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This
is a brief tutorial on the essence of setting up breath control
patches on the Yamaha TX802 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 TX802, 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 TX802, 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
TX802 VOICE:
A
TX802 voice is composed of a single, 6 operator FM (frequency modulation)
synthesis element. 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 FM voice can be programmed for breath control sensitivity.
Thus, the TX802 FM voices 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.
DETAILED
INSTRUCTIONS:
1)
Select voice edit(II)/brth/ and set "EGbias" to a substantial
value (try 99 for starters).
2)
Select voice edit(I)/eg/ and set the envelopes for each operator
(especially the carriers) to generally be fast attacking and moderate
to fast release 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).
3)
Select voice edit(I)/sens/. for starters, set "velocity"
to 0 for each operator. 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.
4)
Select voice edit(I)/sens/. for starters, set "ams" to
7 for each carrier and 0 for each modulator. this will give the
maximum response range on volume and no range on timbre. these settings
are the most significant area for experimentation in making the
voice responsive to voice control. increasing the ams sensitivity
for modulators will give a change in timbre with breath, and reducing
the ams sensitivity for carriers will leave some residual volume
at 0 breath level.
CONCLUSION:
That's
enough to get you started, but by no means is this a comprehensive
TX802 programming guide. Now that you have the hang of breath control,
keep experimenting with other programming ideas!
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