A falling (“declarative”) nuclear pitch accent has a simple shape: an upward pitch obtrusion on the accented syllable, a fairly abrupt fall to near the bottom of the speaker's range, and a more gradual fall to the end. The synthesis algorithm in Anderson, Pierrehumbert, and Liberman (1983) decomposes this pattern into aH* pitch accent followed by anLphrase accent and anLboundary tone. It devotes four parameters to the realization of theH* accent (amount of rise, targetF0 height, target duration, target time) and two parameters to theLphrase accent (targetF0, target time). The parameters depend in part on properties of the accented syllable (e.g., prominence) and in part on characteristics of larger phrases (e.g., pitch range). The resulting time/F0 pairs are subject to interpolation and smoothing. This paper improves on the naturalness of the algorithm by incorporating findings from a recent study by Steele. In particular, the principles that determine the timing, magnitude, and alignment of theH*F0 rise and of theH* toLF0 fall have been improved.