Sytrus - Really? No Monophonic Mode?

[HSum]

Sytrus is definitely worth it.

btw I knew this would be a topic from Wagtunes in his typical style

Hey buddy, you're not here long enough to know me that well. Only my true haters can talk to me that way.

Hey buddy, I was reading threads long before I registered and became an active member Nonetheless I've nothing else to contribute than saying that I've been using Sytrus since earlier versions of FL Studio and I don't hesitate going the "official" way to get a monophonic sound. And as I'm using FL Studio from time to time I can use the special piano roll editing features it has to get it in an easy way too.

[wagtunes]

Sytrus is definitely worth it.

btw I knew this would be a topic from Wagtunes in his typical style

Hey buddy, you're not here long enough to know me that well. Only my true haters can talk to me that way.

Hey buddy, I was reading threads long before I registered and became an active member Nonetheless I've nothing else to contribute than saying that I've been using Sytrus since earlier versions of FL Studio and I don't hesitate going the "official" way to get a monophonic sound. And as I'm using FL Studio from time to time I can use the special piano roll editing features it has to get it in an easy way too.

I was joking around.

Gotta remember to use them damn smiley things.

[soundpeaks]

I have just bumped into this issue too, there is no way to make notes without legato not to act like portamento

[jancivil]

How do you make a VSTi without a monophonic mode?

Even though one could ask the question, why on earth u-he released a pure monophonic synth in 2016...
Could have been a polyphonic synth with a monophonic option...

How do you play legato lead lines with this thing?

Perhaps there are many people out there, who simply have no need for legato lead lines...
Hmmm, let´s think about that... when do I have used a legato lead sound.... hmmm
The answer is very easy : NEVER

Good for you. It's a musical question, actually: take any woodwind, brass instrument, take a minimoog or... the human voice. All monophonic, all the time. So you've never in your life needed a legato behavior, that's very special and kind of super noob in terms of being, you know, a musician, but good for you.

Yes, because someone isn't an accomplished musician until he / she has, you know, mastered the ancient art of legato.

I suppose a pianist has never played actual legato, but if you think about it there are 'singing' lines one tries to achieve for the melody. It is a way of thinking about melody; and a choice is made to ignore it? And the people who are more interested are ridiculous?
"The answer is very easy" Yeah, that's the ticket.

"the ancient art" is that snark? Are we reinventing the wheel here by ignoring musical normatives?

The ignorance combined with arrogance at this forum is at times astonishing.

[jancivil]

Not because I want to be that guy ..but what's the problem with legato? It can be done on any piano, guitar or what ever. Definition of legato according to the English Oxford dictionary, "In a smooth flowing manner, without breaks between notes". Perhaps you are actually talking about glissando? :p

No, people are talking about legato behavior of a synth. Legato meaning when you, by playing or writing in the piano roll, overlap two notes and the second note is not a clean break from the first (legato meaning connected) or both notes at the same time for the time of the overlap; on a guitar it's a hammer-on technique, same as w. violin, known as a slur (which is different than a bowed legato, ie., to the next string without a new bowing or *attack*). On a wind or brass instrument it's a new note but not newly articulated at the mouthpiece. No new attack.

It's not actually doable on a piano for obvious reasons.

So as I said it's a way of thinking about a line, first. But in a synth there is monophonic behavior - this includes portamento, a pitch glide (or bend) to the next note (but setting it as described above to get portamento is not the definition for monophonic) - or not, basically. Polyphonic behavior gets you an overlap of two notes, polyphonically. Monophonic cuts off the earlier note in a certain way. EG: a Minimoog, where portamento is additional to its normal behavior.

Glissando is a glide to a new note but the pitches in between are heard discretely rather than a bend.
CF: that clarinet move early in Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue.

[Kel]

Sytrus is one of the few synths that allowed me to make a pretty realistic emulation of Crash cymbals(some of the hardest things to do on a synth). Its old, but worth every Penny. The filter modes are exceptional.

[Halonmusic]

Well too bad for you.

