Samuel Tibell

Hi there, I know it's more than a year ago you discussed this, but I just wanted to share some ideas that maybe could help some of you. I just started to try and properly learn the Play interface and EW Hollywood Strings, and since I'm working in Logic Pro, I saw some possibilities regarding articulation setup and I think this solution would be fitting nicely in some circumstances at least (regarding computer specs and number of tracks etc.) Here's what I managed to do: Being able to have one midi track per instrument and on each track achieve more articulation changes than the keyswitch patches can give you. You don't have to use keyswitches, and you don't have to use a track for every articulation, even if you want both legato and staccato articulations. (At least Hollywood Strings doesn't offer you that kind of versatility on its keyswitch patches). To do this you need to take advantage of Logic's built in articulation setup, which you can find in the track inspector box in the inspector area. 1. Make as many software instrument tracks as you want instruments, and open up an instance of PLAY on every track; let's say you want to make a piece for a string quartet - then make 4 tracks with an instance of Play on every track. 2. Let's say we're on our Violin 1 track. Now add all the patches that represents the different articulations that you want. See the picture below for an example of what I did: As you can see I've chosen five different patches/articulations: Sustain, Spiccato, Runs, Staccato and Tremolo. What you also may notice is that each one of them has their own midi channel (1-5). So, 4. Set every articulation to their own midi channel. So far I think you may have had the same strategy, and next maybe you would have made one midi track for each patch, either taking advantage of the multi-timbral function or the multi-output function with four aux-tracks, which you would've assigned to separate midi-channels. But, here's what you could do instead: 3. Go to the inspector, open up the track inspector and reach down to 'articulation set'. Choose 'new'. 4. Add as many articulations as you have patches. 5. Choose the same midi channel for each articulation as you did in your Play instance. For me it would look like this: NOTE: Make sure you SAVE your articulation setup. Otherwise you may loose all the work in step 9 next time you open up your project. 6. Now, in your Play instance, select the patch with midi channel 1. For me it would be my sustain patch. I'm doing this because I want to be able to hear something when I play on my midi keyboard, since the keyboard is set up communicating on channel 1. It's also beneficial to have the sustain patch on midi channel 1 since it's easier to play and envision your music, even if sustain isn't the only articulation you want! 7. Now, go ahead and record a sequence/melody. 8. Open up your piano roll and BOOM now watch at the left box with the quantization and velocity settings, suddenly there is an articulation set-up! 9. Now select a note that you want to change articulation to. Choose one of the articulations you've set-up. Do this for your whole melody and... Enjoy what you hear! 10. Feel the relief, the pleasure. Forget cutting and pasting notes, forget dealing with several midi tracks for every instrument, forget annoying keyswitching... I don't know if other DAW's have the same articulation set-up function, but take a look and see if you can find something similar if you don't have Logic Pro. NOTE: Another way to do this is to open up the 'event' window (it may have other names in other DAW's), and select every note you want to affect and choose which midi channels they should signal through Make sure you've set up your PLAY instance with patches and midi channels so you know what articulation every channel is assigned to. With the articulation set-up tool in Logic, you're free to choose how many instances of PLAY in relation to instruments you want, and how many patches at every PLAY instance you want in relation to what your computer can manage. Good luck, I hope this was helpful. Regardless it was helpful for me ;)