Originally Posted by: PaoloT

Since when I started playing wind instruments, I discovered that a note can be extremely variable. At the same time, my teachers say that I should keep a note as steady as possibile, without inflating it. Only a phrase, they say, should normally vary in dynamics, not a single note.

Probably your teacher want you to be able to play steady notes. I'm a wind player myself and steady dynamic free notes are more an exeption than normality in musical context. At least in my world :-)

I use the TEControl too and I set it to CC1. It replaces my modwheel in most cases. I removed the mouthpiece and blow directly into the white plastic at the end of the rubber tube. So no air gets through, it feels like blowing into a pencil, but the pressure is measured and controls the instruments dynamic. That way I can use it for strings and don't get out of air that fast. I can even breath while holding the note when I close the white plastic tube with my tounge.

Saxer and Fabio, thank you very much for your precious hints! I completely forgot about the ability of turning on/off the Velocity XFade for each patch. Very useful!

The mouthpiece removal hint is to be tried. My breath support is not yet exceptional, but it's nice to know that I can experiment with different embouchures. And this time, it is no debate about plastic or ebonite mouthpieces!

Paolo

Originally Posted by: FabioA

Ciao Paolo,
You are correct. I think it's better 99% of the time to have velocity to control dynamic for staccato and percussive articulation. But I would'n use a cc to turn on and off the velocity xfade; in VI pro you can go in the advanced panel, select edit and set velocity xfade off (the other possibility is on or global) for every single patch. So you can set the xfade off for every staccato, pizzicato articulations and use cc1 (or cc2) to control dynamic for sustained articulations.

I guess the global option might be useful (in the light of this question) for "long shorts" (talking about sfz or fp patches), which often might be triggered conveniently by velocity, however, sometimes could be further shaped by wiggling the vel-x-fade fader (to produce the faint idea of a sffz for instance)...

-Lukas

Hi,

Again on this issue. I've created all my custom presets with all cell's velocity control set to Global, to leave myself freedom to use them in the way better fitting the piece I'm using them.

I'm tempted to add the CC28 (XFade controll on/off) as the first message of all techniques/articulations in an expression map/articulation set. To be true, this is what I've done with my xmaps for the SynSE library for Dorico. Techniques are relatively few, and I'm using this library mostly for skething, so I can accept to lose some flexibility. 

But I'm asking myself If I want to do the same for the full VI library. With it, I need nuance. At the same time, having the dynamic control method automatically selected speeds writing a lot. No need to insert a lot of CC28 events in Logic, or hidden switches in Dorico.

How would you manage exceptions? Expression maps and articulation sets tie selection to each note, so there is no way to switch dynamic control locally. Adding dedicated techniques/articulations seems to overcomplicate things.

Paolo