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This section controls the characteristics of the mallet, or hammer, that causes the metal fork to
vibrate. Stiffness represents how hard the surface of the mallet is, so lower values will produce a
gentler attack, while higher values will tend to make the sound more percussive and less full bodied.
Force is the speed at which the mallet hits the fork, with higher values tending to produce more
overdrive and “growl.” Since both of these controls affect how much the fork is made to vibrate, they
interact with each other closely. For example, both values affect the overall volume of the sound, but
in different ways. A very hard mallet hitting the fork with a small amount of force will tend to
produce a hard attack, but a relatively weak overall sound. A soft mallet hitting a fork very hard will
produce a much fuller sound at a similar volume to the first setting, but with a much weaker attack.
Both of these parameters can be modulated by both the velocity and the pitch of incoming MIDI notes.
This is where physical modeling gets interesting. It’s fairly intuitive to see that modulating the force
with velocity will create a real-world situation, whereby more force is applied as you strike the key
harder. However, we are also given the option of making our electric piano’s hammers get harder as
we play louder (or softer if you want).
The Noise subsection models the noise of the hammer hitting the fork, so it also affects the attack of
the piano sound. Noise, however, is independent of the tone that the fork produces. Think of it as an
additional percussive attack that you can blend in using the Level control to give the sound more
definition. To get a better understanding of how Noise affects the sound, turn both of the Level
controls in the Fork section down to 0% and play with the noise Pitch and Decay.
Fork
Some electric pianos, such as those made by Yamaha, use actual strings to produce sound—just like
an acoustic piano. The most familiar electric piano sound, however, is the sound of a hammer striking
a metal tuning fork—the design of the famous Rhodes piano. The tuning fork consists of two distinct
parts: a stiff metal wire (the “tine”) and a tuned metal resonator (the “tone bar”). The tine is struck by
the hammer, and it causes the resonator to vibrate, creating a distinct pitch.
To understand how the Tine and Tone subsections of the fork work, start by turning the Level control
for Tone to 0% and the Level and Decay for the Tine to 100%. This will allow you to hear clearly only
the Tine portion of the sound. It sounds very much like you might imagine a hammer hitting a stiff
wire—a high frequency “ping” with very little body to the sound. Increasing the Color control will
bring out more of the higher frequencies, while reducing it will make the sound darker. The Decay
control can be used to make the sound range from a short percussive hit to a drawn-out ring.
Once you have a handle on the Tine part of the sound, the Tone section is fairly self-explanatory. This
is obviously the sound of the tuned resonator that produces the lion’s share of the piano’s tone. Again,
you can get familiar with this aspect of the piano’s sound by turning down the Level control in the
other sections and listening to it by itself. The Decay control adjusts how long the note rings out while
the key is held down, while the Release determines how long the note rings after the key is released.
Don’t expect to hear long release times like you would with a synth, however. Because we’re
modeling the behavior of a vibrating piece of metal in contact with a damper (see below), the release
time is necessarily fairly short.
Damper
In a real electric piano, the dampers control the sustain feature of a note. When a key is struck, the
same mechanism that moves the mallet also moves the damper away from the fork so it can resonate.