Sound Synthesis and Musical Composition by Physical Modelling of Self-Sustained Oscillating Structures

In this paper we present the first results of a study that is carried out with the sound synthesis and musical creation environment GENESIS on self-sustained oscillating structures models. Based on the mass-interaction CORDIS-ANIMA physical modelling formalism, GENESIS has got the noteworthy property that it allows to work both on sound itself and on musical composition in a single coherent environment. By taking as a starting point the analysis of real self-sustained instruments like bowed strings or woodwinds, our aim is to develop generic tools that enable to investigate a wide family of physical models: the self-sustained oscillating structures. But, if this family is able to create rich timbres, it can also play a new and fundamental role at the level of the temporal macrostructure of the music (the gesture and the instrumental performance level, as well as the composition one). So we propose also in this paper to use the relatively complex motion of a bowed macrostructure as a musical events generator, in order to work with the musical composition possibilities of this type of models.