This is an arangement for the SM Viola of Olivier Messiaen's "Vocalise". The viola part was performed with the Akai Electronic Wind Instrument. I've taken some liberties with the piece in order to show off the range of timbres possible with the physically modelled instrument.
Comments
Giorgio
Perhaps you can answer a question - is there a way to configure the portamento to a "constant time" mode rather than the current "constant speed" mode? (I'm using the terminology from the Yamaha VL1 where both modes are available.) For me the constant speed mode has a couple of drawbacks:
1) when editing the recorded data in a sequencer track, the portamento amount must be tweaked for every interval where it is applied, even a semitone vs. a whole tone.
2) related to the first issue, 'constant speed" makes it impossible to have a preset portamento setting on the EWI that works for a variety of intervals.
It was my experience with the VL1 that the "constant time" mode alleviates these problems.
I've experimented with the portamento controls on the option page, "Speed and Threshold" and " Split Ratio" but they didn't seem to configure the behaviour the way I wanted. Or maybe I didn't understand them correctly.
Despite this little problem, thanks for a wonderfully playable instrument!
Bruno Degazio
We believe that neither a 'constant speed' nor a 'constant time' mode would be suitable for mimicking the portamento pattern of the real instrument.
Before releasing all our instruments, whether Kontakt or SWAM-based, we did a thorough search on legato/portamento as recorded with the real instrument in the anechoic chamber. What we found, as a general rule, is that the duration of portamento is nonlinearly related to the played interval. This behavior cannot be reproduced by the 'constant time', yielding the same portamento duration for a given velocity independently of the interval, nor by the 'constant speed' approach, yielding very fast or very slow portamenti on small and large intervals, respectively.
The compromise we adopted was therefore a mixed-mode approach, where the portamento duration is linked both to the interval and to the velocity of the overlapped note (or CC5 value) by a suitable function.
This approach turned out to be the most rewarding, since the duration of portamento tends to follow the general rule, but is ultimately in player's hands. For best results using a windcontroller, CC5 should ideally be under player's control as well, using for example the instrument's plate or an expression pedal.
Best,
Giorgio
Seems to me that the latter string ensembles played with the Vienna Strings sound absolutely wonderful and quite a bit better than the Berlin Strings.
Your sense of humor is also very much appreciated (e.g.bubbly clarinets etc.)
Thanks for sharing your stuff,
Dan