Timpani Roll Crescendo

How it's made

Source

a pair of felt mallets alternating on a tuned kettledrum head. Each stroke is a 3–8 ms low-passed noise burst (soft felt ≈ 1.5 kHz, hard felt ≈ 5 kHz) plus a short band-passed "tap" of the felt on the skin.

Body

the stretched membrane rings in near-harmonic modes, ≈ 0.5 : 0.75 : 1 : 1.22 : 1.45 × the nominal pitch (the 3:4:5 group gives the clear pitch, the weak 0.5 mode is the deep thump). Decays run from 0.9 s (lowest) to 0.25 s (highest); the head stretches right after the strike, so a sine at the lowest mode glides down ≈ 7 % over 70 ms.

Envelope

the roll is ≈ 14–24 strokes per second, accelerating slightly; neighbouring strokes overlap because each rings 0.4–0.6 s, which fuses them into a continuous swell. Stroke strength rises along a convex curve (pp → f); the final accent is a full-strength single stroke that rings for ≈ 1 s.

Variation

`rng` jitters every stroke's timing (±12 %), strength (±12 %), mode tuning (±0.6 %) and pan (left/right hand alternation). Presets change pitch, roll length, mallet hardness and ring.

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