Controller assign problem: Velocity vs. Modwheel-crossfade

[Felix Bartelt]

How would you guys solve this problem:

I´d like to be able to:

a) Crossfade between different velocity-levels while holding a note

(At the moment I´m doing this with the modwheel, which works fine)

and:

b) play a chord, in which the single notes can have different volume levels.

Since I´m allready using the modwheel for switching between pp-p-mf-ff, the note-on-velocity has no effect. This means that all notes of a chord play at the same level.

What can I do to change this without loosing the oportunity to be able to blend fluently between different volumes while holding a chord?

[DG]

@Felix Bartelt said:

How would you guys solve this problem:

I´d like to be able to:

a) Crossfade between different velocity-levels while holding a note

(At the moment I´m doing this with the modwheel, which works fine)

and:

b) play a chord, in which the single notes can have different volume levels.

Since I´m allready using the modwheel for switching between pp-p-mf-ff, the note-on-velocity has no effect. This means that all notes of a chord play at the same level.

What can I do to change this without loosing the oportunity to be able to blend fluently between different volumes while holding a chord?

You can't have it both ways. Either you use a xfade patch or you use note velocities I'm afraid. There are various ways of dealing with this, but none of them solve your problem.

DG

[sgentry]

Felix, I have a solution if you are sequencing (not for real-time input) and your sequencer can run MFX plugins (i.e. Sonar, etc.).

I wrote a Midi plug to solve this and a few other problems. I wanted to assign a controller to xfade during sustains, and also use note velocity for faster passages. The plug looks at note velocity, and if > 1 then that note velocity is sent to VI on the designated vel xfade controller. Otherwise, the continuous controller value is sent. This has worked great to be able to use both velocity techniques on the same instrument.

The plug also does cell switching based on note channel data, that is, channels 1 - 16 are mapped to 16 VI articulation cells on-the-fly. This has been a huge time saver for me. Thanks to Jerome for the idea several months back.

The third thing the plug does is do A/B switching. I wanted to control the legato/portamento articulations with a note channel change. Currently, VI doesn't do this since they are combined into a single articulation. So, the plug can be mapped to send an A/B change on a designated controller when ever the note channel matches certain values. For example, I set the strings to always play legato (A) on channel 6 and portamento (B) on channel 7. This can be used for any of the A/B articulations (cresc./decresc., etc.). This was not only a time saver but made it possible to change between legato and portamento without adding another controller to the track.

If you have an MFX compatible sequencer and think this plug might help you, I'd be happy to share it.

Steven

[dbudde]

sgentry,

Would you be willing to share the source code for this plugin? Might be useful to add this as a Sibelius plugin now that it has VST/AU support.

[Felix Bartelt]

Hi sgentry,

thanks for the tipp. I´m not quite sure, if this is a solution for me, cause I need to play a chord of this type for example:

c,e,g. The g should be louder than the c and e, but all of them are inceasing their volume fluently. Like a dynämic crescendo-chord with one note playing louder.

@ DG:

Maybe I´m looking for something wrong, talking about velocity-layers. Cause using EXS24 instead of Vienna Instruments, everything works fine:

When I play a chord (e.g. HO-4L_nA_sus_p-mf-f_3Lay) with logics EXS24 I can set the "via velocity volume level" to e.g. - 20 db and have different volume controllers, so I can still create a crescendo with the Modwheel, while having the opportunity to give single notes of a chord a lower volume.

I´m wondering, why I have this opportunity with EXS but not with Vienna Instruments.

[DG]

@Felix Bartelt said:

Maybe I´m looking for something wrong, talking about velocity-layers. Cause using EXS24 instead of Vienna Instruments, everything works fine:

When I play a chord (e.g. HO-4L_nA_sus_p-mf-f_3Lay) with logics EXS24 I can set the "via velocity volume level" to e.g. - 20 db and have different volume controllers, so I can still create a crescendo with the Modwheel, while having the opportunity to give single notes of a chord a lower volume.

I´m wondering, why I have this opportunity with EXS but not with Vienna Instruments.

You'll have to ask this question of VSL. It is not a concern for me, as I would tend to use different instances for this.

DG

[sgentry]

dbudde,

I'd be happy to share the source and/or binaries. However, this is an MFX plug and deals with MIDI events. Do you think it will work with Sibelius and VST/AU?

Anyway, I used Sonar's MFX SDK, which requires Visual Studio 6.0 to compile. I didn't have VS 6.0, but did have VS 5.0 and got it to compile in that environment. I'd be happy to share the source, especially if someone wants to port to .NET or C++ Express and share that source. Looks like Sonar is no longer supporting the SDK with modern environments. Too bad because it is a great way to add productivity tools to the sequencer.

Steven

[dbudde]

I was thinking it might be useful as a Sibelius plugin (their manuscript plugin, not the VST/AU one). These can read notation and text directives and create midi commands which can then be put back into the score.