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Hello everyone and welcome to issue number 22 of Ketron News
and Tips (KNAT).
This issue is targeted for May 15, 2003.
If you have a question to ask or a tip to submit, please
let me know at jay@ketronus.com. Also I love your comments
so don't hesitate to let me have a response.
If you are on this mail list by mistake or wish to unsubscribe,
follow the removal directions at the bottom. Also if your
name or email address is weird and you would like to continue
to receive this newsletter, drop me a reply and let me know.
Making your User Voices More expressive
There are a couple of very useful edits you can do to create
more expressive instruments. When editing your User Voices
(F7) after you have pretty much gotten the sound you are looking
for (see KNAT #8) you can really fine tune it with F10 LFO/VELOCITY.
This is an area of expression that can really become handy.
Lets take a Sax sound for fun. Or if you prefer, use a flute
or even a piano. Once you start to get the idea, you can apply
it to many instruments.
Go to User and choose a voice you would like to play with.
Even if you don't want to change the voice, you can do these
things and then do not save your changes. If you like what
you accomplished save your changes. You will need an instrument
sound to see what these settings do.
XD and SD and Vega users remember to go to the split screen
after choosing the voice and before pressing F7 Edit Voice.
On some keyboards pressing the same voice twice in close succession
will bring up the Edit Voice function.
OK now you are in the Edit Voice function. All we are going
to play with this time are the functions in the F10 panel.
I will refer mostly to the selections that are common to all
the products. For instance SD1 has a MONO setting that is
either off or on. In the On position it causes the keyboard
to only play one note at a time. This is a feature that was
frequently found on the old analog synths.
Then you come to the LFO settings. LFO stands for Low Frequency
Oscillator and what it does is various types of vibrato or
tremolo.
LFO 1 Controls pitch.
The first control is Rate. That is how fast the vibrato is
in cycles per second although the numbers you are using do
not correspond to the actual number of cycles (or pulses)
per second. The default setting is 64 and that is a median
setting.
The next control is Dco Depth. This setting controls the degree
of pitch variation in each pulse.
The third control is Delay and that is the one control that
appears to be global for this section. It controls how long
before the vibrato will start. This is very useful in real
usage because if you set the delay for a half of a second
or maybe a bit more, you can play rapid passages with no vibrato
and have it drift into a note if you hold it for a bit. This
is actually the technique that most musicians use for expression.
So now you can set the speed and depth of the Vibrato as well
as have it wait on you.
The next section is LFO 2 and it controls the amplitude in
one control and frequency in another.
The first control under LFO 2 is rate (speed) and this one
slot covers the rate for both the next two. It is interesting
that the rate for LFO 2 is independent of the rate for LFO
1.
The next slot is Dcf which is frequency response. The highs
go away and then come back in response to the rate set and
the depth in this slot. If you really want to hear what the
effect is doing, make the depth great and the rate very slow
and you will hear what amounts to a "filter sweep"
sound. This is the type of sound that you hear from a harmonica
player who is cupping his hands about the instrument and opening
and closing one hand.
The next slot is Dca which is amplitude or volume. It is just
like pumping a volume pedal, except you can get degrees of
subtlety not available to most feet.
By using these in various combinations, you can achieve very
realistic and musical effects. Play with them and see what
you get.
The next two slots have to do with velocity. Velocity is the
speed with which you strike a key. It feels like how hard
you are hitting, but the keyboard reads it as how fast the
key is depressed.
Velocity Slope sets the range of velocity that the instrument
may have. If you go all the way to 0 you will have no sound.
Move the setting up to 10 and if you strike softly enough
you will have no sound and if you strike as quickly as you
can you will have a little. Run the setting all the way up
to 127 and very softly will be the same, but a very quick
strike will be very loud. 64 is the default setting.
Velocity Filter does a similar thing with frequency response.
64 is again the default setting and if you play a note softly
it will sound somewhat mellow or dull. If you strike quickly
the note will sound brighter. If you move the setting higher
like to 100 or 127 the difference will be greater between
soft and loud. The louder note will be much brighter. If you
move the setting down, the sound will be mellow no matter
how hard you strike the key.
Getting these two settings right is a great way to make an
instrument into an expressive solo instrument.Have fun and
let me know what you come up with.
One day many years ago, I set the prairie on fire.
That statement, of course, needs a bit of amplification. When
I was a rather young child we lived in a house next to a vacant
lot. Actually as I try to remember, it was probably a double
lot because there was a lot of space to the next house. We
called it our prairie.
My uncle was a volunteer fireman with a community fire department
and he told fascinating tales of beating out prairie fires
with wet burlap bags, brooms and digging fire-breaks with
shovels. He told of setting back fires that could be controlled
to create an area that an uncontrolled fire could not cross.
Of course in my mind my uncle, who was my mother's brother,
was a great hero because he knew all that wonderful stuff.
So in order to be like my hero uncle and fight a fire successfully,
I needed a fire. So I set the prairie on fire. The prairie
was weedy and dry since this was summer in Texas and the prairie
was never mowed or tended that I can remember and it does
not take an flash of genius to figure out what came next.
In what was a remarkably short time, the prairie fire was
out of control and there was panic in my 4 year old chest.
I was frantically trying to fight the ever increasing fire
and smoke was pouring and flames were crackling and I knew
it was up to me and only me to stop what I had started. I
knew a sense of responsibility, even then, that has never
quite gone away.
After what seemed like hours of ever increasing despair, a
fire truck came roaring up and in a few moments some real
firemen, not volunteers, had doused the blaze with water from
their pumper truck.
It was not until many years later that I found out that my
mother had watched the entire episode from the kitchen window
and had stood by while I learned my lesson.
When I think back on that, it seems to me that that is one
of the greatest gifts she ever gave me. The chance to fail.
Every Mother's Day like the one that just passed, I stop and
remember how my mother loved me enough that she would give
me that right. I treasure her memory.
If you love someone enough, give the gift of a chance to succeed
on their own -- or fail.