Energy-based synthesis of tension modulation in strings
Above a certain amplitude, the string vibration becomes nonlinear due to the variation of tension. An important special case is when the tension varies with time but spatially uniform along the string. The most important effect of this tension modulation is the exponential decay of the pitch (pitch glide). In the case of nonrigid string termination, the generation of double frequency terms and the excitation of missing modes also occurs, but this is perceptually less relevant for most of the cases. Several modeling strategies have been developed for tension modulated strings. However, their computational complexity is significantly higher compared to linear string models. This paper proposes efficient techniques for modeling the quasistatic part (short-time average) of the tension variation that gives rise to the most relevant pitch glide effect. The modeling is based on the linear relationship between the energy of the string and quasistatic tension variation. When this feature is added to linear string models, the computational complexity is increased by a negligible amount, leading to significant savings compared to earlier tension modulated string models.