KVR Audio

What sound parameter(s) do you usually assign to the y-axis?

I tend to use filters like parameters to "Y".
Sometimes lfo or mod wheel can be fun.

Usually? Filter cutoff. But I have a few patches where I modulate things like unison detune or oscillator mix. Anything that alters the color of the sound without changing the character.

One trap I've fallen into a lot is to assign a huge range to timbre modulation. I find that this turns polyphonic (piano style) play into a comedy of errors, with wildly inconsistent tones, because hand anatomy has an opinion on how fingers can bend. So I keep timbre modulation faily subtle, and also fairly flat in the middle of the timbre range. That way, grand hand gestures are audible as such but smaller gestures keep a consistent tone.

For mono- or duophonic play you can (and likely want to) have more expressive range on timbre.

wldmr wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:43 pm Usually? Filter cutoff. But I have a few patches where I modulate things like unison detune or oscillator mix. Anything that alters the color of the sound without changing the character.

One trap I've fallen into a lot is to assign a huge range to timbre modulation. I find that this turns polyphonic (piano style) play into a comedy of errors, with wildly inconsistent tones, because hand anatomy has an opinion on how fingers can bend. So I keep timbre modulation faily subtle, and also fairly flat in the middle of the timbre range. That way, grand hand gestures are audible as such but smaller gestures keep a consistent tone.

For mono- or duophonic play you can (and likely want to) have more expressive range on timbre.

This, this, a thousand times this!

The single most important thing Roger taught me about the LinnStrument (after 'No, Mike, you can't set the grid to only play scale notes') is that you can't and shouldn't treat each square on the grid as having its own little Y slider. The best place to put Y to use is, as stated above, in a particular parameter in a patch that causes a subtle but important change per note played.

What this means is that 'MPE-ready' patches for the Seaboard or K-Board Pro 4 will probably not work as expected when played on a LinnStrument, and they should be adjusted accordingly.

mrspiral wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 1:33 am What this means is that 'MPE-ready' patches for the Seaboard or K-Board Pro 4 will probably not work as expected when played on a LinnStrument, and they should be adjusted accordingly.

, my first step when playing with any Equator 2 patch is to delete all of the Y-Axis mappings.

For equator 2 you can make a response curve for each axis. If you make the y-axis heavily non-linear (so that it looks like an S flipped over and rotated 90 degrees) the patches become playable but retain a little subtle variation for most of the y-axis, along with the ability to reach for the extremes of the curve by deliberately reaching for the extremes of the Linnstrument pad’s y-axis.

It’s really easy to do but hard to describe in words.

You can save this curve, then quickly choose the curve when you change patches.

I wish the Linnstrument had customisable curves likes this (or even a fixed non-linear profile or two) so that all mpe presets designed for devices with full-range y-axis keys would work well out of the box.

On the LinnStrument, you can set the range of the Y-axis, along with its relative starting value...

From the manual:

To change these range limits, hold the On pad and the screen will display large characters. Swipe up or down to switch between the following two settings, and left or right to edit each setting’s value:

"L 0": the Low Timbre/Y limit, from 0 to 127.
"H127": the High Timbre/Y limit, from 0 to 127.

Hidden setting: Y-axis Relative Initial value
Hold to set the starting relative value from its default of 64 to any value from 0 to 127. For example, if using Y-axis to add a modulation amount, the Y-axis value at first touch will be zero, then moving your finger forward will increase the value.

Anything beyond that would be the responsibility of the synth. The LinnStrument's job is to send the appropriate controller data; it's up to the synth to then interpolate and curb that data as needed.

Cheers!

Sure. Linnstrument does allow you to modify the pressure response and pitch bend quantisation functions though. If I had aggressive/linear/relaxed response curves for the y-axis too I’d find it much more convenient (and since the y-axis value is particularly closely related to the individual user’s interface with the hardware, I’d argue it’s technically the right place for such configuration too, from a separation of concerns point of view. You don’t adjust the action of the strings with a knob on your amp).

Yes, but pressure response is linear and caters to the weight and strength of one's hand, and pitch quantization is a finite objective, common to all use cases; much like the action, string gauge, fretwork, and intonation of a guitar, if that's the example you want to use.

