Pen2Bow and Bipolarity
Dear Friends, I've been dabbling with Audiomodeling's solo strings and have noticed built-in support for the Pen2Bow iPad based bow controller which works really well. I like the sound quality of the SM Strings better as well as the "out of the box" ensembles. Is there a plan to add that sort of bipolar (up and down bow) control support?
Comments
For such a controller, the instrument needs to feature a "bowed" mode. I.e. a CC- (better high resolution CC) controller that defines the bow position and not the bow speed.
I don't suppose such is provided by the SM Strings. Maybe it's not even possible with a sample based instrument.
-Michael
Hi everyone, I am the developer of Pen2Bow. I was in contact with Sample Modeling during the time of the development of the SM Strings and asked them if there would be a possibility to implement a bipolar bowing option. While not a priority at that time, maybe if more people ask for it, they might reconsider thinking about such an option.
If I may add to the "bowed" model option suggested above: I came to the conclusion that it is not a good idea to report the absolute position of the bow via MIDI. Doing so comes with a battery of problems that can be avoided altogether: In absolute mode, MIDI editing becomes a nightmare because loudness of the instrument is determined by the slope of the MIDI bow signal. In order to make a passage louder, you would need to stretch the MIDI controller signal, rather than to just shift it upwards. Next, recording the absolute position would also render infinity bow controllers (like Pen2Bow, see intro video on youtube) impossible, because at one point the midi signal would reach its end. Thirdly, recording the absolute position of the bow would require much more than 128 levels of precision. While the next generation of MIDI solves that particular issue, changing to a bipolar controller solves all the issues above without (as far as i can see) introducing any notable disadvantage. If a developer of string libraries wishes to support a bowing MIDI device (like e.g. Pen2Bow), I would argue that the bipolar mode is right way to go.