dynamics

[rtwfroody]

I'm playing in a jazz combo, using Pianotec electric piano, and I'm struggling a bit with dynamics. There's a part where horns are playing a melody, and I want to play a little riff under that, but you have to be pretty loud to be heard with the horns. At the same time, I want to be able to comp quietly for the guitar solo.

I find I don't really have enough control over the volume on the Linnstrument. I can pretty consistently hit quiet and loud, but sometimes I get it wrong and you get an awkward loud note. This usually happens when I just barely in time realize what to play, and I move my fingers quickly. So I don't want too much dynamic range set up by default because then those awkward notes get really loud.

I'm considering getting an expression pedal to control volume for my right hand.

What do you do to get consistent wide dynamics with the Linnstrument?

[FranklyFlawless]

What do you do to get consistent wide dynamics with the Linnstrument?

You can change the velocity and/or pressure sensitivity, as well as adjusting the touch sensor prescale. You can also replace the playing surface itself with thicker or thinner materials. Otherwise, practice covers the rest.

[rtwfroody]

With practice, what kind of dynamic range do you think is achievable?

[FranklyFlawless]

7 bits, so 0-127. You may need to tweak the firmware to get the lower values though.

[rtwfroody]

Maybe a better question is: How many different attack velocities can you hit reliably? On a good day I can do soft, medium, and hard on single notes. For chords I can reliably only do soft, and sometimes hard. Medium feels out of reach for them.

[FranklyFlawless]

How many different attack velocities can you hit reliably?

Velocity is not important in my performances. Most of my expressive focus is on pressure, which grants me live adjustments to dynamics as needed. As a result, the initial velocity is largely inconsequential.

[wakyct]

I'm considering getting an expression pedal to control volume for my right hand.

What do you do to get consistent wide dynamics with the Linnstrument?

Another idea could be to set up the low row cc fader to control volume? Think of it as the volume knob on a guitar.

[John the Savage]

I'm considering getting an expression pedal to control volume for my right hand.

I think this is a viable solution. Compress the dynamic range of the sound, and ride a volume or expression pedal to adjust the overall amplitude as needed. Personally, I would opt to do this with my feet. But if you're content to only use your hands, the above suggestion to use the low row CC functionality is a good idea too.

The LinnStrument responds very consistently to pressure input, but I've found its velocity sensing to be a bit unpredictable. You certainly won't get the level of control you might otherwise be accustom to with a real piano keybed, that's for sure.

Cheers!

[FranklyFlawless]

The LinnStrument is only capable of using a single or dual momentary foot switch, not an expression pedal.

[John the Savage]

No, but Pianotec can, and a volume pedal could simply be used across the audio output.

Cheers!

[Fannon]

7 bits, so 0-127. You may need to tweak the firmware to get the lower values though.

I alwaysl wondered about this. Do you know why this is so?

[FranklyFlawless]

Do you know why this is so?

MIDI 1.0 has a resolution of 7-bit values. If you were referring to tweaking the firmware though, that has to do with the various adjustments to the LinnStrument's firmware based on feedback from other LinnStrumentalists over the years, which you can review the commits over on the GitHub repository.

[Fannon]

Ok, so the feedback was that the velocity range of the LinnStrument better starts not with 0, but rather ~20-25? I noticed that this depends a bit on the overall sensitivity you can configure. But I'm not able to get velocity numbers in the range of "10".

But I can see why you would prefer to have such a lower velocity boundary, if it stretches the actual velocity sensitive region more towards the upper ranges, where it's more useful.

[FranklyFlawless]

Ok, so the feedback was that the velocity range of the LinnStrument better starts not with 0, but rather ~20-25?

Well if you want to talk about the past, yes.

Setting the minimum velocity to 32 seems to please many others and works well with many piano-like sounds, which is why that's now the default. Note that it might still be 0 if you've upgraded from a previous release. To get a great piano-like response (for instance in Pianoteq), it helps to calibrate the velocity curve yourself in the software. This is quite standard with any velocity-sensitive keyboard that you want to feel natural for sounds that are in reality activated by physical percussive mechanisms (like hammers hitting strings).

Looking at the current firmware code now suggests it is a default minimum velocity value of 1, but my ability to parse the rest of it is very limited, even after reading through tons of Arduino documentation and Geert's various comments/presentations:

Code: Select all

#define VELOCITY_SAMPLES       4
#define VELOCITY_TOTAL_SAMPLES (VELOCITY_SAMPLES * 2)
#define VELOCITY_ZERO_POINTS   1
#define VELOCITY_N             (VELOCITY_SAMPLES + VELOCITY_ZERO_POINTS)
#define VELOCITY_SUMX          10   // x1 + x2 + x3 + ... + xn
#define VELOCITY_SUMXSQ        30   // x1^2 + x2^2 + x3^2 + ... + xn^2
#define VELOCITY_SCALE_LOW     43
#define VELOCITY_SCALE_MEDIUM  41
#define VELOCITY_SCALE_HIGH    40

#define DEFAULT_MIN_VELOCITY   1    // default minimum velocity value
#define DEFAULT_MAX_VELOCITY   127  // default maximum velocity value
#define DEFAULT_FIXED_VELOCITY 96   // default fixed velocity value

[Fannon]

Looking at the current firmware code now suggests it is a minimum default velocity value of 1, but my ability to parse the rest of the information is very limited, even after reading through tons of Arduino documentation and Geert's various comments/presentations:

Thanks for the extensive reply! Seems like the velocity calculation is not trivial. What you linked are the base variables / configuration, but then they get assigned to actual instance variables where they are further used.

E.g. this looks like it could end up with 8 as minimum velocity at the very least:

Code: Select all

fxdMinVelOffset = FXD_FROM_INT(Global.minForVelocity * 8);

Well, I'm not complaining. For the me velocity sensitivity works the way it is. To come back to the main topic here: Personally I prefer to use an expression pedal for controlling the "coarse" velocity / volume range and then make use of the (more limited) velocity range of the LinnStrument pads within that broad range. But usually it's just sufficient to adjust a preset to fit the velocity range I need for a particular style / part.