Realistic hammer-ons

Started by AaronMusic, January 05, 2022, 01:06:37 PM

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AaronMusic

Hello, I have not been able to get realistic sounding hammer-ons. I hope you all can help. I'm using hardware mode with Kontakt and a Yamaha Motif Rack. Of the four pitchbend options in FTP, the ones that send pitchbend messages produce a glissando that is much too slow to sound like a hammer-on. The trigger mode sends a new note-on message which includes the attack portion of the wave and a velocity much too high. It also sends a note-off of the previous note before sending the new note-on message, preventing the synth from interpreting the hammer-on as a legato note. I.e. Many synths can interpret a new note-on msg before the previous note's note-off msg as a signal to play legato and either switch samples or play the sample without the attack portion. This is, of course, for sample based synths. But other types of synth can also implement legato in the same way. Any suggestions or help is appreciated. Thanks, Aaron

FishmanSoftware

Quote from: AaronMusic on January 05, 2022, 01:06:37 PM
Hello, I have not been able to get realistic sounding hammer-ons. I hope you all can help. I'm using hardware mode with Kontakt and a Yamaha Motif Rack. Of the four pitchbend options in FTP, the ones that send pitchbend messages produce a glissando that is much too slow to sound like a hammer-on. The trigger mode sends a new note-on message which includes the attack portion of the wave and a velocity much too high. It also sends a note-off of the previous note before sending the new note-on message, preventing the synth from interpreting the hammer-on as a legato note. I.e. Many synths can interpret a new note-on msg before the previous note's note-off msg as a signal to play legato and either switch samples or play the sample without the attack portion. This is, of course, for sample based synths. But other types of synth can also implement legato in the same way. Any suggestions or help is appreciated. Thanks, Aaron
Hi Aaron, excellent question.
Interestingly I asked the same question here at Fishman a couple of years back, and eventually made changes to the TriplePlay controller firmware to fix the problem with "old note-off message sent before new note-on message" in Trigger bend mode when playing hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc. We released the fix for this about one year ago (where now note-on appears before the note-off) in version 1.5. So if you want legato triggering (with capable synths obviously) I would suggest upgrading the TriplePlay software from v1.4.x to v1.5.19 or later, then run the standalone and allow it to update the controller firmware. Hope this helps.
Regarding the speed of the pitchbend when you use other bend modes, the Motif might have some sort of smoothing feature for pitchbend, so if so then try to disable that or set it to minimum. For example, I have seen this controller smoothing in the plugin SynthMaster One. The TriplePlay controller itself does very fast bends when you play a hammer-on, no smoothing or other added delay, but not exactly realistic as a legato trigger.
I will think about the velocity problem you mention...some of that might be related to the velocity curve used by TriplePlay vs. that used by the Motif. Sadly the MIDI spec does not specify how MIDI velocity should map to note amplitude, so every company kind of does whatever they think makes sense. Another factor is how the TriplePlay calculates the velocity; if the string is recently plucked firmly, and then you quickly play a gentle hammer-on, the string retains much of it's vibrational energy and thus triggers a pretty hot note. Conversely when the string is not vibrating and you play a firm hammer-on, I think that you will agree that TriplePlay does not generate a too hot note, if anything it tends to be a little bit too soft. So some of it is string physics. But like I said, I will think about solutions.

AaronMusic

Hello and thanks for the quick and informative reply. I updated my TriplePlay software and firmware and the difference is dramatic. And I am delighted. As you might guess, I haven't used the units for a while. I bought three of them for a project some years ago, designed and built some USB to MIDI boxes, and spent some time writing software inside the boxes to implement the legato "noteOn/noteOff" effect by re-interpreting pitchBends. But I never got really satisfactory results and went on to other things. I'm now emeritus and have more time so I've just now returned to this project. Obviously I should have been paying more attention to what your company was doing in the meantime. So I have now subscribed to your newsletter. I must say that with the MIDI stream as it is now coming from the transducer, it look pretty easy to process and refine the messages to get the results I seek.  Thanks again for your help, Aaron