portamento

C

cheloman

New member
can somebody give me a in depth explanation on portamento the theory behind it and how to effectively apply it to r and b.I tried raping google for info on it but was unsucessful in my searches.
 
Portamento is about the smoothness and speed of a slide. It is originally an unfretted string instrument technique - violins, viola, 'Cellos and double bass.

It has had a new lease of life under MIDI because the word portamento is short for the phrase "portamento time".

The general idea behind portamento time is that the further away two notes are the shorter the portamento time should be and vice versa

Applying it is simply deciding on a slide between two notes and then how fast the slide should be executed.
 
As an even more simpler explanation, portamento is simply a smooth slide between two notes (there's also polyphonic portamento, but it gets a bit more complex). What bandcoach was talking about was that when the interval between the notes increases, the slide has to be proportionately faster to make it to the next note "in time". In that Vybe example, I'm only hearing that single downwards slide (with delay), which could be accomplished by a number of things...not necessarily portamento, but it's one possibility.

The easiest way to figure this out is simply by taking a synth which has a porta/glide/slide (many names for this dear child) and trying it out. Make a simple melody line with some bigger jumps between notes (like, say, an octave) and then play around with the porta amount to see how it effects the sound.
 
Portamento is something which I see as an extension of an Arpeggiator. Works almost like an auto-harp or something in that you can select a chord or a number of notes and have them repeated at different speeds and in different orders and make pretty cool sounds that you might not be able to play with your handspeed.
 
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Well, it has a few different uses. You basically just adjust the amount of it during the sound design process. Just a tiny bit of it can turn an annoying clanky synth into a smooth lead sound. A lot of it can give this kind of "floaty" feeling, for lack of a better word. I also use it occasionally for things like sweeps and effects. Sometimes, I also use the pitch bend for the same effect, but some vsti's don't let you pitch bend very far, and the slide sometimes will be more chromatic than smooth.

So I'm working on this youtube remix from this sample: woo! - YouTube

And in my song I use a double portamento along with and EQ sweeping white noise to create a cool ramp. Here's the song:

Woo 9-22 - - Output - Stereo Out by rappersfriend on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free
 
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