A Piano Model including Longitudinal String Vibrations

In this paper a mixed-paradigm piano model is presented. The major development is the ability of modeling longitudinal string vibrations. Longitudinal string motion is the reason for the metallic sound of low piano notes, therefore its modeling greatly improves the perceptual quality of synthesized piano sound. In this novel approach the transversal displacement of the string is computed by a finite-difference string model and the longitudinal motion is calculated by a set of second-order resonators, which are nonlinearly excited by the transversal vibration. The soundboard is modeled by a multi-rate filter based on measurements of real pianos. The piano model is able to produce high-quality piano sounds in real-time with about 5–10 note polyphony on an average personal computer.