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Old 11-05-2018, 08:23 AM   #77
mschnell
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
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More elaborated rant:

There is no such thing like “simply doing the legato”.

Physical instruments feature multiple articulations, that are triggered by the player, who on the fly learns to handle these when learning to play the instrument. Legato is just one of those articulation options.

As an example consider a Cello or a fretless bass. Regarding the transition from on note to another (say 3 semitones higher) the player can choose to (1) slide his finger on the string (repeated: extreme vibrato), (2) tap another finger on the same string (repeated: trill), (3) start a new tone on the same string by pressing and plucking it or (4) start a new tone on another string by pressing and plucking it while the previous note continues playing. A composer even could (5) make a second Cello play that note. (1) would be called “slide” or “pitch bend”, (2) would be called “legato”.

Now we want to create the feeling evoked by these articulations while controlling the sound by a completely different tool such as a keyboard (optionally with wheels or a breath controller) or a Seaboard. To make this decently playable, predefined doable gestures on the x-board and controllers need to be translated (and simplified/automated/randomized) to viable sound variations (“articulations”) as provided by the appropriate plugin.

As an example other than legato, with my current hard keyboard I e.g. use a simple but nice Upright-Bass sound (from the NI “Factory selection” for Kontakt, that I got for free when buying their Audio 6 USB interface). Here a slap articulation is simply reproduced when the keyboard sends high velocity Note-On messages. Nice and easily playable.

Another example: for vibrato depth, on a keyboard, it feels rather natural and is easy to learn, to use aftertouch. The Seaboard allows for wiggling your finger for vibrato which is even more natural, but supposedly lass easy to learn. Now with e.g. a physical Cello, a bass, or a guitar the player does exactly this wiggling and creates a kind of pitch-bend vibrato, while with a sax a pitch-bend vibrato is possible to do with modulating the reed (lip) pressure, but the preferred “vibrato” (technically better to be called “tremolo”) is the “diaphragm vibrato”. Same would theoretically be possible by a breath controller (expression), but I seem to be unable to learn to do that. Hence I use aftertouch, which obviously lacks the control of the vibrato speed, which I now control by head tilting left/right via the TEC BBC v2 breath controller. This works nicely for Flute (Tremolo), Trumpet (“shaking”), and Cello (vibrato). Regarding the seaboard for e.g. Flute, it might be viable to use the wiggling as an expression modulation rather than a pitch bend modulation, in case “finger pressing tremolo” is harder to do.

A legato example: The SWAM Flute and Cello instruments feature multiple versions of note transitions, including “legato”. These are automatically detected from the Midi data stream and work very convincingly with a hard keyboard. They are dynamically denoted in the instrument’s GUI when playing. (I need to ask the SWAM team how exactly they do this as well with their “keyboard-” as with their “seaboard-” default settings.) With the Flute and “The Trumpet”, using my hard keyboard and Breath Controller this produces very realistic note transitions without any pitch gliding sound between them. (This indeed is what I need to reproduce with the Seaboard.) On top of that, you can set the software to do a portamento (gliding) between legato notes, with the portamento speed proportional to the velocity of the target note. This feels very natural (easy to learn) and is perfectly usable while controlling the dynamics (expression) with a breath controller.

There are wonderful videos in the Net showing elaborated usage of the Seaboard with very realistic reproductions of the feeling of many different physical instruments, which includes articulations and note transitions that seemingly are easily managed by the (obviously exceptionally talented and well trained) players (such as Marco Parisi and Jordan Rudess): Bass, solo sax, split between a bass and a set of saxes (I especially love this one: -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krlQIHD1YmE), E-Guitar, acoustic Guitar, Cello, two Celli, violin, …

I understand that there are certain settings (channel count, keyboard split, … ), that need to be prepared in the Seaboard itself to allow it to be used for any of such advanced performances.

-Michael

Last edited by mschnell; 11-05-2018 at 08:36 AM.
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