Feature Modulation Synthesis (FMS)

This paper introduces FMS (Feature Modulation Synthesis), a synthesis-by-analysis sound synthesis system. Unlike many of the traditional synthesis methods such as AM, FM, additive/subtractive synthesis, waveshaping, wavetable, and physical modeling which results in sound generation via sonic parameters that in essence were developed in mimicking or modeling existing target acoustic instruments, FMS takes the approach of extracting salient timbral features directly from a sound object where the end goal is the resynthesis of an altered sound object reflecting the modulated timbral features. The FMS system comprises of analysis of a sound object and salient feature extraction; modulation of single or multiple features; and synthesizing the new sound object via the modulated features. The essential idea behind FMS is thus synthesizing a sound object by modulating and affecting only the desired timbral dimensions while ideally leaving all other timbral aspects intact giving very fine control over specific sonic attributes.