mark williamson wrote:
 
> The second question is more specific does any one have
> any physical modeling info on ukelalea's - ie string tunings
> and body resonance info... (bit of a long  shot this one...)

You could probably adapt much of the physical modelling work for
classical guitar to model a ukelele.  CCRMA is where most of the
physical modelling work started - check http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu. I
know that there has also been some work done in Finland (can't remember
any names at the moment) on guitar modelling, using commuted physical
modelling.  Basically, the impulse response of the body, as excited by a
plucking motion, is sampled, and this sampled impulse is used as the
excitation input to the waveguide.  The result is identical to sending
the output of a waveguide through body resonators, but is much less
computationally intensive.  

You could probably start by using four pluck generators, one for each
string of the ukelele. Have the strings "plucked" at slightly different
times for a chord, a few milliseconds apart, to get a proper strumming
sound (Common Lisp would be a great environment to work with for
generating the note lists for this type of thing).  Run the output of
all of the pluck instruments into a few resonators (reson), to simulate
the body resonances.  A good musical instrument physics textbook, like
Fletcher and Rossing's "The Physics of Musical Instruments," might have
a listing of ukelele body resonances; otherwise, just start with a
listing of guitar resonances, and scale them up.

Having said that...why the hell would you want to use state of the art
computer technology to simulate a freaking UKELELE?!?! :)

I guess it is just my own bias.  I like using the computer to simulate
"real-world" instruments like bowed instruments and choral voices.
However, as a guitarist, the Karplus-Strong stuff doesn't do that much
for me.  If I wanted that sound, I'd just pick up a guitar.  I'm sure
that pianists, trombonists, etc. might get really excited about the
Karplus-Strong stuff.