6.3.5. KarplusStrong (KarplusStr)
Description: Karplus-Strong is the name of the sound synthesis method developed by
Kevin Karplus and Alex Strong at Stanford University. They discovered that you could
create a realistic sounding drum and plucked string sounds by looping a short noise burst
through a filtered delay. Nowadays we refer to their method as physical modeling. In
physical modeling you recreate the physical characteristics of an instrument using digital
techniques; the bow position of a string instrument, the force you use to hit an instrument,
and the diffusion and damping factor of the materials the instrument made of.
In physical modeling, an exciter creates vibrations in a resonator. The exciter can either be
a bow or a strike. The resonator can emulate many different instrument shapes.
Bow: Set the amount of Bow that is applied on top of the strike. It results in a continuous
tone, whereas the Strike alone creates a decaying tone.
Position: This controls where and how hard the resonator is struck; it has no effect on the
bowed part of the sound.
Decay: Sets the amount of resonance by controlling the decay of the resonator.
The oscillator models listed below have been developed by Mutable Instruments. They
permitted us to implement some of their open source Oscillator designs in the MicroFreak,
for which are very grateful as they add a lot to its sonic potential.
These models feature waveforms that were introduced in 2018 with the Plaits Module of
Mutable Instruments. Plaits is one of the most popular oscillator modules in the Eurorack
world.
In the descriptions below we describe the functions of the Oscillator models in a basic
way. For in-depth info about Plaits and its waveforms, please refer to https://mutable-
instruments.net/modules/plaits/manual/.
Note: The names of the knobs on the MicroFreak will differ from the names used in the Plaits
oscillator documentation.
MicroFreak name Plaits name
Wave Harmonics
Timbre Timbre
Shape Morph
Karplus Oscillator Model
39 Arturia - User Manual MicroFreak - The Digital Oscillator
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