Comparisons of Geo and Naada instruments in GeoShred with SWAM instruments

wingwizard

@moForte said:

@GeoTony said:
@wingwizard , I’ve struggling to understand what it is that the y-axis velocity sensitive nature of GS does that velocity keyboard does differently (I’m not a user of VK btw) . Given that using an iPad almost certainly needs visual input (I’m not sure I’ve seen any GS musician not looking at the screen) then I’m not sure what difference there is between your brain deciding where to tap vertically on the y-axis compared with how hard to tap on VK (does it measure the size of your figure area?).. genuine question 😊

Look, I think that the developer of VKB has a great idea. It may work well with samplers, but with physical models its challenging. Every time I test it, I find that it delivers an unpredictable narrow range of velocities. When I want to get the GeoCello to respond with a hard string/body impulse response, an emotional expression, I tap at the top of the key and get it every time. Same for overblow on the flutes. I'm unable to do that reliably with Velocity keyboard. I've spent hours looking at Velocity Keyboard in MIDI Monitor side by side with GeoShred's "KeyY Touch" (and KeyZ touch aka 3D Touch). I'm not able to get either the full range of velocities or reliably reproducible velocities from VKB.

If someone has figured out how to get this to work, I'm open to looking at it and considering figuring out how to do something similar. I'm open to looking at videos showing how to tune VKB and get good wide range, reliable results. Send me a video at [email protected]

For me playing positionally on the keys for velocity has become quite natural. As a cue, I tap softly on the bottom of the key and hard at the top of the key, and I have the genuine sensation that I'm hitting the bow hard on the string or overblowing the flute.

Sorry I haven’t had time to make videos but this is exactly the same as my video would have been. It works great for me too. @Gavinski this also explains how the pitch correction works which we were talking about the other day. Perhaps you knew this already but I didn’t and can see why it might be subtle and kind of tallies with my slight feeling of a change to a glide like response

GeoTony

Here is the trick to allow polyphony with the GeoShred Geo…. and Naada instruments.
By default the Geo… instruments are monophonic (one note at a time) and the Naada instruments allow one or two notes (duophonic) .
The trick makes use of GeoShreds ability to output the notes from each string on a different MIDI channel.
The GS MIDI preset ‘MIDI Out Control’ outputs on channels 1 to 6. This will work with the Naada instruments but the Geo… instruments require channel 2 or above.
I have used a simple app called Medleyan to convert channel 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 etc. Note you could equally use the excellent Mosaic or the equally excellent and free StreamByter to do this conversion.
So there is …
One MIDI instance of GS which is the playing surface.
One MIDI instance of Medleyan (taking its input from the MIDI GS) to do the channel conversion.
Six Audio instances of GS each one taking its input from Medleyan and each one using a different channel from 2 (the high e string) to 7 (the low E string)
In this case all 6 instances of GS are set to GeoCello but they could be any Geo… or Naada instrument or any another App in any combination you want.

Gavinski

@GeoTony said:
Here is the trick to allow polyphony with the GeoShred Geo…. and Naada instruments.
By default the Geo… instruments are monophonic (one note at a time) and the Naada instruments allow one or two notes (duophonic) .
The trick makes use of GeoShreds ability to output the notes from each string on a different MIDI channel.
The GS MIDI preset ‘MIDI Out Control’ outputs on channels 1 to 6. This will work with the Naada instruments but the Geo… instruments require channel 2 or above.
I have used a simple app called Medleyan to convert channel 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 etc. Note you could equally use the excellent Mosaic or the equally excellent and free StreamByter to do this conversion.
So there is …
One MIDI instance of GS which is the playing surface.
One MIDI instance of Medleyan (taking its input from the MIDI GS) to do the channel conversion.
Six Audio instances of GS each one taking its input from Medleyan and each one using a different channel from 2 (the high e string) to 7 (the low E string)
In this case all 6 instances of GS are set to GeoCello but they could be any Geo… or Naada instrument or any another App in any combination you want.

Does just kind of make you wish though that there was a polyphonic mode for all of these, though, no? Is there an actually technical reason why you couldn’t just have one channel per string or even per note just baked into the app? And then you would just need a nice ADSR envelope and you could have beautiful, unique pads using the timbre of these gorgeous instruments but without the constraints imposed by the physical instruments.

GeoTony

Hard to argue against that @Gavinski 🤨

zqekdnxebq

Medleyan doesn’t appear to be available in my country/region (US App Store)

Gavinski

@zqekdnxebq said:
Medleyan doesn’t appear to be available in my country/region (US App Store)

I'm not sure that's really necessary. You can assign which channels geoshred sends each string out on, no Tony?

GeoTony

I wouldn’t bother with it @zqekdnxebq , I got it when it seemed to be on the up and up but as you say it seems to have disappeared.
I sure you can @Gavinski , if you edit the midi settings in GS then Minimum Midi channel is available to edit so you could change it to 2. I think I would just use a Mozaic or StreamByter script, probably a one liner to do it.

heshnote

Hello! I’m trying to figure out how to use GeoShred’s expression and Portamento automation in the piano roll editor of Cubasis. I’ve been using the stand-alone SWAM instruments penciling in the expression and modulation options in the piano roll with no problem. How can you do the same with GEOSHRED instruments in Cubasis? I greatly appreciate it, thanks!

moForte

Heshnote,

For GeoShred all models (GeoSWAM or Naada) are controlled by MPE. Expression is on the MPE KeyZ parameter which is Channel Pressure, aka Channel Aftertouch. So you want to automate "Aftertouch". See this image here:

Note that for most of the models, Channel Pressure is controlling more than one parameter and often the response curve of each parameter is run through a lookup table. For instance for the GeoTenor Sax, Channel Pressure is controlling "Expression", "Growl" and "Flutter".

Growl is run through a lookup table.

You would never be able to get this kind of complex instrument behavior by directly controlling automation parameters, so it's better to control the MPE Expression Parameter.

Here is our nutshell explanation of MPE:

https://www.moforte.com/geoShredAssets6000/help/FAQs/index.html#MPE

MPE in a nutshell

• Channel 1 is the manager channel. Messages sent to this channel go to all channels on the receiver. This is where to send modWheel (cc1) , global pitchBend ... Note that messages sent to channel 1 apply to all voices on all channels.
• Channels 2 ... n are the voice channels. There are 2 common interpretations of this, channel/note and channel/row
• MPE messages, per channel
  -- pitchBend aka KeyX (this is how independent pitchBend is achieved)
  -- cc74 aka KeyY, usually used for "brightness" but can be used for swells as well.
  -- Channel Pressure aka Channel Aftertouch (NOT poly aftertouch) aka KeyZ. Can be used for swells, or other pressure related expression