Operation Manual

5.2 The Edit View 23
thereby limiting the interaction time. A softer hammer (knob turned to the left) produces a more
mellow tone while a harder one produces a brighter sound.
The Key modulation knob controls how the stiffness of the hammer is related to the pitch of the
notes played on the keyboard. When this knob is turned to the right, the hammer will become stiffer
as the notes played on the keyboard get higher. This is a behavior found on acoustic instruments
like pianos and hammer driven instruments.
Likewise, the Vel knob controls how the stiffness of the hammer varies with the velocity signal
from the keyboard. Turning this knob clockwise causes the hammer to become softer as one plays
harder on the keyboard and stiffer as one plays more softly. Again, this is a behavior found on
acoustic instruments.
Low
Medium
High
Low
Medium
High
TimeTime
Stiffness
Force
Figure 9: Effect of the Stiffness and Force knob on the output from the Hammer module.
Force
The Force knob is used to adjust the amplitude of the impact of the hammer on the fork as illus-
trated in Figure 9. When in its leftmost position, the impact is very soft and as the knob is turned
clockwise, the impact gets stronger. The strength of the impact can be modulated both with the
pitch of the note played and the velocity signal from the keyboard using the Key and Vel modu-
lation knobs respectively. For example, the strength of the impact of the hammer could be made
higher for high notes than low notes by turning the Key modulation knob to the right. It could also
be adjusted to follow the velocity signal from the keyboard by turning the Vel knob clockwise.
Noise
The Noise knob is used to control the amount of noise generated during the impact between the
hammer and the fork. Turning the knob clockwise increases the amplitude of the noise. The Pitch
knob is used to determine the center frequency of the noise. Turning this knob clockwise increases
the center frequency of the spectrum of the noise signal. The Decay knob is used to adjust the time
taken by the noise signal to fade out. As the knob is turned clockwise, the decay time increases.
For a more natural sound, a shorter decay is preferable.