Polyphonic Aftertouch (or Better) should be standard

Anything about hardware musical instruments.
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

I would prefer a ribon controller than PA.


That being said stop comparing phones wich are one the most widely avaiable devices to PA keyboards, economies of scales play a huge part in costs.
dedication to flying

Post

The CME Xkey has PolyAT and it would be a nice product for on the road, but the keys are a bit on the cheap side when it comes to feeling and sound. The pressure range is also a bit short for my taste, so it's hard to control.
Ton's of new controllers come out with Poly AT these days, but more the "control heavy"/experimental sort:
- QuNexus
- LinnStrument
- Eigenharp
- Seaboard
- Haaken
- Soundplane

But for the time being: My old and cheap AKAI MPD 18 is actually pretty good at Poly AT after treatment with tape and rubber... ;-)

Cheers,

Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
Sculptures ScreenDream Mastodon

Post

Shy wrote:First of all, there is either "Channel Pressure" (which is falsely referred to as "aftertouch") or "AfterTouch" (as in for each key), no "polyphonic aftertouch".
Excellent! A hair-splitting contest!

Let's see what the MIDI people say*: "Channel Pressure (After-touch). This message is most often sent by pressing down on the key after it "bottoms out". This message is different from polyphonic after-touch. Use this message to send the single greatest pressure value (of all the current depressed keys). (vvvvvvv) is the pressure value."

But I don't write aftertouch with a hyphen. Is this naughty?

* http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php

Post

mellotronaut wrote:
audientronic wrote:
mellotronaut wrote:
Gamma-UT wrote:
mellotronaut wrote:how many softsynths do respond to poly aftertouch? CS80 ... i love the idea too, but there seems to be a long way to go.
Alchemy, Zebra and Omnisphere are on the list, so that should cover a reasonably broad spectrum of softsynth users.
thanks! :) is there an affordable keyboard min. 49 keys with poly aftertouch?
There's the CME X-key, which is a little 25 key controller for 100 bucks. It's fun to mess around with. I'm hoping they expand to something with real keys.
looks a bit toyish ... and Jordan again ... aaahhhhhhhhhhhhh :help: ... anyway PA for 100 bucks ... thanks again! :D
Well, it is. It has computer keyboard style keys, which makes it difficult to control pressure. But with a very light touch, fun for a 100 bucks.
I just want to enter it into the record that I bought mine before Jordan showed up. :lol: :wink:

Post

rod_zero wrote:I would prefer a ribon controller than PA.


That being said stop comparing phones wich are one the most widely avaiable devices to PA keyboards, economies of scales play a huge part in costs.
Right, that's why a big company should take it on. Maybe Apple should build one. They like music, right?

Post

Gamma-UT wrote:
Shy wrote:First of all, there is either "Channel Pressure" (which is falsely referred to as "aftertouch") or "AfterTouch" (as in for each key), no "polyphonic aftertouch".
Excellent! A hair-splitting contest!

Let's see what the MIDI people say*: "Channel Pressure (After-touch). This message is most often sent by pressing down on the key after it "bottoms out". This message is different from polyphonic after-touch. Use this message to send the single greatest pressure value (of all the current depressed keys). (vvvvvvv) is the pressure value."

But I don't write aftertouch with a hyphen. Is this naughty?

* http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php
It's not a "hair splitting contest". "The MIDI people" who wrote the specification never called aftertouch polyphonic aftertouch or channel pressure aftertouch, and in various manuals of synths, romplers, sequencers, etc., you'll see "channel pressure" and not realize what the hell it means, because someone at the MMA decided to start calling it "channel aftertouch" or worse, just "aftertouch", and also introduce "key aftertouch", "poly aftertouch" and "poly pressure", all of which just mean the same thing: the original "aftertouch", to confuse people further. So yeah, I guess it's hopeless, now that the mess is done and everyone either follows the original naming or the newer idiotically convoluted naming and no one can tell you you're "wrong" because some idiot in a "standardization body" messed it all up.
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not." - Claudio Monteverdi

Post

There were more than one kickstarter type projects here a year or so ago touting poly at in two distinctively different methods. One was a company that put an extra layer on top of an existing keyboard and each key became a sort of x-y controller. Then there was the other one that was talking about the 'swing' of the keys. That one was definitely a kickstarter thing. Then there is the rubber pad covered keyboard that Jordan Rudess was touting - https://www.roli.com/seaboard/

I have an old Ensoniq VFX SD (the one with the built-in 3.5" floppy drive) which works now and then. There were other Ensoniq axes that also had poly AT. I believe the SQ-80 may have been the first, but it's quite 'clicky'. If this site can be trusted, it confirms the SQ-80 had it. A friend of mine bought one after I bought my ESQ-1, and I remember the actually playing of the keyboard was noisy. http://www.answers.com/topic/ensoniq-sq-80 The TS-10 had poly-AT as well.

