Piano Roll options

Vuijkie

Vuijkie

New member
I recently discovered (I'm embarrased..) that my piano roll in Logic has a button at the left corner of the bottom with a lot of other functions. Some are pretty obvious what they do (pan, Pitch) but other are weird and not directly noticible. For instance what is velocity? I figured it would be something like volume but I tried it and it is not really. Kind of cool that my notes get some color but I don't want to mess my sound up.

the things I really want to know are velocity, since i've seen video's where people have used it very much but I don't see what it does. And I am curious about breath.

Any FP's that can help me figure it out?
 
velocity is a term that was used to describe the loudness of a sound when played

- it came from the measuring of time elapsed between key pressed (breaking contact with the off switch) and key making contact with the on switch connected to it

- the time elapsed is a direct measure of the force used to move the key and can be converted into a vector (a directed force) in the range 0-127; the smaller the time frame the larger the value.

- if your sounds are not responding to velocity this may be because they are one-shot sounds with no velocity layers or the sound module (sw) does not respond to velocity or you have velocity sensitivity issues - i.e. there are only a small number of discrete velocity layers and teh velocity values you are trying all fall into the same velocity range
 
Hmm, I'm not sure I have enough experience or knowledge to know exactly what you have just explained. The way I understand it is that you can adjust the sound of different notes (layers often) in 1 piano roll instead of layering it on different tracks. is that right? So for instance all your notes on C2 are lower velocity then your notes on C3 wich means you can balance between High and Low sounds in velocity (=sort of volume control) Do I understand this correctly?
 
no - a velocity is simply an index into how loud the sound should be: 0=no sound; 127=loudest possible for this sound. Think of it as hitting the keys hard makes the sound loud, hitting the keys soft makes the sound soft.

It is modified by the channel volume (midi continuous controller 7) and the expression control (midi continuous controller 11).

So to balance notes using velocity whilst it may seem like a natural idea, is not necessarily the best way to approach it.
 
Hmm, I still dont think i understand, i tried it, but the velocity's lowest option is 1, and I dont notice any difference between the sound when it is on 1 or 100..
 
simply means that the sound is not velocity sensitive - it is a one shot and only has one level......
 
Vuijkie said:
Hmm, I still dont think i understand, i tried it, but the velocity's lowest option is 1, and I dont notice any difference between the sound when it is on 1 or 100..
Click to expand...

i use logic and im not a pro in producing but think about velocity like someone playing a live instrument such as a piano or drums. velocity is how hard the keys or drums are being hit. obviously the harder you hit say a kick drum the louder the sound will be. its the same on logic or any daw. by changing the velocity on a drum pattern gives it the effect of sounding like it is being played live compared to a drum pattern with all the same velocity which will sound obvious that it is being arranged for example through ultrabeat or a piano melody that is being penciled in on piano roll. hope that made sense.
 
Yes that last one makes sense (for me at least, lol) But then I agree with the earlier comment that it won't really be the easiest way to adjust the velocity. I think it would be better to tweak with the volume in your mixer no? Unless you recorded something with multiple layers, that way you can adjust each layer in comparisson to the overall sounds. Do I understand this right?
 
Nowadays velocity can be applied to other parameters in softsynths and softsamplers (like filter frequency), but volume remains the most common.

Velocity is basically analogue to the mod wheel messages in that it in general can be mapped to whatever the vst lets you map it to.
 
Don't forget different velocities will also change the harmonics of the analogue sound if you're playing acoustic stuff, which is the idea behind mapping velocity to, say, the opening of a filter on a soft synth.
 
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