Sustained note muffles next note

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1

Hey SP community, I am trying to create the effect of a piano sustain pedal, using the sustain option. But when I use the following code (which is sustaining every note for 3 beats, and sleeping for 1 beat between notes), the successive notes sound weird & muffled…

play :E4, sustain: 3
sleep 1
play :E4, sustain: 3
sleep 1
play :E4, sustain: 3
sleep 1
play :E4, sustain: 3
sleep 1

So yeah, how do I create the effect of sustain pedal without muffling the successive notes?

2

hi @musicninja

As nobody answers, i suggest this (but it doesn’t give you an explanation for your question)

use_synth :piano
4.times do
  play :E4, sustain: 1, release: 3
  sleep 1
end
1 Like
3

Thanks for replying! I thought my post was gonna get forgotten…

I think your solution doesn’t run into the muffling issue because the piano synth is pretty short to begin with, so it can’t be sustained beyond 1 beat… For e.g. try sustaining this for 3 beats, it sounds the same as when you sustain for 1 beat

4

@musicninja This is an interesting question. At first I thought it was triggering Sonic Pi’s global limiter, which can be bypassed with set_mixer_control! limiter_bypass: 1. But that has no effect!

I think the issue here is that the default synth (:beep / :sine) is such a pure sound that each subsequent “beep” at the same pitch partially cancels the ones that are playing, depending on their phase relationship: Wave interference - Wikipedia

When I run this code, I hear the “muffling” effect only with the :beep synth, not with :blade. Is that what you hear too?

3.times do
  use_synth (ring :beep, :blade, :zawa).tick(:a)
  4.times do
    tick
    play (ring :c4, :c4).look,
      sustain: 3, amp: 0.5 #, pan: (ring -1, 1).look
    sleep 1
  end
end

You can also remove the “muffling” effect by uncommenting the pan: option (since the left and right channels don’t interfere with each other) or by changing the second :c4 to a different note, like :d4.

1 Like
5

Hi @pashultz, to be honest I’m still trying to internalize the new functions I learned from your code - tick, ring, look… Hold on. I’ll try the full code in a bit and get back with the results!

Appreciate your inputs though, and I think your theory on wave interference is spot on <3

1 Like
6

Ok, I used the :blade synth, that didn’t muffle, interesting…

But not sure what you are trying to accomplish in the above code - why are you cycling b/w 3 different synths? and why are you cycling b/w :c4 and :c4 in the inner loop? Instead you can just say play :c4

7

Definitely! I just whipped that up as a quick way to iterate through different parameters, to see which ones might cause the muffling. You’re right; the ring on pitch is especially pointless; I had originally entered several different notes, then I changed it back to just :C4 but left the structure. Still, even with that goal, it would have made more sense just to use a single-element ring! Oh, well.

And sorry for not explaining earlier; I guess by now you’ve found the section in the tutorial on rings, ticks, etc. I find them to be among the most intuitive tools in Sonic Pi for working out musical concepts—to the degree that I now use them even when they’re not helpful! :smile: