Syngular

Forcing the piano editing interface on a synth is hopefully a temporary thing.

Love Syngular. Instant buy. The interface reconfiguration for the Syngular instrument is very efficient for the purpose of sound design.

The randomization feature (the icon of the throwing die in upper area) has been available for some time to quickly create odd, unusual and sometimes beautiful or compelling sounds, or as a starting point for creating a custom sound. Regarding the A-D-R (attack, decay, release) visible in the design panel of the Syngular interface, for all instruments (I think) these features have been available in various locations (the attack envelope has been available in the Note Effects panel, the decay has been available by adjusting the soundboard impedance and direct sound duration, and the release by adjusting Action-->Damping duration.

But it's very nice to have the Attack, Decay and Release available in the Design pane of the Syngular instrument for easy, efficient editing of sounds, especially when creating layered custom presets, as well as the Harmonicity control (available and adjustable for piano models as the String Length parameter) and the LFO parameters (also available in Note Effects as modulation rate (speed), pitch variation (vibrato) and amplitude (volume) variation (tremolo).

Also nice to have the several basic waveform shapes (sine, saw, square and triangle) that have been used since Robert Moog, Wendy Carlos and others created and/or popularized electronic audio synthesizers after precursors such as the theremin, available as Syngular presets, as starting points for creating interesting single or layered sounds.

In addition, it's great to have a synthesizer that can take advantage of the myriad adjustable parameters of the Pianoteq engine, and the layering and morphing, etc. And does anyone know of another virtual synth that allows one to edit the various sound-shaping or sound-influencing parameters on a note-by-note basis (like Pianoteq Pro's Note Edit functionality)?

It's great to see the Pianoteq engine made available for and applied to the field of general audio synthesis and sound design.

this is great news.

i has suggested something like this here months ago, but this is way beyond what i expected.

You'll need v9.1 to access the instrument (in demo mode) and then you can purchase it to play it without the demo restrictions.

Edit: TRIPLE ANSWER COMBO UNLOCKED

I agree that it would be nice to have access to a few more direct controls. For example, I would like to be able to control the complete range of decay of the Syngular core waveforms (sine, saw, square, triangle). Even with the Decay parameter in the design interface turned to its lowest setting (fastest decay/attenuation), and the Direct sound parameter moved to its highest setting (which counterintuitively produces the shortest length of sound sent to the virtual impedance soundboard), the decay of those basic waveforms is attenuated only to a degree, to a certain base volume that is quite noticeable and lasts for a very long time and with only a very gradual decay, evident if one keeps the note (or sustain pedal) depressed.

I'm guessing that the basic waveforms (sine, saw, square and triangle) are provided by the Pianoteq engine and made available to users as the Syngular presets that include those names. It would be nice if the Modartt/Pianoteq team further developed Syngular to provide users with some more complex initial wave shapes, such as those available as wavetables in various synths.

Regarding the choir preset parameters, I notice that the "Syngular Pad Mixed Choir" preset is composed of two layers, a "Mixed Choir 1" and a "Mixed Choir 2." Neither of those presets appear in the list of Syngular presets available to users, so I'm guessing that those are custom presets created and edited by the sound designer, each created by editing the Pianoteq parameters available to anyone (I'm hoping) in Pianoteq Pro, although the exact edits he or she made are a mystery (and sound great).   Further, I'm guessing that the sound designer then used those two private custom presets to create the 2-layer preset ("Syngular Pad Mixed Choir") that is one of the presets that were included with Syngular.

It would be nice if the sound designer of that preset (and perhaps others) would share a little about which Pianoteq parameters were most influential in creating the particular sound of those private custom presets ("Mixed Choir 1" and "Mixed Choir 2") as a guide to others who would like to explore the potentials and learn to make the best use of the Pianoteq interface and its exposed user-adjustable parameters.

Not sure what you mean by "older versions", but upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1 is free (as all minor upgrades have always been). If you already own 9.0, just log in your user area and download the latest version.

