
460 Live Instrument Reference
where the picking position is always basically the same regardless of the notes being played.
On a piano, the excitator position is relative — the hammers normally strike the string at about
1/7th of their length — and so is best modelled with Fix. Pos turned off. The excitator’s position
can additionally be modulated by velocity or note pitch, via the Vel and Key sliders.
The Excitator section can be toggled on or off via the switch next to its name. With it off, the
string can only be activated by interaction with its damper. (If both the Excitator and Damper
sections are disabled, nothing can set the string in motion — if you find that you’re not producing
any sound, check to see that at least one of these sections is on.)
Please note that the Excitator section’s parameters work closely together to influence the overall
behavior of the instrument. You may find that certain combinations of settings result in no sound
at all, for example.
The String Section
Tension’s String Section.
The vibration of the string is the main component of a stringed instrument’s sound. The effective
length of the string is also responsible for the pitch of the sound we hear.
The theoretical model of a resonating string is harmonic, meaning that the string’s partials are all
exact multiples of the fundamental frequency. Real-world strings, however, are all more or less
inharmonic, and this increases with the width of the string. The Inharm slider models this behav-
ior, causing upper partials to become increasingly out of tune as its value increases.
The Damping slider adjusts the amount of high frequency content in the string’s vibration. Higher
values result in more upper partials (less damping). This parameter can be modulated by note
pitch via the <Key slider to its right.
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