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First Project Guidelines: Digital Music Synthesis

Instructor: Yolanda Campos

Abstract—This document contains the description of the first frequency. While many conventional musical instruments have
project, to be performed in the course Digital Audio (Bachelor’s harmonic partials (e.g. an oboe), some have inharmonic ones
degree in Sound and Image Engineering for Telecommunication). (e.g. piano). Both synthesis techniques mentioned above can
The project goal is to implement a music synthesizer in MATLAB produce harmonic and inharmonic sounds.
trying to emulate a particular instrument.
Keywords—Sound synthesis, additive synthesis, frequency mod-
ulation, digital signal processing.

I. I NTRODUCTION

T HIS project deals with the digital synthesis of music.

There are several techniques to perform music synthesis.
Two of the most simple ones are additive and Frequency
Modulation (FM) synthesis. The goal of this practical work
is to compare both methods applied to the synthesis of music
from single instruments.
Additive synthesis is one of the earliest forms. It is based
on Fourier theory. The basic underlying idea is that complex
tones (y(t)) can be created by the addition of simpler ones (see
Fig. 1). Each partial is a sinusoid of different frequency (fi )
and amplitude (ri ). Additive synthesis is a linear technique,
since it does not create frequency components that were not
explicitly contained in the original waveforms.
Fig. 2. FM synthesis. [1]

The loudness and the timbre of a sound changes over time,

Fig. 1. Additive synthesis.
FM synthesis (see Fig. 2) is a method of sound synthesis
in which the frequency of a carrier signal is changed by the
amplitude variation of a modulating signal. This results in
many more frequencies in the output sound that were present
in the carrier and modulator waves themselves.
so some parameters must be considered time-dependent. An
envelope can be assigned to them which specifies how they
change over time. A common model is the ADSR (Attack-
Decay-Sustain-Release) envelope, shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 2
suggests how this type of envelope can be applied. Additive
synthesis also requires the use of ADSR envelopes, although
they are not represented in Fig. 1.
The synthesizer must be prepared to play single notes of
the chromatic scale (12 semitones) in a range of three octaves
and with various possible durations (at least three durations:
1, 1/2, 1/4), to enter via the
√ keyboard. A semitone corresponds
to a frequency ratio of 12 2.

II. I MPLEMENTATION DETAILS

A musical signal is said to be harmonic if all the frequencies
of the overtones are integer multiples of a fundamental fre-
quency. In contrast, inharmonic sounds show aperiodic wave-
Fig. 3. ADSR envelope. [2]
forms, in which the individual overtones do not have frequen-
cies that are integer multiples of some common fundamental
 2

IV. D ELIVERABLES
A. Technical report
Your final report must be prepared according to a given
format (you will find it on the web page). The maximum
number of pages allowed is 6. The report should contain the
following parts:
• Title and authors
• Keywords
• Abstract: one paragraph that summarizes the work
• Introduction: It describes the context and explains the
objectives of the project
• The main body of the report will be divided into different
sections, whose titles will be decided by each team. A
discussion will be included, where the team members
will comment on the general advantages and disadvan-
tages of additive versus FM synthesis, the performance
of both techniques for the specific instrument and any
Fig. 4. FM synthesis with temporal envelopes. [1]
other relevant issue related to the results.
• Conclusion and future work
• References
III. P ROJECT DEVELOPMENT

The development of this project consists of the following B. Software

steps: Your project m-files must also be uploaded. Also a
1) In order to produce sounds with a similar timbre to the readme.txt file must be included to explain how to run the
considered musical instrument, it will be necessary to code. All these files will be combined into one .zip file and
make a previous investigation on the spectral character- only that one will be uploaded.
istics of each instrument.
2) Generation of stationary notes by additive or FM syn- C. Oral presentation
thesis, without considering ADSR envelopes.
3) Generation of ADSR envelopes. The oral presentation must include a live demonstration
4) Modification of stationary notes by including the en- (with audio) of the project. The slides used for the presentation
velopes. will also be uploaded.
In the case of the additive synthesis, the simplest option
V. R EFERENCES
is to apply the same ADSR envelope to the different partials,
although this approach is not optimal. In order to obtain a more [1] www.dtic.upf.edu/ egomez/teaching/sintesi/SPS1/Tema6-
similar sound to the real instrument, it would be necessary Modulacion.pdf
to apply different temporal envelopes to the different partials. [2] en.wikiaudio.org
Also in the case of FM synthesis there are several possibilities
concerning how many different envelopes to apply. Each team
must achieve a good compromise between quality of the
results and time required to achieve a solution, and explain
the decisions that have been made.
Each team will focus on a single musical instrument and will
investigate the particular temporal and spectral characteristics
of this specific instrument type.
• Teams 1-3: Additive synthesis. Piano. Deep study about
inharmonicity.
• Teams 4-6: Additive versus FM synthesis. Flute. Only
harmonic generation.
• Teams 8-10: Additive versus FM synthesis. Trumpet.
Only harmonic generation.
• Teams 11-13: Additive synthesis. Guitar. Deep study
about inharmonicity.
• Team 7 y 14: Additive synthesis. Bass guitar. Deep study
about inharmonicity.