Passion Flute subtleties with an EWI4000s controller

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I think the hardest part is detecting what sort of note ending to put in--whether it needs to be a super short staccato, or have a little bit more fade at the end. I might need to have some sort of threshold (or better yet, a gradual threshold), to really separate the staccato releases from even just 1/8th notes.
Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples
Ultra-realistic sample libraries for Kontakt

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completely off the cuff i'd say when in doubt go with the super short staccato release and have slow fades be a function of dynamics.

but you don't see me programming libraries so thats completely ignorant of any real programming knowledge.

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Quick update--I've been playing the MIDI files (thanks guys!) through Passion Flute, and can definitely see what you're saying about playing quickly, and staccato. It's one thing to get a library to perform smoothly from a MIDI keyboard, and it seems like it takes special attention to get it responding well from a wind controller as well.
Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples
Ultra-realistic sample libraries for Kontakt

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Thanks Greg. Appreciate the time you are giving this.
Always learning....

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hear hear!!

so true, theres always been keyboard and modules that you can and can't use with a windsynth and thats been true of vsti's as well.

and add to that youre doing flute which is very very challenging.

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bump up, any luck?

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I've been messing with it a bit--I'm trying to figure out the best approach for handling velocity versus expression. One thing I think I'm going to do is lessen the amount of tuning difference in the dynamics. It's modeled after the natural tuning difference in the flute (how it goes flat when playing very quietly, and a little sharp when overblowing), but I think I'm going to tone that aspect down.

In terms of the staccato, I had left the staccato samples ringing after release to make let them have a natural release sound. I think the staccatos are a little too long for that to work efficiently, though. Maybe just making the staccatos respond strictly to expression will fix that, though. That way you can get clean cutoffs in short notes.

The one other thing I noticed from playing back the MIDI files is that sometimes the notes don't attack promptly and reliably. I might need to rewrite the note triggering and legato code completely. I always love making things work more efficiently, but hopefully I don't get carried away and rewrite everything else, too. ;)
Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples
Ultra-realistic sample libraries for Kontakt

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Greg, that sounds very encouraging. May I say that your attention to detail around the pitch to breath input typifies your approach to sampling. it would have been much easier, I guess, to produce a product with perfect pitch at every velocity in the first instance but you saw the value in making a sample library with ultra realistic expression. I wait excitedly for whatever improvements you send us wind controller players. Thank you again for the time you are giving this.
Always learning....

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encouraging indeed, and i think well worth the effort since i feel youre pretty close to real flute beauty already and with the finessing youre talking about that should nail it.

i agree about the intonation modeling, and maybe that could be something adjustable in range with a knob or slider, but i know thats easy to say and complex to code.

thanks for your hard work on this!

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Quick update on this project--I've decided to rescript all the voice and sample handling scripts. The interface will be the same, maybe with a few improvements. However, the response should be a lot more nimble and responsive, which will be great for breath/wind controllers. I'll be using all these MIDI files you guys kindly provided as reference while I'm working on it.
Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples
Ultra-realistic sample libraries for Kontakt

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Thanks again, Greg. That sounds brilliant.
Always learning....

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greg rules, this i know. nice to read this after mowing my lawn, very re-energizing.

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I've made a lot of improvements in my recent work to the way legato is handled, so I'm confident that I'll be able to make Passion Flute a lot more responsive as well as more CPU friendly.

While I'm at it, is there anything that needs to be changed in the interface? I was thinking of making it a little more evident which mic channels are on/off. Obviously I don't want to make a LOT of changes to the interface, but let me know if there are any little things bugging you that can be easily fixed while I'm at it... ;)
Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples
Ultra-realistic sample libraries for Kontakt

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Hi Greg, great to hear that you've been able to make some headway with this. Is there any way to scale the controller response range? i.e. if the Dynamics fader is assigned to CC#2, is there any way to put upper and/or lower limits to this? I assume there's a way to use a script to do this but is there a more user-friendly way e.g. perhaps the user could drag small "limiter bars" to limit the upper/lower range of the fader. I hope this makes sense. I think this would give the user a lot more fine-tuned control.

Also, is there a way to reduce the attack and/or velocity threshold so that pp is possible?

Cheers
Gary

P.S. Were my MIDI samples of any use?

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Similar requests to MadCow above. If I were being totally selfish, I don't understand how to engage keyswitches fully on Kontakt instruments using my EWI Continuous Controllers. Some GUI's on VST's have comprehensive midi learn functions for everything, and I have managed to link, for example, the glide strip CC on my EWI to a "switch" in the sampler that allows me to change the patch played (a good example is Independence Pro where I have created a fingered bass guitar patch that, when I touch the glide strip on the EWI, turns into a slapped patch so I can play fingered lines and then throw in some slaps when I want to. I can also add growl to Samplemodelling's Mr Sax T this way).
Being able to keyswitch using the glide strip with Passion Flute would be good - though I guess it is already possible but I haven't the tech savvy to understand how to do it yet. I know it is about reassigning controllers. Samplemodelling released a patch that made reassignment very simple with their VST so if there were a way to do that with Passion Flute it would be great (I could also see it having benefits for other OTS libraries too). I could then choose whether to have the overblown notes switched in and out through choice and not dependent upon perfect velocity control via breath control.

Thanks Greg - your willingness to work on this for what must be a small percentage of your customer base is admirable and gratefully received. I suspect that good results would be broadcast very quickly over to the respective user fora too, that may bring some more business your way. I certainly hope so.
Always learning....

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