i think you have just hit on the main problem of synthesis.  i often use
a three tiered approach to get the sound i want.

1) use my vastly limited knowledge of sound synthesis techniques and
tinker around with some things that might have some particular quality i
am looking for.

2) listen to other sources.  the other day i heard a bell like sound in
a video game i was playing.  i took the recording, filtered out all the
nonessential junk with cool edit pro, and analized the spectrum,
envelope, etc. and reconstructed the sound in csound, so well in fact
that i can barely tell the difference.  of course, if i had given it 5
minutes thought, i could have done it from scratch, but it is so fun to
tinker with analysis.

3) take my minidisc recorder and find someone who plays an instrument
with a similar sound to what i am thinking of.  then i tinker with that
sound and usually screw it all up to create my new sound.

basically i just use a little intuition and creative thinking to achieve
my sounds.  of course, many great sounds i have discovered by accident.
i have come to realize that the art of sound synthesis is 50%
ineptitude.

pete



Qian Chen wrote:

> Hi, there
>
> If this is off topic, please let me know.
>
> Since I first got intersted in csound and dsp, I have always been
> wondering whether there are some methods when I want to generate a
> specific sound?  As a programmer, I know that there are a lot of
> algorithms to realize some result I expect.  But as for sound
> generation, I have learned AM, FM, waveshaping... but have no idea
> about what to do when I really think out of a sound.  What I have to
> do is just trying again and again.  Sometimes I got what I want, but
> it is very seldom for me.  Could someone tell me what to do?
>
> Regards
>
> ==
> Qian Chen
>
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