The Bowed Tube : a Virtual Violin

This paper presents a virtual violin for real-time performances consisting of two modules: a violin spectral modeland a control interface. The interface is composed by asensing bow and a tube with drawn strings in substitutionof a real violin. The spectral model is driven by the bowingcontrols captured with the control interface and it is ableto predict spectral envelopes of the sound corresponding tothose controls. The envelopes are filled with harmonic andnoisy content and given to an additive synthesizer in orderto produce violin sounds. The sensing system is based ontwo motion trackers with 6 degrees of freedom. One trackeris attached to the bow and the other to the tube. Bowingcontrols are computed after a calibration process where theposition of virtual strings and the hair-ribbon of the bowis obtained. A real time implementation was developed asa MAX/MSP patch with external objects for each of themodules.