Aeolian Harp Drone

How it's made

Source

crosswind locks into transverse modes of three nearly unison strings; sine banks model coherent string vibration, with filtered pink turbulence below the sustained tones.

Body

fundamentals 82-196 Hz support partials 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10; the fundamental is suppressed. Small fixed tuning offsets and independent 0.07-0.23 Hz wander give slow, non-periodic beating.

Excitation

shared 5-30 s gusts move the preferred harmonic; overlapping smooth mode envelopes transfer energy between partials instead of sliding the whole harmonic ladder like a siren.

Envelope

each string smooths excitation over 0.8-1.5 s; a 1.8 s entrance and 2.5 s release frame the requested duration. Upper modes weaken with string damping; no impacts or plucked attacks.

Layers

a quiet stereo air bed moves between 450 and 3200 Hz with wind; a weak 190/430 Hz noise resonance suggests a wooden soundboard. A 65 Hz high-pass and 6 kHz low-pass remove rumble and fizz.

Variation

seeded tuning, phases, local wind and tension drift are independent for each string. Register, upper-mode bias, wind, air and drift distinguish low valley, high silk, still and gale presets.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.