The Quilcom SIM-W: Whistle while you work

[Spogg]

Hello playmates!

Someone who liked my SIM-BP bagpipe synth suggested I make an Irish Tin Whistle simulator. I thought that’s gonna be easy surely. It’s just a whistle after all isn’t it?

So I checked it out and, like many instruments I’ve learned about, I went down the Tin Whistle rabbit hole and it was fascinating what I found; not just about the sound but the many ancient versions of flutes and the varied playing styles out there. Articulation is very important!

Like my other “SIM” synths I don’t use samples, partly as a challenge and partly because of the flexibility it affords. This is one of the beauties of FlowStone, you are not confined to just piecing stock modules together to make regular synths, and I love it for that.

Anyway, here’s my YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/2b-03NpPi_I

You can download it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hya5olofetjzr ... 1.zip?dl=0

I hope you have a bit of fun with it.

[newdsp]

Very nice simulator but I tried to open it in FS 309 and ... Yeah. LOL. Any ideas how to convert it to 309 ?

[Spogg]

Very nice simulator but I tried to open it in FS 309 and ... Yeah. LOL. Any ideas how to convert it to 309 ?

No, sorry. It opened correctly in the new FS4 alpha.

I know I sound like an old nag but using that "beta" version is a really bad idea.

[trogluddite]

That's really good for a purely synthesised sound. The way that overblowing changes the harmonic balance is particularly nice - much better than simply pitch bending the note up a 5th, which I've sometimes heard people try. Also nice to hear some whistling that doesn't make me want to punch the whistler (why is it that the people who most enjoy whistling are the ones who can't do it in tune?!)

Personally, I think I'd rather have continuous MIDI control over "breath strength" combined with "overblowing"; but that's probably because I did use a breath controller** at one time (also a Yamaha VL physical-modelling synth rather more expensive than SIM-W!). To be fair though, that's a very difficult kind of modulation to mimic from any keyboard or foot-pedal (aftertouch seems the obvious counterpart, but even on those keyboards with AT, it's very rarely smooth enough, IMHO).

The presets "panpipes" and "unreal2" need a tweak maybe - they seem to lock up the audio whenever I select them (in FS 3.0.6). Selecting another preset reliably gets everything working again, but I didn't manage to find which part of the synth was causing it.

** The breath controller was a Heath-Robinson DIY affair - just a small microphone inside a short length of tube with a couple of baffles in it. Blowing through the tube caused lots of turbulent noise at the mic, which was filtered, passed through an envelope follower, and converted to MIDI CC#2 messages. Notes still came from a keyboard, and lip-pressure from after-touch. It worked surprisingly well so long as you didn't mind getting copious amounts of dribble all down yourself!

[tulamide]

Something strange is going on! After you posted here, I thought "nice work", but a tin whistle is not my type of instrument". Today I visited Youtube and got a recommended video. "Clarke Tin Whistles Comparison" by a channel called "whistletutor".
Link here: https://youtu.be/D77Awp2vLRw

I took it as a sign, and didn't dare to ignore it. I watched the whole video, which I normally would never have done. What surprised me is that I could clearly hear the difference. And what I heard matches the opinion of the "whistletutor". The black whistle is clear, clean, maybe louder, but definitely stronger in its tone. I also learned that those two are tuned in D and only cover one octave (two by blowing technique). That explains the arpeggio-like flute patterns I hear in scottish and irish tin whistle songs (for example here https://youtu.be/mpN36I9xr-o). To break the restrictions from just one octave, you just naturally play more notes in shorter time to kepp it interesting.

I then watched your video (finally), and my impression is that your simulation tends more towards the first tin whistle (which is the most sold one produced for like 400 years in the same way), than the cleaner, sharper second one. Or do you think your sim could achieve the tone from the second (black) tin whistle as well?

Also, now we also need fiddle, (button) accordion, wooden flute and clàrsach simulations, and we have everything to produce scottish and irish folk

[Spogg]

Personally, I think I'd rather have continuous MIDI control over "breath strength" combined with "overblowing"; but that's probably because I did use a breath controller** at one time (also a Yamaha VL physical-modelling synth rather more expensive than SIM-W!).

