Wavetable matching is the process of finding the parameters needed to resynthesize a musical instrument tone using wavetable synthesis. The most important parameters to find are the wavetable basis spectra. Previous work on wavetable matching has used a genetic algorithm (GA) to select the basis spectra. However, the work has assumed the original tone was harmonic or nearly harmonic. This assumption is not satisfied by tones such as from the bowed strings. In this paper, we introduce a wavetable matching technique for bowed string inharmonic tones. It uses a simple method to group the harmonics with similar frequency deviations. A GA is then applied to different groups to find their basis spectra. We have results for the method on three different instrument tones cello, trumpet and viol...[ Read more ]

Wavetable matching is the process of finding the parameters needed to resynthesize a musical instrument tone using wavetable synthesis. The most important parameters to find are the wavetable basis spectra. Previous work on wavetable matching has used a genetic algorithm (GA) to select the basis spectra. However, the work has assumed the original tone was harmonic or nearly harmonic. This assumption is not satisfied by tones such as from the bowed strings. In this paper, we introduce a wavetable matching technique for bowed string inharmonic tones. It uses a simple method to group the harmonics with similar frequency deviations. A GA is then applied to different groups to find their basis spectra. We have results for the method on three different instrument tones cello, trumpet and violin, which indicates that the new method significantly improves the perceived quality of the matches over harmonic wavetable matching.