Player–Instrument Interaction Models for Digital Waveguide Synthesis of Guitar: Touch and Collisions

Physically inspired sound synthesis techniques have been devised for several instruments including guitar. Less well studied are methods to model the interactions of the player with strings and of the strings with other mechanical parts of the instrument. In this paper, we present methods based on simple scattering junctions to be inserted at various points along a digital waveguide simulating transversal wave propagation along a string. These junctions, which are derived using a balanced perturbation method for displacement wave variables, connect the waveguide with the external stimuli provided by the player or with objects that are part of the instrument. A model for plucking is revisited and improved. New nonlinear structures for the accurate model of collisions are developed. The proposed junctions achieve realistic synthesis of the interaction of the plucking finger or pick with the string, of the interaction of the fingers on the neck-side hand with strings, such as in the production of harmonics, and of the strings themselves with frets or fingerboard in a fretless instrument.