[ToniLeys]

Stop arguing without a solid point guys. Here's a REAL problem Sytrus can't help:
I composed the opening music for a youtube channel from my country and the main melody is played with the patch "Distorto" from Sytrus, a bit tweaked. Here it is:
The melody uses monophonic because some notes are legato and (and here is the important part) WHEN PLAYING LEGATO ENVELOPES DON'T HAVE TO RETRIGGER. Listen how the "phrases" in the melody are legato and the synth doesn't ATTACK again.
Now to the REAL problem: Tomorrow those youtubers make a big big party with bands playing live and I'll play live too, and I have to play that song for the bombastic finale. I play live with REAPER and my Novation Launchkey, even though I compose in FL Studio. So I need to load that instrument and play the melody in the keyboard. There is NO F***ING WAY I can make that melody sound as is, because on every note the stupid synth retriggers all envelopes and sounds awful!
I will have to copy by hand the whole f**king patch to another synth.
So yeah, Sytrus not having monophonic screwed up my show and I need to come up with a solution fast because stupid Sytrus doesn't help. I love Sytrus tho, and will keep composing with it, but this specific problem is a BIG FAT one I'm f**king mad.




AND IT IS FREAKING 2019.

[Halonmusic]

Aha

[Kel]

IF Im not mistaken... there is a preset in the env section which is called porta. If I remember well, using that and the FL studio settings of Sytrus (the section of keyb mappings, etc) with porta or mono, should make something similar to legato.

Cheers.

edit. Ah its for cubase!! sorry. well, may be you may find a workaround.

[imrae]

Yes, because someone isn't an accomplished musician until he / she has, you know, mastered the ancient art of legato.

Having a basic command of your instrument is generally considered to be part of musicianship, yes.

[jancivil]

[mrdoghead]

No, people are talking about legato behavior of a synth. Legato meaning when you, by playing or writing in the piano roll, overlap two notes and the second note is not a clean break from the first (legato meaning connected) or both notes at the same time for the time of the overlap; on a guitar it's a hammer-on technique, same as w. violin, known as a slur (which is different than a bowed legato, i.e., to the next string without a new bowing or attack). On a wind or brass instrument it's a new note but not newly articulated at the mouthpiece. No new attack.

It's not actually doable on a piano for obvious reasons.... Polyphon(y) ... gets you an overlap of two notes.

Actually, no - it is doable and done on piano. It requires control and thus requires practicing the technique, but we refer - properly - to the gentle ending of one note flowing into the next on a piano as legato. You do not get a knob on a circuit or a switch on a code function that helps players to approximate the legato style of a wind or a string instrument with little effort, but a piano can produce lovely legato phrases. Also, while hammer-on usage in guitar playing is sometimes referred to as legato style, hammer-ons are not the only way to get legato phrasing on guitars or on other string instruments. Any gentle flowing of one note to the next without losing articulation of each note is legato phrasing. A bend or a slur is not legato, though a legato passage of music may incorporate such moves for accent or deemphasis. For legato, the player understates the attacks of follow-on notes, but to link the notes gently there must be articulated notes following one another closely to link. The attacks are not fully elided. Legato is a range of similar styles of phrasing, differing from one instrument to another, that produce a family of closely related results - results that differ a bit depending on the instrument. While it is more difficult to play legato on a piano than on a Minimoog, where it is hard to avoid, it is possible in both cases.

I do not disagree with saying including an option to produce this sort of Moogy monophony with controllable articulation envelopes and portamento to accommodate certain playing styles would be good a feature for IL to consider for Sytrus or that it should have done so from the release of the instrument. Synth players have come to expect the particular monophony of early synthesizers like the Minimoog to be easily available from any instrument. It's a bit of a standard behavior, becoming so because it minimizes the technical hurdles to playing legato lines (a) on a synth and (b) on a keyboard. On the other paw, nothing stops a keyboard player on a good polysynth from playing legato the old-fashioned hard way other than touch control, the right setup, and a keyboard that's up to the task.

Glissando is a glide to a new note but the pitches in between are heard discretely rather than a bend.