The presets "panpipes" and "unreal2" need a tweak maybe - they seem to lock up the audio whenever I select them (in FS 3.0.6). Selecting another preset reliably gets everything working again, but I didn't manage to find which part of the synth was causing it.

** The breath controller was a Heath-Robinson DIY affair - just a small microphone inside a short length of tube with a couple of baffles in it. Blowing through the tube caused lots of turbulent noise at the mic, which was filtered, passed through an envelope follower, and converted to MIDI CC#2 messages. Notes still came from a keyboard, and lip-pressure from after-touch. It worked surprisingly well so long as you didn't mind getting copious amounts of dribble all down yourself!

I did give some thought to breath-controller overblow but I don’t have such a thing and it would have been a far more complex thing to make and probably nobody would use the feature.

But I’m VERY impressed with your idea for a breath controller I must say. The standard midi keyboard is certainly limited when it comes to expression and articulation.

I’m concerned about the lockup though. I use 3.06 and at no time did I get any weird behaviour, otherwise I would have been onto it directly. I did the sound design in FS too, so I’ve no way to check for an issue I can’t make happen. If you do happen to spend some time on it and find the cause I’d love to know what’s wrong. I’ve had some good feedback on Facebook and nobody has mentioned an issue, but they would be using the plugins of course.

I’ve spent a lot of time helping Johan with many issues and there have been a few where he describes a problem which I can’t reproduce on my PC, so it’s not unknown for something like this to happen (he has a faster PC than mine too, but it uses AMD stuff, so maybe that’s a clue…dunno).

[Spogg]

Something strange is going on! After you posted here, I thought "nice work", but a tin whistle is not my type of instrument". Today I visited Youtube and got a recommended video. "Clarke Tin Whistles Comparison" by a channel called "whistletutor".
I then watched your video (finally), and my impression is that your simulation tends more towards the first tin whistle (which is the most sold one produced for like 400 years in the same way), than the cleaner, sharper second one. Or do you think your sim could achieve the tone from the second (black) tin whistle as well?

Also, now we also need fiddle, (button) accordion, wooden flute and clàrsach simulations, and we have everything to produce scottish and irish folk

I love synchronicities!

I know the Whistletutor stuff quite well by now!

It should be possible to simulate the black one and other variations. I would suggest you bias the mix towards “tone”, reduce fluctuations and the mess with the additive section. I actually own a Waltons D whistle and a Generation G whistle which I bought in Ireland a few years back, so I based my preset design on that kind of sound and what I heard on YouTube. From what I read and saw, serious players have large collections of whistles so they can choose one that’s appropriate for the music. I gather that more breathy sounds are preferred for airs and more pure sounds for faster stuff like jigs and reels, but I’m still nothing like an expert.

I should confess that I’ve just entered the Fiddle rabbit hole so I’ll see where that leads me. A fiddle is a violin and the word fiddle describes a playing style, so I’m hoping to be able to use some of the existing model for articulation but with a new sound generator. Maybe by opting for a specific style I can avoid the minefield of classical bowing gestures. After all, Irish whistle and fiddle music seem to share a bed. We’ll see.

[kortezzzz]

As an amateur keyboard solo player, I must say this one is one of your most impressive projects. The auto ornaments feature is top class for folk music. I really enjoyed playing it and I think this instrument needs a midi learning for live performers that would like to change some of the micro-parameters during the playing. Keep it coming

[Spogg]

Thank you Sir!

If you want to add something or change something please feel free (as always).

Cheers!

[trogluddite]

I’m concerned about the lockup though. I use 3.06 and at no time did I get any weird behaviour, otherwise I would have been onto it directly

I did wonder if that might be the case, as you are always so thorough with your designs - if it weren't so repeatably only the same two presets, I'd have definitely assumed a problem at my end. If I get a moment, I'll have another go to see if I can isolate the problem and see if using the alpha makes any difference. Now that I know it's just me, I suspect it might be soundcard related; I've had nothing but problems with my USB ports following a Windows 10 update a while back (not just audio, even my USB mouse is glitching occasionally).