Non-linear response curves, on the other hand, particularly when it come to timbral control, are subjective and radically differ from sound to sound. The LinnStrument is not a single instrument, like the guitar, bound by inherent acoustic properties. Therefore, it simply makes more sense for said tonal effects and other modelled behaviours to be accommodated by the synth or sound engine, where they can be stored with each sound, preset, or template, on a case-by-case basis, as required.

With organic instruments, the finer points and nuances of performance, like timbre, pitchbends, tremolo, and vibrato, reside in the fingertips, embouchure, breath control, etc.; as such, it’s ideal that the LinnStrument does not attempt to gradate those movements for you. Ultimately, your input is the curve, and you control whether that curve is exponential, linear, or logarithmic.

Furthermore, as someone who plays live, and is always facing different scenarios, I can tell you that it would not be practical for me to be changing LinnStrument profiles for each different instrument or sound I encounter, from one stage to the next, one song to the next, etc. Often, I have to jump between multiple instruments within the context of a single song; each requiring different tolerances for timbre and modulation.

Regardless, I think you'll find that A LOT of thought went into what performance behaviours were to be the LinnStrument's responsibility, and which were decidedly better handled at the sound source.

Cheers!

Regardless of the practicality or philosophy of things, modifying the timbre curve on your own instrument would be relatively simple:
https://github.com/rogerlinndesign/linn ... .ino#L1934

Instead of clamping between a min/max, clamp to the interpolation of some curve. You could even add in a menu feature to draw in the curve on the playing surface .

John the Savage wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 5:29 pm Regardless, I think you'll find that A LOT of thought went into what performance behaviours were to be the LinnStrument's responsibility, and which were decidedly better handled at the sound source.

Cheers!

I adjust curves in the Instrument or DAW... I wouldn't want to also have to remember what setting the Linnstrument was on. I depend on it being consistent and the same.

I put lots of different parameters on the Y axis... depends on the use case. It's easy in Bitwig to create a few macro snapshots of different synth settings and then use Timbre to move between them. The possibilities are, as they say, endless

Since I'm not much of a musician per se, and I'm not big on sequencing / sampling, sound design is the area that I'm getting most satisfaction from right now. A lot of good points here, especially the "keep it simple, stupid" ones and not going crazy with ranges. For me if you can't roll your finger through full range and get an acceptable sounding transition, you've gone too far. Also, being sure that a stray strike doesn't sound good awful is a good thing, though otoh Violinists seem to live with a narrow range of acceptable sounds, hahah. But relatively subtle changes can have a bit impact.

I'm finding this to be the case with all sorts of synth knobs. Just as with writing, it's really easy to get carried away, the hard part can be paring away all of the stuff you really don't need. Mostly I leave out the atmospherics kind of stuff, much of that people can use expression to create in a much more personal way as well as add effects as they want them. (In my latest efforts I haven't even touched LFOs and very little filter and I'm very sparing with fx.)

For me, filter cutoff is an obvious thing to try, but more and more my sounds are using things like oscillator parameters, and a favourite current "trick" is to use it to set individual OSC mix/levels. Takes more effort but you often get richer control and more unique colour changes. The set of sounds I just posted n Roger's Surge thread gives a pretty wide set of examples of different approaches; I'm not objective enough to tell you whether they are actually good choices or not, but they are at least different.

I do find that I take the easy way out in terms of having the "base" sound be the relatively un-coloured sound. That can mean that people who tend to play in middle will get less of a "pure" sound. That is, I expect that players will typically strike toward the lower end and add y-axis to get nuance. I'm leaning toward trusting the musician to intuitively find the best place for initial strike. One down side is that this does mean that setting Timbre control to "Relative" often won't give the "ideal" sound I targeted.

pdxindy wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 1:37 am I adjust curves in the Instrument or DAW... I wouldn't want to also have to remember what setting the Linnstrument was on. I depend on it being consistent and the same.

100% agreement on this. Linnstument is the sound interface, synth is the sound interpeter and it simply creates confusion to mix the two. (That is until we get on-board sound, heh heh.)