Hi Mario,
I had a look at the series on MIDI you recommended and found it useful for reinforcing my general understanding and clarifying some (previously vague) ideas I had on the topic.
No breakthroughs in how I might improve my handling of MIDI for now, but a quick look at the amount of related material on youtube, let alone the rest of the web, is a forceful reminder that it's all out there, just waiting for me to search it out and do the required study.
Interesting thing about velocity layers though,(at least I think that was what I was messing with) - I was having a close look at a piano chord voicing generated by Biab(looking in the piano roll window, clicking on one note at a time to hear them individually), and found myself quite disliking the sound itself(not the pitch in relation to the overall chord). The tone was sort of hollow and flat, and I thought, quite different to the general piano sound I had been hearing from my newly-aquired Forte-Dxi.
I wondered "Is this anything to do with velocity?" - it was low, somewhere around 40 to 50 I think, and so I auditioned that same note at various velocities from 127 down to very low (always adjusting my main output volume accordingly so as to be listening to the note at the same, or close to same volume), and I reckon I discerned 3 different "regions" of timbre - high velocity had a bright sound with a definite, strong attack, medium velocity had a warmer sound with a not-so-strong attack, and the low velocity was just unpleasant to my ears.
Clearly now I have to play a lot with different instruments in my synth to further explore these tambral (is that how one spells it?) variations, as it will have obvious consequences for the sound of the rhythm-section accompaniments I make (my main use for Biab & RB).
Nice to have a name (velocity layering, if that's indeed what I'm hearing) to go with the sound-perception.
Thanks again for the always useful and interesting posts.
Clinton.
OK,now it's a few hours later (than this original post and the evening following the above-mentioned Forte "piano experiment").
I've been trying out the same thing with a variety of other Forte sounds and have been sadly disappointed. "Bright piano" works the same, as one might expect, but nothing else I came across except a very subtle effect on the Nylon guitar - so subtle I'm wondering if I imagined it. Nothing on the basses (I tried acoustic and fretless), not the Rhodes, not other guitars (Jazz and I can't remember which other).
I seem now to remember something about "optimized for piano" somewhere in the Forte blurb - maybe I'm finding out the hard way what they mean.
Do not mistake this for a whinge about my synth - I think it's fine for about $40 - I'm demoing it at the moment and I reckon I'll pay up and keep it, and in the meanwhile I'll live and learn - in this instance, laboriously.
Clinton.

Last edited by clinton; 02/25/15 02:49 AM.