Speculative physical modelling synthesis: Personal reflections on making music with the NESS brass and guitar models

This paper presents personal reflections of making music with physical modelling synthesis in line with the Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium call to explore “a situated oscillation between experience and imagination, bringing forth new forms of knowledge and opening up to new kinds of aesthetic thinking.” Physical models are considered here as texts entangled with histories of the modelled acoustic instruments, histories of computer music, and potentially their own histories as sound synthesis processes. This is explored in relation to physical models in general, particularly the well-established Karplus-Strong model, and my own work with the more recent Next Generation Sound Synthesis Brass and Guitar physical models.