Glissando has come into many odd usages in recent years - with people equating it to portamento or to bumpy slurs or bends - but any phrase where notes skip quickly from one note to the next (it need not be "all" the notes covered by the phrase, even within a given scaling system) without holding the notes beyond their sounding may be called glissando. Many software and some hardware synths provide a glissando function of the type you describe, but these are both more and less than classical glissando.

I don't mean to be disagreeable. In fact, I have liked your contributions to this thread. This particular set of language and technique debates just seemed to want a bit of context.

[jancivil]

No, people are talking about legato behavior of a synth. Legato meaning when you, by playing or writing in the piano roll, overlap two notes and the second note is not a clean break from the first (legato meaning connected) or both notes at the same time for the time of the overlap; on a guitar it's a hammer-on technique, same as w. violin, known as a slur (which is different than a bowed legato, i.e., to the next string without a new bowing or attack). On a wind or brass instrument it's a new note but not newly articulated at the mouthpiece. No new attack.

It's not actually doable on a piano for obvious reasons.... Polyphon(y) ... gets you an overlap of two notes.

Actually, no - it is doable and done on piano.

Every keyed note on the piano is a new attack, by definition, period. Piano is never articulated legato, the definition of that is no new attack. If you literally connect two piano notes, it's polyphonic, you have two notes for that span of time.


A bend or a slur is not legato, though a legato passage of music may incorporate such moves for accent or deemphasis.

Legato literally means connected; if you connect the notes by a slur, confer string instrument performance, it is legato by definition. You're seeking to define this word for us by insisting it is just a type of phrasing. Somehow two notes can't be 'phrased' smoothly (your definition)? This doesn't track. What's the premise for that definition? A passage of music is always more than two notes?

And this:
any phrase where notes skip quickly from one note to the next
Well, two notes are never a gliss. Maybe you neglected to fully state that.

On a violin, a new note in the same bow motion as the last is technically legato articulation. If you re-bow, it is no longer connected, in the literal sense of the word and cannot be considered legato articulation.
On a guitar, you could sound a note on a new string and maybe say that is "legato phrasing"... whatever.
I wouldn't, at the least not in the context of what I did here which was define articulations for usage.

Define means limit, establish a definite (cf., finite) meaning. EDIT: I would say two notes ringing at the same time is polyphonic behavior; & soon, if we follow logically we'll have to consider 'legato strumming', and this moves away from definition.
Certainly if you pick two notes separately in a line, you are not articulating it legato. CF: Piano.
If you work with a guitar plugin, there is a distinction, ie., solid definitions.

For legato, the player understates the attacks of follow-on notes, but to link the notes gently there must be articulated notes following one another closely to link. The attacks are not fully elided.
If you're dealing with articulations in a sampled instrument the definition is they are fully elided. If one develops such an instrument, the definition of legato is that there is no new attack. You record the samples as such.
This other thing is your viewpoint/opinion and there is no actual use for that per the topic, to say the least.
Understating attacks is your argument against eliding attacks? Really?

The definition's dependence on your assessment of the word phrasing has no real use for the topic. The point was articulations, and I met my goalpost with that definition, which has a use value for working with virtual instruments.

[jancivil]

but to link the notes gently there must be articulated notes


Sure, go with a broader definition of articulated, a new goalpost appears. Actually off-topic.

As to glissando vs portamento:

Prescriptive attempts to distinguish the glissando from the portamento by limiting the former to the filling in of discrete intermediate pitches on instruments like the piano, harp, and fretted stringed instruments have run up against established usage of instruments like the trombone and timpani.[4]
- Wiki; [4] = Harvard Dictionary of Music, edited by Willi Apel (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1944): 298 or 595[contradictory]": "Glissando…the execution of rapid scales". "Portamento…[an] effect frequently but erroneously called glissando… on the violin and on the trombone."

I'm all about definitions; whether or not there is a certain weight in past usages, I want a distinction, not a total grey area, for this kind of thing.

Now, a timpani glissando is called that in sample libraries both when it is (I would require it be rolled while the bend occurs), strictly speaking and when it's really a portamento. So anyone may obv feel free to define things for themselves but I need definitions in the strict sense, in clarity.