Hi guys,
I've been making some MPE patches with the Linnstrument and am struggling to control volume of the patch using Pressure/Aftertouch (henceforth referred to as Pressure), for dynamic swells/releases etc.
The only way that jumped out at me to achieve this was to modulate Gate Level using Pressure. The problem seems to be that the Linnstrument doesn't necessarily send a Pressure -> 0 message when you release a note, meaning Aalto keeps the Pressure signal high.
Therefore, with Pressure routed directly to Gate level, the gate stays open, even after you've released the note.
Has anyone come up with a way to do this naturally with the existing architecture? If not, I think there are two solutions:
Allow for realtime modulation of Envelope 1 Sustain level while a note is held (i.e. not just at note on), so that we can modulate Sustain level with Pressure instead of Gate level. This is probably preferable as the Release phase will still be triggered on note off.
A setting that forces the Pressure signal to 0 every time a note is released (feels like a bit of a hack and no control over a Release phase)
Cheers
imho, sounds like a bug in the linnstrument firmware to me...
surely by definition, the pressure on a pad when you have released it is zero ... how can you be exerting pressure on a pad, if your not touching it ;)
(unlike pitch/timbre which could be still non-zero when you release, because you don't have to release the pad in the 'centre')
with MPE both the soundplane and and eigenharp has zero pressure on touch release.
(and i use this a lot on many synths)
from memory, when I last looked, this is not detailed in the mpe spec, so its probably valid to say pressure is only sent when the sensor reports it i.e. don't force to zero... but the spec has quite a few holes like this.... I think its one of those cases where its generally useful, and of course its not going to add much to the data content.
there is only one exception to this...the mpe spec allows for (but few implement) reuse channels when touches > max touches e.g. say there are 16 touches (max is 15 midi channels in mpe) , then channel 2 can actually have 2 active touches which 'share' pb/y/z so in the case you would have to take care and only send zero when no active touches... but it would still work for synths. BUT as I said, this is not really used, because 15 touches is normal enough, and you loose individual note control, which is whole point of these controllers.
(I suspect its in there for when you use splits, so reduce the touch count, but even so its of limited use)
I think that realtime modulation of ENV1 would be a good addition to Aalto etc. It really should have worked that way from the beginning. I'll have to check to make sure it's not breaking any other uses though.
Meanwhile you could ask the Linnstrument team to add a zero upon release, like Soundplane does. They seem to update the firmware pretty often.
Thanks both for the responses!
Just updated to the latest firmware and now it seems that note off does indeed = pressure to zero, so maybe I just had a bugged beta version! (I was sure I recalled it working better with Aalto in the past...)
Realtime modulation of ENV1 would still be rad (and not just for MPE related patches), but yes - please ignore the above - patches now playing fine.