Electric: Balance Bell Attack, Sustain and Pickup Drive

Find the bell inside the chord

The first example plays an original MIDI chord sequence through a hand-authored patch. Electric generates its sound from a stiffness-shaped strike, optional noise and two resonators per voice. The tone bar carries the fundamental; the tine contributes an upper, bell-like component. No sampled electric piano or captured preset is required.

Lower Tine Vol from 55% to zero while keeping Bar Vol at 85%. Listen for the upper attack component disappearing while a rounder pitched body remains. Restore it and shorten Tine Dec. The bell now fades sooner instead of simply becoming quieter. These are different solutions when a chord is too bright.

Tine Color sets the upper component's frequency ratio, from twice to nine times the fundamental. Its 40% setting corresponds to a ratio of 4.8, so the model need not be strictly harmonic. Move it slowly and listen for a change in the bell's pitch relationship, not a conventional lowpass sweep. Lower Tine Vol if that relationship competes with the chord.

Separate body length from release

Bar Dec controls the fundamental's natural decay. Tine Dec controls a much shorter decay range for the upper component. Both are displayed as percentages, but equal percentages do not mean equal seconds. A long Bar Dec with a short Tine Dec can keep harmonic support after the bright attack has receded.

Release and Damper govern what happens after note-off. Try a stronger Damper and compare the result with the visible note endings. A strong setting can stop the fork promptly even when Bar Dec is long. To explore a lingering release, first reduce Damper, then increase Release; otherwise its contribution can be difficult to hear.

In the Mallet section, Stiffness shapes the strike's filtering. Noise adds a separate noisy component; N Decay controls its persistence and N Pitch controls its filter color. Despite the name, N Pitch does not retune the chord. Start with a small Noise amount and listen to fresh attacks. Too much can turn a useful key-like onset into a distraction above every note.

Let velocity encounter a nonlinear pickup

The second original MIDI scenario is for expression comparisons. Its hotter pickup setting lets stronger notes encounter more saturation. Follow changes in spectral edge as well as loudness. This phrase also contains programmed slides and pitch bend; those pitch movements are not caused by the pickup. Drive increases the nonlinear stage's intensity; Pickup In changes the level entering it. They interact, so alter one at a time instead of turning both up together.

Pickup Out scales the signal after that stage. Reduce it when adding Drive to make the comparison less biased toward the louder version. If soft notes already sound flattened, reduce Drive or Pickup In; simply lowering output volume will not restore the lost contrast inside the nonlinear processing.

Symmetry at 50% centers the pickup transfer curve. Moving away from the center biases it and changes the harmonic balance. Compare the initial 35% with 50% at the same Drive, listening to the harder attacks. It is a modeled waveshaping parameter, not a measurement of an actual pickup's physical location.

Keep the model in perspective

The fork is a compact two-resonator design, not a simulation of every tine, damper, cabinet and mechanical interaction in an acoustic instrument. Familiar electric-piano associations are useful vocabulary, but these controls do not establish fidelity to a particular brand or recording. If the note works alone but clutters an arrangement, reduce its ringing body or upper tine before adding more processing. Finish with Volume only after the attack, sustain and velocity response have useful roles.