Shader-based Physical Modelling for the Design of Massive Digital Musical Instruments

Victor Zappi, Andrew Allen, and Sidney Fels

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

Physical modelling is a sophisticated synthesis technique, often used in the design of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs). Some of the most precise physical simulations of sound propagation are based on Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) methods, which are stable, highly parameterizable but characterized by an extremely heavy computational load. This drawback hinders the spread of FDTD from the domain of off-line simulations to the one of DMIs. With this paper, we present a novel approach to real-time physical modelling synthesis, which implements a 2D FDTD solver as a shader program running on the GPU directly within the graphics pipeline. The result is a system capable of running fully interactive, massively sized simulation domains, suitable for novel DMI design. With the help of diagrams and code snippets, we provide the implementation details of a first interactive application, a drum head simulator whose source code is available online. Finally, we evaluate the proposed system, showing how this new approach can work as a valuable alternative to classic GPGPU modelling.

Citation:

Victor Zappi, Andrew Allen, and Sidney Fels. 2017. Shader-based Physical Modelling for the Design of Massive Digital Musical Instruments. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1176203

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{vzappi2017,
 abstract = {Physical modelling is a sophisticated synthesis technique, often used in the design of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs). Some of the most precise physical simulations of sound propagation are based on Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) methods, which are stable, highly parameterizable but characterized by an extremely heavy computational load. This drawback hinders the spread of FDTD from the domain of off-line simulations to the one of DMIs. With this paper, we present a novel approach to real-time physical modelling synthesis, which implements a 2D FDTD solver as a shader program running on the GPU directly within the graphics pipeline. The result is a system capable of running fully interactive, massively sized simulation domains, suitable for novel DMI design. With the help of diagrams and code snippets, we provide the implementation details of a first interactive application, a drum head simulator whose source code is available online. Finally, we evaluate the proposed system, showing how this new approach can work as a valuable alternative to classic GPGPU modelling.},
 address = {Copenhagen, Denmark},
 author = {Victor Zappi and Andrew Allen and Sidney Fels},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1176203},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 pages = {145--150},
 publisher = {Aalborg University Copenhagen},
 title = {Shader-based Physical Modelling for the Design of Massive Digital Musical Instruments},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2017/nime2017_paper0028.pdf},
 year = {2017}
}