Certain Mallets produce only noise

[zzzhang12]

System Information

MacOS 14.5, MacBook Air (chip: Apple M3)

LMMS Version(s)

1.2.2 (OS_X/x86_64,Qt 5.15.0, GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.17)

Bug Summary

The uniform bar, tuned bar, glass, and Tibetan bowl produces only noise instead of the actual sound of the instruments.

Expected Behaviour

Switching to either one of these instruments should create the respective sound.

Steps To Reproduce

No specific steps or settings required.
I only started a new project, added a Mallets instrument, switched to the specific instrument I mentioned, clicked on (holder) the piano keyboard.

Please search the issue tracker for existing bug reports before submitting your own.

• I have searched all existing issues and confirmed that this is not a duplicate.

[zonkmachine]

Test adding an envelope (second instrument tab).
This plugin has updates in the latest development versions. Download the 1.3 development release (Nightly) if you want to test it.

[Rossmaxx]

@zzzhang12 can you confirm if this is still a thing in master? If not, you can close this.

[Monospace-V]

2024-12-21.23-27-52.mp4

is OP referring to how the notes don't sound like different notes but just like different frequencies? @zzzhang12 , can you clarify?

I have reason to believe that this behaviour is what OP is referring to, since I initially was confused by it also, simply didn't question it then.

[zonkmachine]

I have reason to believe that this behaviour is what OP is referring to, since I initially was confused by it also, simply didn't question it then.

It sounds like something ring modulated which is commonly used in percussion sound synthesis. Try a volume envelope on it. To me it sounds like it's intended to.

[zonkmachine]

The instruments in Mallets are summoned from three different instruments in the stk library that are quite different from each other. The last four Mallet instruments come from stk's BandedWG.
https://github.com/thestk/stk/blob/master/src%2FBandedWG.cpp

They are actually not completely implemented and in an earlier PR I simply removed some knobs that hadn't been implemented. It's a compromise. My suggestion at that time was to actually remove those four instruments completely as they were more or less broken. It's quite a complex module and actually not currently a simulation of something being stricken, as the other instruments are, but by something 'bowed'. I think the original coder of Mallets may simply have misunderstood it's use but I also think it should be able to use the module in a 'stricken' mode but I haven't been able to implement this. If someone wants to dig deeper into this, I would recommend trying to poke the BandedWG module directly via the terminal or via csound to see what capabilities it has that we've missed.

I think this is not really a bug but a feature request and a lack of documentation.

[michaelgregorius]

Judging by the linked documentation is seems that the banded waveguide needs some more expressive input capabilities to not sound as monotonous as it currently does:

    Control Change Numbers: 
       - Bow Pressure = 2
       - Bow Motion = 4
       - Strike Position = 8 (not implemented)
       - Vibrato Frequency = 11
       - Gain = 1
       - Bow Velocity = 128
       - Set Striking = 64

[zonkmachine]

Found an example for BandedWG under Chuck that could give a hint on how to use it. The example uses Strike Position which is not implemented according to the stk documentation so that may not work,... or the stk documentation is wrong.
https://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/doc/examples/stk/bandedwg.ck

Here's an online Chuck server with the example loaded:
Press: Start WebChucK (orange button) and then Run (Green button)

// STK BandedWG

// patch
BandedWG bwg => dac;

// scale
[0, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11] @=> int scale[];

// infinite time loop
while( true )
{
    // ding!
    Math.random2f( 0, 1 ) => bwg.bowRate;
    Math.random2f( 0, 1 ) => bwg.bowPressure;
    Math.random2f( 0, 1 ) => bwg.strikePosition;
    Math.random2( 0, 3 ) => bwg.preset;

    // set freq
    scale[Math.random2(0,scale.size()-1)] => int winner;
    57 + Math.random2(0,2)*12 + winner => Std.mtof => bwg.freq;

    // print some parameters
    <<< "---", "" >>>;
    <<< "preset:", bwg.preset() >>>;    
    <<< "bow rate:", bwg.bowRate() >>>;
    <<< "bow Pressure:", bwg.bowPressure() >>>;
    <<< "strike position:", bwg.strikePosition() >>>;
    <<< "frequency:", bwg.freq() >>>;
    <<< "---", "" >>>;

    <<< "bow -> pluck", "" >>>;
    Math.random2f( .5, 1 ) => bwg.pluck;
    // advance time
    2::second => now;

    <<< "pluck -> bow", "" >>>;
    .8 => bwg.startBowing;
    Math.random2f(2,4)::second => now;
    1.0 => bwg.stopBowing;
    1::second => now;
}