing — and read its shape as a wavetable at audio rate. The pitch you play sets how fast you scan around the ring; the springs slowly reshuffle the shape, so the timbre morphs on its own as the note sustains, the way a struck object's tone evolves. Two independent clocks — audio-rate scanning, sub-audio physics — in one AudioWorklet.

0
waveform
spectrum

The string (slow)

0.060
0.9995

Morph = spring stiffness (how fast the shape churns); settle = how long before it relaxes to a plain tone.

Voice

0.3 s

play with your keyboard (a s d f …) or click the keys · hold a note and listen to it move