Quote:

MIDI samples with fixed ADSR.

How ya gonna do slurs, hammerons or pulloffs with that?

Not to mention the virtual myriad of other more subtle things that an accomplished player of any instrument can do? That includes Percussion instruments. Three, four or even six Velocity Layers can't cut it, although more is better for helping create illusions. (...)



The best synth I have found for that is the Yamaha VL70-m. It does hammerons, pulloffs on the guitar patch, on the sax patch the tone changes with the pitch bend, it does flutter tongue and throat growl, it does lip slurs on the brass instruments, and many other nuances that acoustic and acoustic-electric instrumentalists do. It uses physical modeling synthesis and doesn't have the ADSR envelope that most synths have. Instead it has computer models of reeds, plucked strings, bowed strings, cup mouthpieces, various tubes and boxes, and various dampers like bridges and bells. It uses the MIDI velocity and various continuous controllers to recreate what I think is the best representation of an acoustic or acoustic-electric instrument. I have a couple of clips at http://www.nortonmusic.com/clips.html

The only problem is that it only plays one note at a time (I have two modules).

But I agree the average synth can not do all these things. Some have a legato mode and that will do hammerons, pulloffs, and wind instrument slurs, and some of the other nuances can be coaxed with intelligent use of the continuous controllers, but they still fall short a bit. On the other hand, IMHO their editability more than makes up for any shortcomings in their expressive capabilities, especially for background parts.

I tend to use my array of MIDI modules for the background parts and save the VL70-m modules for the melody parts.

I feel I can get a much better music by editing the MIDI parts than I can by using RTs. However, if I wasn't going to do any editing, perhaps I'd settle for the RTs.

But as I said before, it is good that PG has both, that way each of us can make music in our own way, the way that is best for each of us as an individual.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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