Zeroscope for tuning physical modeling synthesis

I hope I’m the first one to bring up this topic here. I’m having a hard time to tune my 2hp Bell or Qu Bit Surface using Zeroscope (I believe the same can be said for Plonk or Ring). It does an excellent job for tracking consistent notes but apparently not really so for something imitating bell or string sound with clear attack and decay. Is there any tips to maneuver this? Or is it just how it is?

Zeroscope will have an easier time with simpler waveforms that have a strong zero crossing, such as a square wave. More complex signals with lots of harmonics will be harder to detect.

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I’m not familiar with Bell or Surface, but I have used the Zeroscope to successfully tune Rings before.

Search online for Lightbath’s (and r beny’s) mini-tutorials on tuning Rings.

Maybe you can do the same thing on Bell or Surface??? Don’t know if the same parameters are available on those modules.

Good luck!

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I did such a search and could not find a succinct video on the topic.

I think this is really the key. When I turn rings I will try to get it to sound like a plucked nylon guitar string, then I can tune it on Mordax DATA.

It’s not a video, just a document. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post external links here, but hopefully this is ok.

Just to reiterate, this is content from the artist Lightbath. I did not make it.

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1SC5EUZuRFwJQqp26mqlnCkn_RDxgK8GuY1LgAdifsOE/mobilebasic

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Worth noting - if you’re able to make the waveform simpler, you might have an easier time. So - do you have a distortion module, and/or comparator/switch? You can run the output of your other module through that to get it ‘simpler’ - though you may want to run it through a lowpass filter first, too! And, worth noting, “bells” can be hard to tune - they’re full of “unrelated” (not musical-interval related) spectral content. Tuning the sound of your module to make the simplest/purest tone (vs. a very “clangorous” one) will also likely help.

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Thanks for sharing that @Dasein1980 ! There’s some good tips in there. I didn’t realize you could use the FREQ attenuverter for fine tuning.

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Thank you everyone for comments and suggestions. In any case using Zeroscope to tune those modules is difficult. I’ll try a regular chromatic tuner, or just keep using my ear (which is often challenging in a live situation).

A tuning best practice thing worth mentioning is to be sure all of your voices are connected and receiving the same voltage before you start tuning anything. Otherwise things might change from impedance differences when you connect things. 0v is the usual amount for tuning and is provided in the Tetrapad and Scales tuning modes.

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