12.5 Musical examples

David A. Jaffe - Silicon Valley Breakdown (1982)

David Jaffe composed this piece at Stanford from plucked-string sounds, synthesized with the extensions to the Karplus-Strong algorithm that he developed with Julius Smith. It shows how far a simple physical model can be pushed, and it was among the first pieces to put the Karplus-Strong algorithm to musical use. This video pairs the piece with a film by George Olczak.

Don Slepian - Sonic Test Drive: Yamaha VL1 (2022)

The Yamaha VL1 (1994) was one of the first commercial synthesizers based on physical modeling, building on digital waveguide research at Stanford. In this video from the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project, musician Don Slepian takes the instrument for a test drive.