Program acoustic instruments in Sculpture in MainStage

The tasks outlined in this section provide programming guidelines, tips, tricks, and information to assist you in creating particular types of acoustic instrument sounds in Sculpture.

Create a bell sound in Sculpture

At a basic level, bell-like sounds are quite easy to produce with Sculpture. The creation of truly interesting bells involves a little more effort, but the harmonic richness and detuning during the decay/release phase makes all the difference.

In MainStage, load the #default (or your vanilla) setting file.
Choose Strike from the Object 1 Type pop-up menu.
Drag the Material Pad ball to the very bottom of the pad, and place it halfway between Steel and Glass. Play a few notes, and notice that the sound is already more bell-like.
Drag the Media Loss slider nearly all the way down. Again play a few notes, and you’ll hear that the release phase of the sound is considerably longer.
Drag the Resolution slider all the way to the right.
Drag the Pickup A slider to about halfway (0.48).
Drag Object 1 pickup position to a value of 0.10. You should be starting to get pretty bells now … play a few notes.
To activate the Delay unit, click the Delay button in the upper-right section.
Click the Sync button at the bottom of the Delay section, and drag the Delay Time slider to a value of 20 ms.
Adjust the Wet Level knob to 66%.
Click the Body EQ button in the lower right to activate it. Make sure that Lo Mid Hi is chosen from the Model pop-up menu.
Adjust the Low knob to 0.55, the Mid knob to 0.32, and the Hi knob to 0.20.
At this point, you have a working bell sound, but you’ll probably find that there is a tuning issue below C3 in particular. This programming approach was taken because the harmonics of the sound are most noticeable after all other parameters have been set. The solution to the tuning issue primarily lies in the Inner Loss and Stiffness Keyscale parameters.
To adjust, first select the Keyscale button, then drag the green horizontal line within the Material Pad up or down for low notes, or drag the blue horizontal line up or down for high notes.
Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu, save your settings with a new name, and use it as the basis for new bell sounds, or for your next Christmas album.

Create a generic brass sound in Sculpture

Brass instruments are notoriously difficult to recreate with electronic instruments. Samplers do a reasonable job in the right hands, and with the right sample library, but they lack the organic warmth of a real brass player. This is a simple and generic brass setting that can be played as a solo instrument or as a brass section.

In MainStage, load the #default (or your vanilla) setting file.
Set Object 1 type to Blow.
Activate Object 2, and set its type to Noise.
Adjust the Strength of Object 1 to around 0.90.
Set Object 1 VeloSens to around 0.30.
Drag the Material Pad ball to a position that is diagonally between the “I” of Inner Loss, and the “l” of the word Steel, while playing middle C. The sound should be quite brassy.
Play the E above middle C and you’ll hear a weird “mandolin meets a telephone ring” kind of sound.
Drag the Resolution slider to the left or right while playing middle C and a few notes down an octave or so. You’ll discover that a range of sounds that cover everything from sitars to flutes is possible, just through manipulation of this parameter.
Click the Keyscale button and—while playing up and down the keyboard—independently adjust the Resolution slider, plus the Resolution Low and High Keyscale sliders until the range of the keyboard you wish to play (an octave or so around middle C, for example) doesn’t suffer from those mandolin/phone artifacts. Make sure your sound retains the “brassy” quality.
Move Pickup A position to around 77%.
Turn on the Waveshaper and select Scream as your preferred type. Adjust the Input Scale and Variation parameters to taste.
Turn on the Filter. Select HiPass mode, and adjust the Cutoff, Resonance, and other filter parameters to taste. (As a suggestion, set Cutoff at 0.30 and Resonance at 0.41).
Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu and save the setting with a new name.

There are countless directions this sound could be taken in—as a muted trumpet, French horns, and even sitars or flutes.

Make further changes to your brass sound in Sculpture

In MainStage, do any of the following:

Use the Waveshaper to radically alter your sound.
Use the Delay to emulate a space for your instrument.
Use the Body EQ to cut the lows and boost the Mids and His.
Drag the Material Pad ball toward the Nylon corner to see how this affects the nature of the sound.
Choose Blow as the Object 2 type, then experiment with the Object 1 and 2 positions. This can also result in different brass sounds.

Create flute-like sounds in Sculpture

Use this approach as the basis for instruments in the wind family, including flutes, clarinets, shakuhachis, pan pipes, and so on.

