The Quilcom B-2 BELLY: It does bells!!

[Spogg]

Hello all!

The Quilcom B-2 BELLY completes my B-2 series of synths designed to simulate different categories of percussive instruments; this time it’s bell-like sounds

Here’s my demo video:

https://youtu.be/FzO8sgYgnL0

The zip includes the FSM (3.06), 32 and 64 bit plugins and stand-alones. There are also papers and links about bells,some samples and the essential User Guide.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/la62foou6k30p ... 0.zip?dl=0

I hope you’ll take a look at my BELLY and find it desirable!

Cheers

Spogg

[tulamide]

Offtopic alarm:

Now that you covered ASS and BELLY, I think you should cover the whole body. Names I expect from your coming VSTs:
[*]Quilcom Head to Toene
[*]Quilcom De-Liver
[*]Quilcom The PIT
[*]Quilcom Tongue

There's more where that came from

[Spogg]

Soft knee?

I think you might have started something!

[trogluddite]

Well, I'm a bit disappointed this time. I have been looking for a VST borborygmous* simulator for ages, and thought that this might finally be the solution.

[* Borborygmous = the scientific term for tummy rumbling. It's one of my favourite sounding words, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to use it! Most bizarrely, my browser's spell-checker suggests that I should spell it "Scarborough" - maybe it knows something about having an ice-cream too soon after fish-n-chips?! ]

Of course, as ever, this is wonderful, Spogg - and now that the B-2 series is complete, I've given it its own sub-folder in my VST collection.

Many years ago, when I was a student, a bunch of us got taken on a trip to a bell foundry (somewhere near Burton-on-Trent, I think - we visited the Bass brewery on the same day). The guide gave us a little talk about how the bell tuning was done, and we were shown the massive lathe-like machine which was used to refine the shape of the raw castings for the big church bells. There were no convenient sliders for the overtones like BELLY, of course - just a guy with decades of experience tapping the thing with a hammer, and then deciding how much metal to grind off here and there.

[Spogg]

That really made me laugh Trog!

And I really do appreciate your nice comments.

When I was researching this (i.e. Googling stuff) I came to realise just how immense a subject it is. This is often the case with imitative synthesis. I remember going so deep into pipe organs for my Quilcom Rank organs. I find it fascinating because there’s just so much to learn and new horizons open up.

I started off thinking that bells just go kinda “ding” or “bong” and of course they do, but the mechanisms, design and physics lead to such rich and varied sounds.
I also became aware of the skill, art and craftsmanship of the bell tuner, but I do wonder how you learn such a trade. Just how many bells get scrapped in the process because “you took too much off that mate, there’ll be nothing left soon”.
I’m quite sure I’d end up with just a heap of swarf and no bell.

Cheers

Spogg

[trogluddite]

You reminded me of this report in New Scientist - about the world's most accurately spherical man-made object. And it really is "man-made" - sophisticated technology was used for measuring it, but all of the grinding was controlled by hand without using CNC machine-tools. As someone who often ends up with more food down the front of my shirt than in my mouth, I am absolutely awed by such skills!

[tulamide]

You reminded me of this report in New Scientist - about the world's most accurately spherical man-made object. And it really is "man-made" - sophisticated technology was used for measuring it, but all of the grinding was controlled by hand without using CNC machine-tools. As someone who often ends up with more food down the front of my shirt than in my mouth, I am absolutely awed by such skills!

That again reminds me of the petrospheres of Costa Rica, aka "Las Bolas". Almost perfectly spherical, definitely man-made, up to 2.5m in diameter, over 300 of them and constructed around the 7th century from natives, of whom we know nothing about. The stone they used is "Gobba" and as tough as granite. And their only tools were other stones (which revealed the marks on the stones). Wether created for scientific or cultish reasons, they are a piece of art for sure.

ob_7722da_d4ff71e8216f9ceb77616e47511efa5e.jpg (64.19 KiB) Viewed 16628 times

[Spogg]

You’ve both reminded me of something I noticed when I was a small child.

If I thought about a large solid black sphere it gave me a very uneasy sensation, and these last two posts bought that “feeling” back. I can’t describe it other than by saying it’s a weird mixture of fear and confusion. But those words are inadequate.

Maybe it’s something to do with such a thing not occurring in nature, but I’m not convinced. Maybe it’s one of those weird mental quales that people have sometimes, like trog has described elsewhere.

I’m now wondering if those guys who made the stone spheres had the same experience as me and gave it a religious significance.

Cheers

Spogg

[Halon]

Great stuff spogg!