Newbie question - Presets, matrices, patches

[Newbis]

In the Vienna Instruments booklet on page 20, there's a technical explanation of presets, matrices, and patches.

I'm wondering though if someone could help me make a little more sense of how to use these. What I get is that if I select a Preset, it uses a lot more memory than a matrix because it's loading all the instruments for that preset into memory. And then if I click on Matrix Assign, I can see all the Matrices for that preset and assign them to my channels.

But since I could just as easily assign each of those instruments into the separate channels without going to the Preset first, and I still have to click on each of those instruments that the Preset loaded to assign to the channels, what good does the Preset do for me? Are there settings that come with the presets that aren't there when I just select the instruments from the Matrix view directly without going to the Preset first? Or is it just a matter of having the instruments load all at once instead of having to wait for each mouse click while loading instruments?

Talking about clicks....Suppose I like to start in the Matrix view. Is there a way to get it to default to that when I go into Vienna Ensemble?

As to patches, what I see patches as is a way to fix problems with articulations missing in a matrix. For example, if I select guitar, it only plays short notes, so I have to go to the patch and double click on the sustained notes, and then the guitar is sustained. Is that basically what the patches are for?

Thanks,
-Jonathan

[andyjh]

 To keep to a quick answer, a Patch is a single articulation of a sound, like Staccato or Portato, to switch these Patches you set up a matrix of multiple Patches that can be changed with controllers, such as the mod wheel, this is saved as a Matrix (a matrix of Patches). Matrices can be grouped and also switched (typically key switches), and this combination is saved as a Preset.

Presets can be large as they contain so many sounds, most you probably don't need, but good for finding the articulations that you may need. It may be better to start with an empty matrix and build your sound up loading Patches that you need. (You have to use at least a 1x1 matrix, as Patches can only be played through a matrix). The Patches are your building block, they are the individual sounds. Once you have created Matrices from your Patches, it is best to save this as a preset, as this contains all the parameter data as well as the matrices used, but the supplied Presets are not likely to be very economical on RAM useage.

As for the guitar, if you load the "L1 CG Articulation Combi" Preset, that should be OK (you might want to select keyswitch D7 for poly playing), If you are loading the Matrix "L1 CG Articulation Combi", then that starts with the Staccato sound, use keyswicth C#1 to change to the sustained sound (click on the on screen keyboard if you don't have an 88 note keyboard, as it will off the range on a 61 or 76 note keyboard).

It wasn't exactly a quick answer was it really...

[Newbis]

Thanks, that gives me a better idea. So if I understand then, the things that I see under matrices are already set up from existing patches, and I can create new matrices by selecting more or fewer patches than the existing matrices, and then I can create presets from matrices.

[Paul]

Hi Newbis,

Please check out our Video Tutorials for Vienna Instruments, that should get you started quickly!

Best,

Paul