In MainStage, load the #default (or your vanilla) setting file.
Make sure Keyboard Mode is set to mono, as flutes and other wind instruments are monophonic. After you’ve created the setting, feel free to experiment with this parameter while playing, and make your choice.
Set Object 1 type to Blow.
Set Object 2 type to Noise.
Set the Gate of both objects to Always.
Adjust Object 2 Strength to a value of around 0.25.
Adjust the Object 1 Velosens parameter to a value around 0.33.
Move the Material Pad ball to a position between the end of the Inner Loss text and below the Nylon text.
Play the keyboard and you should hear a flute-like sound, but with a long release—which obviously isn’t ideal. Drag the Amplitude Envelope Release slider down to around 0.99 ms.
Pickup A should be set to a value of 1.00 (far right).
Set Object 1 pickup position to around 0.27.
Set Object 2 pickup position to around 0.57.
Activate the Waveshaper and select the “Tube-like distortion” type.
Play a few notes, and adjust the Waveshaper Input Scale and Variation parameters to taste (try Input Scale = 0.16 and Variation 0.55, for example).
As you play sustained notes, you may notice a distinct lack of interesting timbral shifts (typical of real flute sounds—due to changes in the player’s breath, lip position, and so on) as the note is held.
You can use a number of approaches to add interest to the sustained sound. These include using the vibrato modulator (assigned to aftertouch, perhaps), recording or drawing in an envelope, and controlling the Waveshaper Input Scale via Velocity and/or String Media Loss. You could even use the Loop Alternate Sustain Mode. Feel free to experiment!
Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu and save the setting with a new name.

Create an organ sound in Sculpture

Organ sounds are among the easiest and quickest sounds to emulate in Sculpture, because they have no release phase. This simplifies things in that you don’t need to set Keyscaling parameters for the basic tone. You may, however, do so at a later stage—for modulation routing or specific sound design purposes.

In MainStage, load the #default (or your vanilla) setting file. (Object 1 type should be set to Impulse. If it isn’t, change it now.)
Set the Voices parameter to a value of 8, or higher if you wish.
Drag the Material Pad ball to the top-left corner.
Activate Object 2 and set the type to Bow.
Set the Object 2 Gate mode to Always.
Drag the R(elease) slider of the amplitude envelope all the way down.
Play a C chord, and you’ll hear a flute-like sound.
Drag Pickup A to the far right.
Play a C chord, and you’ll hear a cheesy organ sound. As you can see, Pickup A position has a significant effect on the overall sonic character of the sound.
Drag the Object 2 pickup while holding down the C chord. When you find a position that meets your “that sounds like an organ” criteria, release the object pickup.
Very slightly adjust the Object 2 Timbre parameter upward.
Carefully adjust the Object 2 Variation parameter downward and upward until you find a tone you like.
You may at this point want to move the Object 2 pickup parameter to another position. Hold down a chord while doing so.
You can make further tweaks to the Variation and Timbre parameters of Object 2.
To introduce a little key click, change Object 1 type to Strike, and adjust the Strength and Timbre parameters.
To add a little of the detuned organ vibe, set the Warmth parameter between 0.150 and 0.200.
Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu and save the setting with a new name.
You can use this as the basis for your next organ setting.
Tip: Play notes or chords adjusting parameters, so you can hear what each parameter is doing to the sound. You probably notice some intermodulations that are introduced when you’re playing chords. Apart from the pitch differences between notes in the chord, this is a result of the interactions between each voice being produced by Sculpture. These slight variations between each voice—or string—and their harmonic interactions with each other are not dissimilar to the harmonic interactions of a violin section in an orchestra—even when playing identical lines.

Create a percussion sound in Sculpture

Percussive sounds, such as drums, tend to share a similar type of envelope. They contain a strike element, where most of the sonic character is exhibited, followed by a short decay phase. The release phase varies, depending on the instrument itself—a snare drum as opposed to a woodblock, for example—and depending on the ambient space it is placed in—a cavern, a bathroom, and so on.

In MainStage, load the #default (or your vanilla) setting file.
Set Object 1 type to Strike.
Activate Object 2, and set its type to Disturb 2-sided.
Set Object 2 Gate mode to Always.
Object 1 Strength should be about 0.84.
Object 2 Strength should be about 0.34.
Drag the Media Loss slider up and down while playing to hear its effect. Find a suitable setting.
Similarly, you can change the Material Pad ball position—although its effect on the overall tone of the sound is heavily reliant on the Media Loss value.
Activate the Body EQ and Filter, then adjust the settings to taste.
Choose Save Setting As from the Settings pop-up menu and save the setting with a new name.

Download the guides:

MainStage User Guide: PDF

MainStage Instruments: PDF

MainStage Effects: PDF

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