Volume modulation and wind controllers2007-03-16T23:49:50+00:00I'm not sure I understand how volume modulation works in Zebra 2 (and Podolski and Triple Cheese). I'm using an AKAI EWI4000s Electric Wind Instrument as a midi controller, and in most cases am interested in using this for wind or bowed sounds. So I want to replace the main ADSR volume envelope in patches with a volume envelope defined by my breath, using the CC values that the wind sensor generates.
Where I run into problems is in the Voice Mix section. Here's an example: Let's say that in channel 1, the Vol is 50 and the source is ENV1. I would think that I could lower the Vol to 0, change the source to Gate, and then change the Mod to 50 with Breath Pressure as the modulation source. My expectation would be that modulation would add to the value being modulated, so that depending on Breath Pressure, the Volume would would vary from 0 (with Breath Pressure = 0) to 50 (with Breath Pressure = 127). It doesn't seem to work that way. The Volume values in Voice Mix currently seem to act as limits, allowing only negative modulation, so with Vol = 0 I can not make a sound with any amount of modulation.
There are other places to modulate the volume (such as within the oscillators) but the Voice Mix section seems to be the most logical place to do that. I've tried using the ModMatrix to modulate Volumes of 0 with a CC, but this seems to work somewhat randomly. (One time I tried this, I modulated a Voice Mix Vol of 0 with Breath Control. No matter what the modulation amount was, from 0 to 100, I produced sounds of seemingly equal volume.)
I have a temporary fix right now. Since the EWI by default sends out the same breath information using multiple CCs, I use Plogue Bidule to filter out Breath Pressure, invert it, and then include it back into the midi stream. This way, I can use the inverted Breath Pressure to negatively modify the volume in the Voice Mix and elsewhere use Aftertouch to modulate filters or whatever.
Is this the way volume is supposed to working, as a limit that cannot be modulated upwards? The same thing happens in the VCA sections of Triple Cheese and Podolski. For some reason though, Zebralette works the way I expect -- you can modulate a zero Vol in the VCA section with a positive modulation value and actually produce a sound.
This has been tested on PPC Macs, using both Plogue Bidule and Numerology as hosts.
-- James CunninghamYashahttps://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=107329