| << Byrd on war | 2003 > February | John McLaughlin interview >> |
Sunday, 16 February 2003
Emagic virtual instruments ::
The other night, I was transported back to 1979 and my old Fender Rhodes by Emagic’s EVP-88 piano software instrument. You mean, I don’t have to be a mechanic, constantly under the hood to tune a key, fiddle with a pickup, tine or hammer?! It doesn’t have any bum notes!
Tonight vanished into the ES2 synth (complete with parameter randomization), and then the EVD6 (physical model of a classic Clavinet and more...). These are great-sounding instruments. I had no idea what I was missing!
But now this dinosaur who owns a DX7 is missing a couple of things. There doesn’t seem to be a way to map MIDI program changes to saved settings. This isn’t a big deal in a studio environment, but what if I want to play a synth live with a PowerBook? I want to push a button, not navigate two levels of pop-up menus. Maybe I just haven’t found the way yet.
Nor does there seem to be a way to have MIDI volume control messages control the synth and not its mixer channel, which is problematic because (a) full volume is +6.0 dB and often clips and (b) what if I want to put an intense reverb effect after the synth and I want the realtime volume control before the reverb? I suppose I can route the synth to a bus and put the effects on a bus, and maybe there’s a way in the Environment to route volume to the synth.
Perhaps someone will enlighten me.
UPDATE (18 Feb): I asked and received. The trick is to use Logic’s Environment to reroute the volume control to the synth’s output level parameter, and filter it out of the normal chain.
There’s always more :-)
| << Byrd on war | 2003 > February | John McLaughlin interview >> |