“Efficient nonlinear modal sound synthesis”
"STMS Wednesdays" is pleased to announce you a seminar by Michele Ducceschi, invited by the STMS Lab's S3AM team.
The work of Michele Ducceschi and his team focuses on physical modelling for music acoustics and sound synthesis and, in particular, digital restoration of historical musical instruments (ERC starting Grant NEMUS: https://site.unibo.it/nemus-numerical-sound-restoration/en).
He will be giving a presentation on his work on “Efficient nonlinear modal sound synthesis”.
The seminar will take place in the Salle Stravinsky at Ircam, but can also be followed live on Ircam's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/live/IbCXO6SANZY
Abstract:
“Modal methods are a long-established approach to physical modeling sound synthesis. Projecting the equation of motion of a linear, time-invariant system onto a basis of eigenfunctions yields a set of independent forced, lossy oscillators, which may be simulated efficiently and accurately using standard time-stepping methods. Extensions of modal techniques to nonlinear problems are possible, though often requiring the solution of densely coupled nonlinear time-dependent equations. In this talk, I will show an application of recent results in numerical simulation design, in which the nonlinear energy is first quadratised via a convenient auxiliary variable. The resulting equations may be updated in time explicitly, thus avoiding the need for expensive iterative solvers, dense linear system solutions, or matrix inversions. The case of a network of interconnected distributed elements is detailed, along with a real-time implementation as an audio plugin.”
Biography:
I am an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy, as Principal Investigator for the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant NEMUS. This is a 5-year project to synthesise the sound of historical harpsichords that are currently out of playing condition. Previously, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2017) in the Acoustics and Audio Group at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. I was also a Royal Society Newton Fellow (2015) and part of the ERC-funded NESS project led by Professor Stefan Bilbao. My research lies at the intersection of music, physics, applied mathematics, computer science and engineering. It focuses on the simulation of non-linear oscillations for sound synthesis using physics-based modelling. This requires a balance between precision, efficiency and the all-important problem of stability. I am currently exploring non-iterative conservative schemes in the context of non-linear dynamical systems. I am also co-founder of Physical Audio Instruments.