Oh, the Spectrum profile! That's the key. I hadn't noticed it until now. Thanks!

I believe that the Spectrum profile simply determines the volume or prominence of the fundamental frequency and its harmonic frequencies relative to each other.

Some timbre evolution over time I think might be baked into the model for the instrument, but a lot of other parameters affect it, some very strongly, including the soundboard and its impedance, the slope of decay of the soundboard volume, the Blooming energy and inertia, the length of the Direct Sound Duration contrasted with the continued resonance of the dynamic soundboard, the phasing involved in unison widths (like 2 or 3 voices in a synthesizer, that are detuned slightly to introduce phasing between frequencies), note effects (if any) including modulation rate, vibrato and tremolo, stretch tuning (in the Advanced section of the Tuning dropdown menu), hammer hardness, etc.

To get an idea of what the raw model sounds like for most instruments, aside from the many parameters that affect it, change the soundboard impedance to its lowest possible value while making both the frequency and the frequency-decay slope at their highest value, and change the Direct Sound duration to its lowest value (which actually causes the direct sound to be much longer, I'm guessing because the higher the value, the more rapidly the direct-sound decreases in volume, as the soundboard and its impedance begin to carry and resonate that sound and cause dynamic timbre change over time).

If you do a similar thing with the core Syngular preset waveforms (sine, saw, square, triangle), reducing the Direct Sound duration to minimum, increasing Decay to maximum, and moving the settings for other parameters so that the have little or no effect on the basic sound, you'll hear what sounds very much like the raw, persistent audio of the same waveforms on virtual synths from other sources.

You can also disable stretch tuning, move unison width to zero, and change other settings to the extreme that has the least effect on the basic sound of the model. Blooming energy and inertia also strongly affect the timbre over time.

Regarding the string pads added as a layer in some presets, you'll notice that the unison width has been greatly increased for most of the piano range for that layer, which makes the notes seem to be played by two or three instruments (like two or three violins) as opposed to one piano with only slightly detuned unison strings in the middle and upper registers where an acoustic piano has two or three strings per note.

Pianoteq can do so much and offers so much control and configurability to the user, although the parameters that are relevant may not exactly correspond with or have the same name as the methods used to achieve the same or similar results in many virtual synthesizers (the keyboard split and crossfade between split-zones is just one example).

First you need to register it in your user profile at modartt.com. Then on your computer, open Pianoteq, Options-->About-->Licence Info-->Update Licence

Then a popup window will offer a quick online update-activation, or an offline one.

     Syngular will appear under the "Electric Pianos" section of the instrument list.

If you already knew all this and still have problems, you might consult Modartt/Pianoteq support.

https://www.modartt.com/support

or use the "I have another question" link at the bottom of that webpage.

Regarding formants (and Pianoteq's per-note spectrum profile), Google's AI search result was interesting--

I'm wondering if the creator of the Mixed Choir preset of Syngular referred to spectrum-profile graphs of recorded audio of real voices. I think that if I wanted to do something similar, I might consult a sample library of human voices and look at the frequency spectrum in a visualizer in a DAW, and try to mimic the spectrum profile of various ranges from bass to soprano either note by note in Pianoteq Note Edit, or perhaps 10-15 control notes across the entire range, with Pianoteq's automatic interpolation of incremental spectrum changes from control point to control point filling the spaces (notes) between the control-point notes.

Hy everyone,

since I bought the Studio-Bundle less than a year ago and all new Instruments that get released within a year are free, I thought it would include the new Syngular. Maybe I'm wrong here. But if not, I wonder how to get it. I can use it in demo mode. I went to "options > about > update licence" but still only demo mode. In my account, it doesn't show up, either.

Thank you for any help or clarification

Thank you. No hurry

I think I’m starting to understand it: the physical model is precisely that, it uses a huge amount of mathematics and physics to produce sounds with a complexity similar to that of acoustic instruments, which, unlike synthesizers, already have a timbre that evolves over time.
Then the interface that lets us make changes obviously has to be simplified so it’s accessible to musicians, who are the end users.