Post

So yeah, I guess it's hopeless, now that the mess is done and everyone either follows the original naming or the newer idiotically convoluted naming and no one can tell you you're "wrong" because some idiot in a "standardization body" messed it all up.
I don't understand your version of history. The timeline I lived thru, as best I recall-- The mma did not invent midi, but without the mma midi spec, midi would not have become popular and ubiquitous.

Midi became popular and ubiquitous because any goober from podunk could order the midi spec from the mma and make conforming products, and there were thousands of goobers from podunk to step up to the task. :)

I bought the midi spec shortly after the dawn of midi and as far as I can recall it was poly at and channel pressure from about day one. I have synth manuals from the dawn of midi, which contain the midi conformance sheet in the back, which use the terms poly aftertouch and channel pressure.

The naming most likely derives from midi message types. Midi has channels, and channel pressure is broadcast to an entire channel with no way to make it note specific. Note on and note off messages are note specific, polyphonic. Poly aftertouch is also note specific, and shares message characteristics with note on and note off midi messages.

I don't care what the things are called, but mma came in with the first load of bricks and you can't accuse them of revisionism. Well, you can, but it would hardly be fair. :)

My EPS had poly at. Until then always thought I wanted poly at in the worst way. Turns out I was wrong. I liked the EPS fine but after awhile I left the poly at disabled most of the time. I can't play ordinary music with poly at without it sounding AWFUL.

Maybe some people have enough talent to competently play poly at in "normal" music. Perhaps they are rare. Every time I look thru youtube videos of people playing poly at midi controllers, almost all the demo players stink on ice playing poly at. If it was easy to learn to control poly at, after all these years there ought to be a fair number of impressive musical performances showcasing the technique.

Post

ThomasHelzle wrote:The CME Xkey has PolyAT
...
Ton's of new controllers come out with Poly AT these days, but more the "control heavy"/experimental sort:
- QuNexus
- LinnStrument
- Eigenharp
- Seaboard
- Haaken
- Soundplane

But for the time being: My old and cheap AKAI MPD 18 is actually pretty good at Poly AT after treatment with tape and rubber... ;-)
Ableton Push can also send poly pressure (but not to Live except drums :))
the 'add on' to keyboard on kick starter was 'touch keys', not sure if they are going to make any more. (it didn't add poly pressure, just an extra axis which could then be assigned to poly pressure)

Eigenharp (and others i guess) not only send poly AT, but also pressure (and other axis) as OSC, but also as 14 bit CC, to get better resolution. (later only useful in your synth support voice per channel midi and 14 bit)

soft synths, quite a few support now, if you ask them… often don't say so in the manuals :) .. I think Reaktor also supports poly pressure.

Ableton Live and Reason don't support poly pressure, they just ignore it!

So looks like software is definitely leading the way, I'm sure other hardware controllers will follow

using poly pressure (and other per key expression), I find on the Eigenharp the critical thing is adjusting the response, and this can also be down to the 'patch' you are playing. e.g. some you want a linear response, others a curved response, sometimes a little bit or change sometimes a lot.
( I guess this is not surprising, we have curves and ranges for pitch bend, and velocity, so hardly surprising you need it for other modifiers)

Post

Yeah, u-he recently started to support voice per channel.
I think better modulation and per-Note-Expression are a great trend.
But it's totally possible that classical keyboards are not really the best vessel for those...

