physical audio modus
Modus is a new physical modelling instrument for creating virtual models of instruments impossible in the real world. Andy Jones gets hands-on
Physical modelling synthesis has had a rather chequered history. It was initially employed by the likes of Yamaha to recreate the sounds of real instruments by modelling their physical properties. As good as the results could be, the recreation of these instruments has been more successfully achieved by sampling the heck out of them; every pluck, scratch, hit and articulation can be recorded and then employed by you to mix into your tunes. No physical modelling necessary. However, the technology is not redundant and now companies are waking up to the fact that you can use its principals to create entirely new sounds – from instruments that don’t or can’t exist – perhaps something it should always have been used for.
And Physical Audio’s Modus not only does this, but it makes physical modelling a relatively easy concept for us all to dabble with, resulting in, at the very least, one of the more innovative sound design plugins we have seen.
Modus operandi
Modus’s engine has three main physical models: Plates, Strings-Plate and Plates, and the idea is that the plugin replicates the physical properties of these and how they are connected. You get these engines represented in the top centre of the UI, with tabs to select between them and rather fancy graphics giving you an approximation of how each preset ‘looks’.
Each of the three main engines has various parameters to tweak in the left-hand column, and we’ll start with Strings. Here you get five notes of polyphony by way of the initial plucked string (or pair) and four connected strings. You then control the damping, tone, type (string or more metallic ‘Bar’) of the (up to) four resonating strings plus their ‘Mass Ratio’ – the level of impact each string makes compared to the original. ‘Stretch’ determines how the string harmonics play across the frequency range while ‘Position’ is a global setting for where the sound is plucked and where it is picked up or heard (with the microphone icon).
If you are in search of more off-road sounds then this is a surprisingly fast and cost-effective option
Moving to the Plate section and you get similar dedicated parameters but this time related to emulations of one or two metal reverb plates where one plate is struck and the other resonates. Parameters here include the damping, mass and tone of the plate and, as with Strings, where the plate is struck and where it is heard (again with the mic symbol). We’ll skip over Strings-Plate, only because it’s a combination of the above two with a cut down selection of each’s parameters to tweak.
With the bottom section on the UI you choose how the plates and strings are connected with Maps for differe
