Modal Windchime

This project is a virtual model of a windchime, built using the DIMPLE physical environment created in IDMIL at McGill's department of Music Technology. Six chime-like bars are suspended from a fixed top plates using ball joints. When they collide with each other or the center mass, modal synthesis events are triggered in Max/MSP.

The modal synthesis patch in Max/MSP consists of three bandpass filters per chime voice (reson~ objects) which are tuned to the approximate first three modes of a metallic or bamboo woodchime, determined manually using LPC analysis to pick the three largest peaks in the spectral envelope of samples of each type of chime. Each chime collision in DIMPLE sends an OSC message to Max/MSP, triggering a burst of exponentially damped noise whose amplitude is proportional to the velocity of the collision. The noise excites the filters, producing the synthetic chime sound.

Wiimote controls were also added using GlovePie. The joystick and +/- buttons are used to control the camera pan and zoom, and the acceleration of the wiimote creates virtual "wind" forces on the chime objects proportional to the amplitude and direction of the acceleration. A video demonstration is shown below. Please excuse the slightly clicky audio track - the audio was synthesized on a netbook.