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This
is a brief tutorial on the essence of setting up breath control
patches on the Yamaha TG77 tone generator. Being an abstract, thinking
type of person, I'm going to explain the concepts as well as the
details.
THE
BIG PICTURE:
A
typical synth patch is controlled over time by midi note on's and
off's, and the volume and timbre are modified over time by envelopes.
Each envelope is a preprogrammed contour. When we employ breath
control, we supplant some or all of the preprogrammed envelope contours
with the contour created by the nearly "continuous" stream
of breath control messages. Once you get the hang of setting up
voices to respond to breath control, you may want to make voices
respond to other controllers, as well, such as a foot controller
or modulation wheel. The same basic procedures will apply in that
case.
I'm
going to generally bypass the question of which breath controller
is used and how it is routed to the TG77, since that can vary widely.
I will just assume that, in some fashion, you route breath control
(continuous controller #2, or cc#2, for short) into the midi in
of the TG77, along with midi note events. Some options that I use
are: 1) remapping a mod wheel controller from my Casio keyboard,
2) breath control from my Yamaha BC2 and 3) remapping of volume
control from a Midivox voice-to-midi controller. other options include
dedicated wind controllers, such as the Yamaha WX7, WX11 or the
Akai EWI or EVI.
THE
TG77 VOICE:
A TG77 voice is composed of one, two or four elements. Both "common"
and "element" parameters will be modified. The TG77 has
both AFM (advanced frequency modulation) elements and AWM (advanced
wave modulation) elements. Each element also has two digital filters
and the cutoff frequency can be programmed to respond to breath
control.
AFM
ELEMENTS: AFM elements use 6 operator FM synthesis. Each operator
can be set up as a "carrier" or a "modulator".
The output of a carrier is sent to the audio output, while the output
of a modulator is sent into a carrier. Since modulators can be cascaded,
an operator may act as a modulator of some other operator while
acting as a carrier by receiving modulation from some other operator.
Breath control of a carrier will produce a volume response, and
breath control of a modulator will produce a timbre response.
Each
operator in an AFM element can be programmed for breath control
sensitivity. Thus, the TG77 AFM elements can be programmed to respond
very powerfully to breath control, since operators controlling volume
and various aspects of the timbre can be selectively programmed
to respond more or less to the range of breath control.
AWM
ELEMENTS: AWM elements are basic sample playback operators. The
volume of the output can be programmed to respond to breath control.
DETAILED
INSTRUCTIONS:
COMMON
PARAMETERS:
1)
Select voice edit/com/12(cntrllr) and set "egbiasdepth"
to a substantial value (try something from 64 to 127) and control
with 002 breath control.
2)
Select voice edit/com/12(cntrllr) and set "cutoff depth"
to a substantial value and control with 002 breath control, if you
want to control filter cutoff depth with breath.
AFM
ELEMENT PARAMETERS:
1)
Select voice edit/element/3(eg) and set the envelopes to generally
be fast attacking and moderate to fast decay with high sustaining
levels. If you leave some decay in the envelope, your upper breath
control dynamic will be limited by that decay (which may be desirable).
2)
Select voice edit/element/5(sensitv). I use a guitar midi controller
with breath control, and thus have a pretty good control over velocity.
I leave velocity sensitivity in the 0 to 2 range, maybe higher for
carriers (2) and lower for modulators (0). If you use a wind synth
controller which doesn't give you good control over velocity, you
may want to set this to 0 for all operators. set "amodsens"
to a large value for each operator you want to have respond to breath.
as a first trial, set all the carriers at somewhere from 5 to 7
and all the modulators at somewhere from 3 to 5. this will give
a larger response range on volume and a lesser range on timbre.
these settings are the most significant area for experimentation
in making the voice responsive to voice control.
AWM
ELEMENT PARAMETERS:
1)
Select voice edit/element/2(eg) and set the envelopes to generally
be fast attacking and moderate to fast decay with high sustaining
levels. If you leave some decay in the envelope, your upper breath
control dynamic will be limited by that decay (which may be desirable).
2)
Select voice edit/element/4(sensitv). As noted above, I leave velocity
sensitivity in the 0 to 2 range if i want a little bite from a hard
velocity note. If you use a wind synth controller which doesn't
give you good control over velocity, you may want to set this to
0. Set "amp mod sens" to a high value. +7 gives full scale
volume control, while smaller values leave some residual volume
even when breath control goes to 0.
CONCLUSION:
That's
enough to get you started, but by no means is this a comprehensive
TG77 programming guide. Now that you have the hang of breath control,
keep experimenting with other programming ideas!
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