Resonator: Tune Noise into a Ringing Note

Find the note after the impact

A resonator is easiest to understand with an impulse: a brief disturbance followed by time to ring. This original eight-second noise source uses short broadband bursts rather than mathematical single-sample impulses. It contains a very quiet noise floor between bursts, so those gaps are not absolute silence. Listen for a pitched continuation instead of treating every visible waveform segment as the resonant output.

Only resonator I is enabled below. Its Note is MIDI number 57, or 220 Hz; the panel calls that A2 under its octave-label convention. This number sets a fixed tuning, not a request for an external MIDI note. Incoming audio excites the feedback-comb loop directly. Start at a modest listening level, because sustained resonance can make a small input feel much more prominent.

Reduce Decay from 65% toward 25%, then restore it. The listening cue is how much pitched energy survives after each burst, not simply the loudness of the burst itself. At a high value, adjacent tails may merge into a continuous note. That is useful for turning percussion into a drone, but shorten Decay when the rhythm needs distinct spaces.

Build a harmony one resonator at a time

Enable II and set its Pitch to +7 st. The first Note anchors the bank; Pitch in II–V is a semitone offset from it. Add III at +12 st only after you can distinguish the fifth from the root. Resist enabling all five immediately: a chord can hide which component is crowding the low register.

Each column has Tune in cents for small detuning and its own Gain field for balance. Those column gains use the panel's 0–100 display scale, not the output Gain knob's dB scale. Lower a dominant voice rather than raising every quieter one. Try a few cents of Tune on II for beating, then undo it if the harmony no longer holds still.

Const keeps the decay target independent of tuning. Leave it on while comparing intervals so a register change is less entangled with a decay change. Width spreads II–V across stereo; with only I enabled it is not a useful first experiment. Add width after establishing the chord and check that the central attack remains easy to locate.

Choose which energy enters and which survives

Color controls damping inside the resonant loops. Lower it to darken the ringing sound; raise it to retain more high-frequency detail. It interacts with Decay, so compare tail length again after a large brightness change. A darker ring can sit behind a busy percussion part, whereas a bright long ring may compete with every new hit.

Mode A supports a full harmonic series; Mode B changes the loop behavior toward odd harmonics. Compare them with one voice and unchanged Note before rebuilding the chord. You are changing the character of the resonant structure, not selecting major versus minor. Use the per-voice Pitch controls for musical intervals.

Input enables the excitation highpass, and Filter sets its cutoff. Raising it reduces low-frequency energy entering the resonators. This can stop a kick from driving the effect too heavily, but an excessive cutoff can starve the sound you wanted to ring. It is not an output bass-cut control. Finally lower Dry/Wet to recover more of the unpitched strike. The successful balance is the one where the new note supports the groove rather than replacing every transient with the same chord.