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Doctor in Musical Acoustics ircam/ STMS/ Instrumental Acoustics Team/
6, place de la mairie
78117 Châteaufort
00 33 (0)1 39 56 83 61
joel.bensoam@ircam.fr
I am currently a researcher at ircam, part of the Instrumental Acoustics Team. My fields are the physics of musical instruments, especially sound synthesis by physical modeling. These models are used in Modalys, the sound synthesis software developed by our team, in order to build virtual instruments and obtain the broadest range of expressive variations in response to intuitive controls in real time. An instrument, as a complex structure, is described by the mechanical/ acoustical interactions of its components (strings, tubes, soundboard, 3D FEM objects...).
My initial research involved the investigation of numerical sound synthesis using Finite and Boundary Element Methods. More recently, I have been applying Geometric Mechanics to acoustics. Thanks to the use of differential geometry and Lie group theory, the non linear effects due to large displacements in an acoustical system can be handled. I regularly work on industrial projects as an application of my research, and collaborate with various composers at ircam: Luis Naon, Mauro Lanza, Hans Peter Stubbe ...
My education is in both physics and in music. I completed a masters in Physics at the University of Paris-Sud 11 and a PhD at the Acoustics Laboratory of the Université du Maine (LAUM), and studied the composition of classical music with Gérard Anfosso(*). As a jazz musician, I managed a jazz big band of 13 musicians(**), conducting many of my own compositions. In 1997, I was awarded an international prize in composition, and my piece was played by the "Orchestre National de Jazz," conducted by Laurent Cugny.
Note
(*) Gérard
Anfosso Composer of film music for directors such as Tachella, Ronet,
Chabrol, Bunuel...
(**) Big Band Treize à la douzaine, CD JazzA97002 C'est le printemps