I’m now remembering a synthesizer, Morphine, which did resynthesis by turning a sample into a spectrum whose partials were controlled by an envelope that governed exactly what I was talking about: the temporal evolution of the spectrum, which would be the combined temporal evolutions of each partial.
But that wasn’t physical modeling at all, it was additive synthesis.

My question now is: if Pianoteq works through physical modeling, what is the real role of the Spectrum Profile? Would it be something like an “additive” starting point, a kind of base color, with the hidden mathematics of the model then taking care of the spectral evolution?
But then there’s also dynamic behaviour: a loud sound doesn’t have the same Spectrum Profile as a soft one, which would mean that a Pianoteq instrument would actually have thousands and thousands of Spectrum Profiles (each key at every dynamic level), and only as a starting point, without even considering the spectral evolution.
But it’s obvious that this isn’t how physical modeling works, but rather an additive resynthesis.
So, in Pianoteq, what is it exactly that we’re seeing and modifying in the Spectrum Profile?

je viens de télécharger Syngular et je suis agréablement surpris par la qualité des presets notamment le  "Syngular Pad Mixed Choir" belle évolution de Moddart , bravo.

"Il ne me manque plus qu'une chose dans Pianoteq : une émulation d'orgue Hammond B3."

et pourquoi pas un Stringteq ?

Totally kewl ...*-)

Now me only need Drums and a Step-Sequencer to have me own lil Pteq-Daw ...

Do you mean for one of the following cases?

* 2 or more instances of the Pianoteq plugin in a Daw, one or more set to (transposed to) different octaves/semitones?
  --> In that case, Pianoteq-->Options-->MIDI-->Notes-transposition is available
* 2 or more layers within Pianoteq?
  --> In that case, a Pianoteq-->Layers-->(a specific layer)-->Transpose-popup-button (just to the left of the layer name) is available
* Something else?

Syngular presets, like other Pianoteq instrument presets, when used as a layer include the transposition-button pop-up-menu in the Layers window.

Hi. Thanks for your reply...

The Layer transposition feature is MIDI Note offsets, which does cover many basic use cases, and which luckily does actually follow the periods (or repetition intervals) of musical intonations that are applied when one is using an instance of MTS-ESP master in the project...

However, "for adding subharmonic and harmonic offsets", MIDI transpositions can get close in many cases, but are not always as precise, as when for example one needs an exact 3/1 or 1/3 above or below, and in this scenario, I believe using frequency offsets of the diapason is the best method, unless there is some ability to use harmonic or subharmonic offsets that I've missed.

But you are correct in pointing out that any octave transpositions can easily be made using the MIDI Note transposition feature in the Layers section.

And this is a really useful feature for scenarios where one is playing in musical intonations with </> 12 notes to the period (usually 2/1 octaves), such as 17, 19, 29 or 31 tone equal-temperaments.

I've tried the demo today, I think it's an amazing addon to the pianoteq library. Things I tried:

- Adding body to a piano with the help of Syngular -> select the Sine preset, set up 2 layers in pianoteq, add the piano of your choice in the second layer, set both volume layers to 50, then add a crossfade around c2 for the sine, so that the sine only plays in the lower area of your piano sound. The body it adds to your piano model is incredible. Very comparable to my nord stage 4 sound i'm used to.
- Adding Pads beneath a piano to create a worship piano sound
- Trying to use the lfo section in syngular
- Adding external granular effect processors over the pad presets -> instant ambient result
- Trying to program some modern dance presets

It's not comparable to the modern synths out here (like pigments, massive X or the korg wavestate, etc.), but I think that it adds a lot of possibilities to the pianos by adding creative layering presets, so for that I think it's a perfect addon in the piano model library.

Things I will use the most from this synth is the Sine feature, it was one thing I was really missing because it can add so much to the piano body sound by adding it subtle to the low range. For me this will be an instant buy.

Modartt not only layers sounds but also words :
Synthetiser + Singular => Syngular