Physical Modeling Research Labs

Overview

The labs listed here do not include commercial research facilities. Such facilities do not usually like to publicize their projects, publish papers, or teach students. So what you see here is a tabulation of university research labs that do some research on physical modeling of musical instruments. However, a tremendous amount of ground-breaking R & D has been done under the leadership of Toshifumi Kunimoto at Yamaha in Hamamatsu, Japan. For obvious commercial reasons, the work of his team is mostly published in patents. The extensive development effort carried out at Yamaha on PM algorithms is the basis for the Yamaha VL line of synths. Here is a list of most of the VL patents.

CCRMA at Stanford

Within the worldwide university community, I think we have to say that CCRMA is the hub for physical modeling of musical instruments. There are various labs doing MIDI work, algorithmic composition, research into room acoustics and treatments, DSP processing for effects and spatialization, and other forms of sound synthesis such as additive synthesis. When it comes to physical modeling, though, there is CCRMA and there is everyone else. You can search the Web the world over for physical modeling research labs, and discover that the pickings are slim, indeed. Then looking at CCRMA, it's like you found the mother lode!

Corporate sponsors of CCRMA include Emu, Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Young-Chang, NeXT, and quite a few others. The technical leader here is clearly Julius O. Smith. Julius was the original developer of the basic 'digital waveguide' modeling technique, which is the basis for all physical modeling of musical sounds. He continues to publish and coordinate research related to physical modeling synthesis. The CCRMA lab is fairly well-endowed, and someone interested in the technical issues of physical modeling would do well to take courses here. In fact, if you are interested in physical modeling, I can't see any other suitable university environment, really.

This site is rich with relatively accessible theoretical material on physical modeling. There is also lots of good research work on musical controllers, psychoacoustics, effects algorithms, and so on. Some highlights include:

• The Julius O. Smith personal page, which includes a number of his seminal papers and some excellent tutorial docs on Physical Modeling.
• An index for the Musical Acoustics Research Library
• Synthbuilder and other interesting stuff coming out of the Stanford/Yamaha research

Jump To CCRMA

Princeton Sound Kitchen

The highlight of this site from a physical modeling perspective is the work by Perry Cook, including some interesting downloadables! Jump to Sound Kitchen

IRCAM in France

IRCAM is a major musical acoustics research lab, but their focus on physical modeling is meager. This site is also mostly French, and only some of the material is available in English. Check It Out (English Version)

LIPM in Buenos Aires

(Laboratorio de Investigación y Producción Musical) This lab has a web page (single page) at Stanford. They seem to be the largest electronic music lab in Latin America. They do exchange programs with Stanford and UCSD. They have quite a bit of nice equipment, perhaps including a VL synth, although that isn't entirely clear. Check It Out