Articulation Maps - How do they save time?

[bdr]

I admit I don’t have a deep understanding of Articulation Maps in terms of their usage. I certainly understand what they seem to do. But don’t I still need to hit key switches as I’m playing if eg my violin line moves from legato to tremolo? And so don’t I then still need to have the list of keyswitches for each patch handy? Or a TouchOSC or similar mapping on my iPad? Which is kind of what I’m doing now.

Am I missing something, or misunderstanding?

[cuttime]

I hope this gets a sticky, as I am having a bit of a hard time understanding AMs as well. I'm just not used to that way of working. I sure could use a video walkthrough/handholding. For what I've been able to grok thus far: Articulation maps don't show as low notes/keyswitches in the QSscore/MIDI piano roll. Also, the articulation chases, independent of the location in the score. Ok, everybody tell me how I'm wrong.

[cuttime]

From David Das:

https://youtu.be/5CTtG1NznVI

[bayswater]

From David Das:

https://youtu.be/5CTtG1NznVI

This is excellent.

[synergy543]

From David Das:

https://youtu.be/5CTtG1NznVI

This is excellent.

Yes, Thank you David! These walkthrough videos are extremely helpful. And yes, I did read the fine manual first but some things are better understood visually.

[James Steele]

From David Das:

https://youtu.be/5CTtG1NznVI

Rats! You beat me to it! I also added it to the Tutorial Video section of this site here:

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=68963

[hammerman]

From what I understand (and part of this comes from David Das himself) is that they are MIDI Event chaseable, meaning you can start anywhere in your sequence and you'll get the correct articulation every time. Keyswitches don't do that. Also, you can transpose the track without worrying about deselecting all your keyswitches.

And you can remap to have the same notes trigger the same type of articulation across different libraries. I also heard from MOTU that you can import Cubase maps into DP. Like these: https://www.babylonwaves.com/expression-maps/

[bayswater]

There's a part of Dave's video where he shows editing articulations by dragging them in a lane below the MIDI data. Seems to me I could create an articulation map that is essentially a drum map. The advantage is the map can be made global so it is available to any project and doesn't need a MIDI device to be created. And I could use one to remap drum VIs that don't use the standard MIDI layout.

[HCMarkus]

The advantage is the map can be made global so it is available to any project

IIRC, there is an option to make an Articulation Map global.

[bayswater]

The advantage is the map can be made global so it is available to any project

IIRC, there is an option to make an Articulation Map global.

Right. That's what prompted me to consider this. A DP Drum map can't be global, and I've never found a way to make it into a clipping.

[dix]

It's probably Articulation Maps 101, but something very useful I just realized is that you can, instead of setting up articulations for key switches within a patch, you can set them to MIDI channels within a multi-instrument instead. That way shorts and longs in a single MIDI track's performance can go to different instruments (each with a single articulation loaded), that are then assigned to different outputs, making the creation of separate Shorts and Longs stems much easier. That will definitely save time. ....that is after one takes the time to set it up.

[bayswater]

It's probably Articulation Maps 101, but something very useful I just realized is that you can, instead of setting up articulations for key switches within a patch, you can set them to MIDI channels within a multi-instrument instead. That way shorts and longs in a single MIDI track's performance can go to different instruments (each with a single articulation loaded), that are then assigned to different outputs, making the creation of separate Shorts and Longs stems much easier. That will definitely save time. ....that is after one takes the time to set it up.

Can you give a brief example? (I didn't take Articulation 101.)

[dix]

It's probably Articulation Maps 101, but something very useful I just realized is that you can, instead of setting up articulations for key switches within a patch, you can set them to MIDI channels within a multi-instrument instead. That way shorts and longs in a single MIDI track's performance can go to different instruments (each with a single articulation loaded), that are then assigned to different outputs, making the creation of separate Shorts and Longs stems much easier. That will definitely save time. ....that is after one takes the time to set it up.

Can you give a brief example? (I didn't take Articulation 101.)

I was afraid someone would ask that

An example would be, say you have a string part that switches from sustains to marcato, but you want each of those articulations to show up on different stems (I often like to create separate "Shorts" and "Longs" stems for strings and brass). If you use a key switched patch they'd both be coming from the same output. Keeping separated, dedicated, non-keyswitched instruments (for sustains and marcatos) on different MIDI channels, and mapping Articulations in DP that sends MIDI to the separate Channels/instruments (instead of sending to MIDI notes in a KS patch) allows you to send each of those articulations to different outputs, so the discrete stems can be created. ...hope that all makes sense. it sounds way more complicated than it is.

[bayswater]

Keeping separated, dedicated, non-keyswitched instruments (for sustains and marcatos) on different MIDI channels, and mapping Articulations in DP that sends MIDI to the separate Channels/instruments (instead of sending to MIDI notes in a KS patch) allows you to send each of those articulations to different outputs, so the discrete stems can be created. ...hope that all makes sense. it sounds way more complicated than it is.

Thanks. I see what you're doing. I probably wouldn't do that, but I can see that you do a lot of useful things with articulations other than just send a note to a VI that changes the sample being played.

[Michael Canavan]

Articulations live in the CC editor at the bottom of the MIDI editor, as bars that look like notes.

To answer the original question in case the Das video didn't clear it up, Articulation maps don't need a specific note to trigger the next articulation, so it's not showing up in your sequencer etc. and doesn't get in the way of your score, in fact it will give you the relevant score symbol for that articulation.

You don't have to use the keyswitches at all, ( which is great, becuase I've always hated using them, since you really need to be careful to hit them right before you play the note ), you can manually drag the keyswitches around to different labeled articulations.

I really like how they implemented this, I've only really used Logics versions, and it's a selection menu after you select the notes. It's much worse IMO, since you can't see any of the articulations like you can with DP's CC lane.

What I'm curious about now is you seem to be able to use this like mentioned for different MIDI channels in a Kontakt instance, so you could ostensibly mix and match articulations, from various companies even.