:tu:

Cheers,

Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
Sculptures ScreenDream Mastodon

Post

JCJR wrote:I bought the midi spec shortly after the dawn of midi and as far as I can recall it was poly at and channel pressure from about day one. I have synth manuals from the dawn of midi, which contain the midi conformance sheet in the back, which use the terms poly aftertouch and channel pressure.
Are you sure about that? I've never seen the original spec text but I was told it was just "aftertouch", and I haven't seen it referred to as "Poly AT" in manuals, but if you have something you could send or point ot, I'd appreciate it. In any case, at least back then "channel pressure" was just called "channel pressure" and "aftertouch" was either called "aftertouch" or "poly at", in which case you still wouldn't be confused, because "channel pressure" is not also referred to as "aftertouch". Now they scatter "channel pressure", "channel aftertouch", "polyphonic aftertouch", "polyphonic key aftertouch" and "(aftertouch)" around.
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not." - Claudio Monteverdi

Post

if you google "Complete MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification", you will find the original spec, (midi spec 1.0 1995)
p 9 & 19 are the relevant bits really.

basically, they were called channel pressure and poly key pressure, BUT the spec then says they are usually implemented as aftertouch (hence why people called them poly / channel at)...
the only real 'importance' was as the spec mentions that channel pressure could be say from a wind controller... (since its global), where as poly key pressure would need a key.

the wording today is similar, they are called channel and poly pressure, but then are referred to as being implemented by controllers using 'aftertouch'... so both terms are correct, one is the hardware implementation of the midi message. ... so they kind have become synonyms. (though technically, you cannot send a poly AT message, only a poly pressure message )
Last edited by thetechnobear on Tue Sep 02, 2014 10:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Post

Thanks, that...adds more confusion (lol), but thanks :).
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not." - Claudio Monteverdi

Post

FWIW clarification, the midi spec 1.0 is much older than that 1995 date, but rather than releasing a midi spec 2.0, they added a few addendums to the 1.0 spec over the years, and may have slightly edited a few passages of the earlier doc for the sake of clarity.

It is almost impossible to 100 percent unambiguously document a feature, and any changes in wording to the original spec would be to avoid developers misreading the spec bad enough to make incompatible products.

Time flies when yer having fun, and dunno the year in the 1980's when the spec became a purchasable document, or when I got mine. Think I got mine circa 1985 or 86, but could be sorely mistaken. Was already writing midi software and making midi hardware then, and it was rather difficult to do so without the spec. Am pretty sure it was available in some crude form in 1984. Perhaps before 1984 you had to work for yamaha or sequential circuits to know anything about it.

Post

A few irrelevant thoughts on the topic.

I'd like to add my voice to the three person choir singing praise of poly-aftertouch and making it a standard (like velocity is, for example).

Is poly-at really difficult to use? Perhaps the difficulty stems from inferior key-bed designs requiring a lot of force to be applied. This certainly applies to a lot of standard, channel-aftertouch keyboards, where balancing pressure is awkward. Often, it's an on/off process rather than a smooth response.

But the actual process of pressing harder with individual fingers, do people really find it challenging? We already control per-note dynamics with velocity, each finger can work independently to obtain interesting dynamics.


Perhaps most people are satisfied with the standard combination of velocity + 2 mod wheels?
There is a video of a muso playing a Moog Voyager on YT. This gentleman plays a solo and his hand keeps jumping frantically from the pitch wheel (to add pitch bend) and the mod wheel ( to add vibrato). Now, I saw the video and felt sorry for this constant, awkward use of the available controllers. His hand was doing gymnastics needlessly...since...all he had to do was to assign vibrato to Voyager's aftertouch. Then, the hand could rest on the pitch wheel and deal with pitch bending comfortably...

But perhaps companies are not interested in pursuing poly-at development due to the current modus operandi of button/loop/beat based performances? There is an avalanche of midi controllers that provide pads, faders, knobs, sequencer triggers....this is the contemporary methodology, and not skilful keyboard performances. And even if a keyboard line is needed, everything can be edited in a DAW, nothing needs to be real-time.

But then, one could ask, how about those who came to music technology through classical piano training? They have the chops and power in their hands to use pressure in all its guises with ease? The thing is, these people would be trained to use velocity dynamics only since a piano does not offer aftertouch...thus I can imagine there being no expectation of using more control over dynamics than is possible on an acoustic piano. It's a lost battle (?).

People are not aware of why and how to use channel-aftertouch, how can they tackle poly-aftertouch? Nobody is going to seek it, and therefore create a buzz for manufacturers to take notice.

Perhaps, it only leaves synth anoraks and geeks, those who know what CS80, SQ80, T8, MK88 are capable of, and those who have an unhealthy obsession with Vangelis' early music (me! lol). But nobody is going to cater to us...or will they? :)
http://www.electric-himalaya.com
VSTi and hardware synth sound design
3D/5D sound design since 2012

Post Reply

Return to “Hardware (Instruments and Effects)”