Soundwise

Anderton
There is key switching and velocity switching, but what that won't do is randomized or round-robin switching,

 
There are ways to simulate RR switching. I'm going to screencap a video on this. Where can I read about key switching in RPro?

 
First I need to clarify I'm not talking about "expressiveness" keyswitching but standard velocity and positional switching. There's a fairly terse description on pages 97 and 98 of the Rapture documentation covering low/high velocity and low/high key switching. If that's not enough, let me know.
 

Anderton 
I also do wave sequencing with Rapture Pro, i.e., audio files trigger sequentially and crossfade into one another to produce a continually evolving timbre. 

That sounds terrific, but I have no clue on what you are talking about. Can you elaborate, please?


I think I should write an article about this...but meanwhile, here's the basic idea.
 
A simple example of wave sequencing is what Roland did with the D50. Memory was very expensive back then, so to create a (for example) "realistic" cello sound, they'd sample the short attack transient of a cello, then crossfade the end of the attack with a looped sawtooth waveform to provide the sustain. Because the ear is most interested in the first 300 ms of a sound (it’s genetically programmed – is that rustling in the grass wind, or a sabre-tooth tiger looking for fast food?), your brain would identify the sound as “cello” even though it ended up as a sawtooth.
 
Dave Smith, known as the father of MIDI and the true polyphonic synthesizer, built this capability into the Prophet-VS with a more advanced implementation that allowed for joystick control capable of sweeping among the sounds (like the Vector mixer in Rapture Pro). Korg’s Wavestation (which I think Dave designed or at least consulted on; not sure) took this to a higher level.
 
As a practical example imagine 100 ms of a sine wave, followed by 100 ms of a triangle wave, followed by 100 ms of a square wave, followed by 100 ms of a sawtooth wave, with crossfades among these to provide a seamless “morphing” from one waveform to another. It would appear as a continuous sound with a changing, animated harmonic structure.
 

 
There are two main ways to do wave sequencing in Rapture Pro:
 

• Load different waveforms into different elements, and delay the onset of envelopes so that the elements sound at different times.
• Assign the same step sequencer settings to amplitude for each element, and have different steps bring different waveforms in and out.

 
Make sense?
 
(Maybe it's time to change the thread title to "Gibson Patches - Where Are They? And Various Tips")
 

Anderton
First I need to clarify I'm not talking about "expressiveness" keyswitching but standard velocity and positional switching. There's a fairly terse description on pages 97 and 98 of the Rapture documentation covering low/high velocity and low/high key switching. If that's not enough, let me know.

 
Well, that was obvious. I was hoping there is keyswitching for different articulations.

Anderton 
I think I should write an article about this...but meanwhile, here's the basic idea.
{...}
Make sense?

Yes, I've heard about looped samples attached to sampled attack, just didn't know that simple saw waveforms were used for a loop portion. However an article on this subject would be awesome. )
 

Anderton
There are two main ways to do wave sequencing in Rapture Pro:

• Load different waveforms into different elements, and delay the onset of envelopes so that the elements sound at different times.
• Assign the same step sequencer settings to amplitude for each element, and have different steps bring different waveforms in and out.

Got a feeling I will learn this only by a lot of trial and error. An article or even a tutorial will surely be very helpful.
 
Thanks a lot for explanations, clarifications and Various Tips! 

Soundwise

Anderton
First I need to clarify I'm not talking about "expressiveness" keyswitching but standard velocity and positional switching. There's a fairly terse description on pages 97 and 98 of the Rapture documentation covering low/high velocity and low/high key switching. If that's not enough, let me know.

 
Well, that was obvious. I was hoping there is keyswitching for different articulations.

 
As you know (but others may not) typically you'd dedicate that "octave-you-never-use" on your 88-key controller to enable different articulations, but that's not possible with Rapture Pro because you can assign notes only as modulation sources (e.g., change panning based on keyboard note so the low notes come out of the left and high notes on the right). 
 
I have two workarounds for RP. One is to switch between two articulations with a footpedal or mod wheel, but that's only two articulations. The other is to do essentially keyboard "splits," where each split has a different articulation. Probably the best example of this (although not strictly about articulation, just variety) is a patch I did with power chords. Each covers an octave and one octave is major, one minor, and one only tonic + 5th. However this comes nowhere near the kind of keyswitching Kontakt can do.
 
Seems like the easiest way to update RP would be to have an additional parameter for each element that would solo that element in response to hitting a particular key on a keyboard. In a way Session Drummer does this already...the lower notes trigger patterns while the higher notes trigger sounds. Although this would mean a limit of six articulations (and less if a patch required using several elements), with multiple instances of Rapture you could exceed that number.

Anderton
As you know (but others may not) typically you'd dedicate that "octave-you-never-use" on your 88-key controller to enable different articulations, but that's not possible with Rapture Pro because you can assign notes only as modulation sources (e.g., change panning based on keyboard note so the low notes come out of the left and high notes on the right). 

Can't keyboard switching be programmed in the sfz file/s ?
 

Paul P
Can't keyboard switching be programmed in the sfz file/s ?

I checked some online resources on SFZ format, couldn't find tags, that allow for keyswitching:
http://drealm.info/sfz/plj-sfz.xhtml
http://noisesculpture.com/cakewalk-synthesizers
http://www.harmonycentral...wn-virtual-instruments
 
Although it is implemented in Aria/Sforzando engine, which is sfz based, looks like keyswitching in Aria player is its custom function:
http://plogue.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4389
 
 

Soundwise
I checked some online resources on SFZ format, couldn't find tags, that allow for keyswitching:

This is extracted [edited to shorten and add highlights] from Cakewalk's "The SFZ Format" :
 
Some of the features of the sfz format are:
"...
•    Unlimited regions of sample playback based on MIDI controllers (continuous controllers, pitch bend, channel and polyphonic aftertouch, keyboard switches) and internal generators (random, sequence counters)

sw_lokey
sw_hikey
Defines the range of the keyboard to be used as trigger selectors for the sw_last opcode.
sw_last    
Enables the region to play if the last key pressed in the range specified by sw_lokey and sw_hikey is equal to the sw_last value.
sw_down    
Enables the region to play if the key equal to sw_down value is depressed.
Key has to be in the range specified by sw_lokey and sw_hikey.
sw_up    
Enables the region to play if the key equal to sw_up value is not depressed.
Key has to be in the range specified by sw_lokey and sw_hikey.
sw_previous    
Previous note value. The region will play if last note-on message was equal to sw_previous value.
sw_vel
This opcode allows overriding the velocity for the region with the velocity of the previous note. Values can be:
current: Region uses the velocity of current note.
previous: Region uses the velocity of the previous note."


To what degree these are useful and/or are implemented in Cakewalks sfz driven synths is another matter.
 
 

Wow...as I've often said, I learn something new every day  Thank you Soundwise and Paul P!
 
This appears to be the droid you're looking for:
 
sw_down    
Enables the region to play if the key equal to sw_down value is depressed. 
Key has to be in the range specified by sw_lokey and sw_hikey.
 
I'll add that to some SFZ files and see if Rapture Pro supports the command. Stay tuned, and thanks again.

Thank you!
 

Anderton
Thank you!

You're very welcome.  It's not every day I can contribute something useful .
Going deep with sfz is high on my list of things I really want to do if I ever find the time.
 

Paul P
Going deep with sfz is high on my list of things I really want to do if I ever find the time.

 
It's really not hard at all once you get the hang of it, and I can assure you I am no programmer...the farthest I ever got was using BASIC to make things bounce around on a Commodore-64 screen, and a couple of command line things with OS X. I realized I had better stick with my day job.