# SWAM Woodwinds Reblow?



## Gingham Jones (Mar 19, 2022)

Hey, does anyone know if there's a thing like with the strings where you can use a sustain pedal to rebow when a key is pressed? Or do you just have to program each note that you don't want legato?


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## HCMarkus (Mar 19, 2022)

Try a breath controller... you can do it for real. Plus you'll know when you need to breath, so you won't play phrases that would kill a real clarinetist. 






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## Gingham Jones (Mar 20, 2022)

Those do sound interesting however I recently have seen an urgent need to tame the GAS, so I was hoping there was a solution for keyboard.


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## Saxer (Mar 20, 2022)

I don't see a difference between blow and reblow. There's no bow change like in string world and the SWAM instruments are dry so there's no sucking effect. Just hit the key again and make sure there's a small but not too long gap between note off of the previous note and the 'reblow'. No problem for the SWAMs.


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## youngpokie (Mar 20, 2022)

Gingham Jones said:


> a thing like with the strings where you can use a sustain pedal to rebow when a key is pressed?


I'm curious which one this is. 

I use the sequence that works in opposite way: key press while sustain pedal is on, to generate detache rebowing. This works the same way for woodwinds with CC64. 

From memory, what you describe for strings (sustain pedal while key press is on, ie the reverse order) only works when the manual bowing mode is active, no?


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## Gingham Jones (Mar 20, 2022)

I mean maybe it's my incompetence as a keyboard player but I feel like a real woodwind player could tongue a new note faster than I can press a key twice in a row so then I have to go slightly elongate the prior note. Excuse my poor wording, maybe 'reblow' was a bad choice. But yeah, like the detache mode in the strings, I hoped there'd be something similar for woodwinds. I don't get a new attack if I press a key with the sustain pedal down in the woodwinds. I could see that being unrealistically fast too though, so fair enough, I'm still learning how woodwinds work! Guess I'm stuck with more editing, thanks for the replies.


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## youngpokie (Mar 20, 2022)

Gingham Jones said:


> I don't get a new attack if I press a key with the sustain pedal down in the woodwinds. I could see that being unrealistically fast too though,


I just tried it with clarinets. In my default settings sustain pedal triggers overblow on very high note velocity. To replicate the strings behavior with detache, I had to move CC64 to the actual sustain parameter which is unassigned in my default settings. When I do that, sustain pedal generates normal sustain and I get very clear and well-defined attacks on each subsequent note. Could it be you need to check your controller mapping too, if that's what you're after?

However, if you are referring to very fast repetitions of _the same note _as opposed to a sequence of different notes, then I think you are limited by the speed of your fingers and response of your keyboard. Flute and Clarinet in particular can re-tongue the same note at extremely high speeds by using the tongue to say "ta-ka-ta-ka". There's also triple tongue technique: ta-ka-ta ta-ka-ta, etc.

I don't have a breath controller either, so I program these into an expression map (knowing that it won't be quite like the real thing). But if someone has it and could post a midi file that shows how exactly the breath controller records velocity and expression curve (with any gaps) during re-tonguing of the same note, that could be super helpful for folks who have to draw it manually.


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## doctoremmet (Mar 22, 2022)




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## Rob (Mar 22, 2022)

youngpokie said:


> ... But if someone has it and could post a midi file that shows how exactly the breath controller records velocity and expression curve (with any gaps) during re-tonguing of the same note, that could be super helpful for folks who have to draw it manually.


hi, here is a short video of Swam flute tonguing a single long note, and the corresponding midi:



View attachment Swam_flute_tongue.mp4


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## rdieters (Mar 23, 2022)

in this old video there is a demonstration of tonguing with a breath controller (starts at 1:20)


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## youngpokie (Mar 23, 2022)

Rob said:


> a short video of Swam flute tonguing a single long note, and the corresponding midi


This is amazing, Rob - thank you!!

In Cubase, the file shows a long single note which is sounding like multiple notes because of the CC11 curves - as you also show in the video. I'm not completely sure how to understand this: perhaps you simply overdubbed that single note just to quickly show the CC curves or because it's something related to the controller? Thanks again, much appreciated!


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## Rob (Mar 24, 2022)

youngpokie said:


> This is amazing, Rob - thank you!!
> 
> In Cubase, the file shows a long single note which is sounding like multiple notes because of the CC11 curves - as you also show in the video. I'm not completely sure how to understand this: perhaps you simply overdubbed that single note just to quickly show the CC curves or because it's something related to the controller? Thanks again, much appreciated!


Main point of my example was to show the shapes the BC draws when doing double/triple staccato on the same note, so that someone without BC could draw something similar by hand... I quote from your post "post a midi file that shows how exactly the breath controller records velocity and expression curve (with any gaps) during re-tonguing of the same note, that could be super helpful for folks who have to draw it manually." I might have misunderstood your words though...


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## youngpokie (Mar 24, 2022)

Rob said:


> I might have misunderstood your words though...


No, not all all - I was just curious if a single long note was somehow related to the breath controller operation, but I really doubt it. Anyway - thanks again, this is really helpful!


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## Rob (Mar 24, 2022)

I played and held the note on the keyboard, while blowing in the BC... the BC itself doesn't send note-on messages, just controllers


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## gamma-ut (Mar 24, 2022)

youngpokie said:


> No, not all all - I was just curious if a single long note was somehow related to the breath controller operation, but I really doubt it. Anyway - thanks again, this is really helpful!


It may help if you think of the note commands from MIDI as the fingers holding the keys down on the wind instrument and nothing more. Blowing is what makes the notes. If you're using breath as the primary controller, there's no need to release and press the keys again - but a lot depends on how you've got the CCs set up in something like SWAM.


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## Gingham Jones (Mar 24, 2022)

Thanks all for the replies. Here's what I'm doing right now, it's with a keyboard/expression pedal. The first 3 notes I just want re-tongued so there's a tiny gap but it's just a pain to slightly elongate the notes from when I played them. Is there a better way or is the answer still "get a breath controller"? Also, if anyone knows how to make the expression curve color in Studio One not black, please do tell. I don't know why that started, it didn't used to be black.


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## Gingham Jones (Mar 26, 2022)

I notice in Rob's video that the expression returns to 0 after every blow. Obviously this would be impossible to do with a pedal, but is that necessary to get the right legato transitions or note attacks?


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## gamma-ut (Mar 27, 2022)

You might want to have a look at the MIDI settings on the Advanced tab and the attack control setting. For breath controller use, relying on expression-only is the most natural setting (for me at least). However, with an expression pedal, to get sharp attacks easily, change that to Velocity Hard so that note-on velocity takes control over how the note is expressed - and play or paint in each note you want. Alternatively, you can shape it with a mix of expression and velocity using the Vel Soft setting.

These instruments have a crapton of settings for fine-tuning and the manual isn't great, so it can take a while to get it set up so it works for you. The manual could do with a few "if you've got this kind of setup, try this..." pages, and is largely geared towards people using a breath or wind controller as it does come to life more naturally in that scenario.


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## Gingham Jones (Mar 28, 2022)

Nice! For some reason I thought the attack control setting was something totally different. It was on soft so I changed it to hard and I think that had a positive impact. Thanks for pointing that out.


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## youngpokie (Mar 28, 2022)

gamma-ut said:


> with an expression pedal, to get sharp attacks easily, change that to Velocity Hard so that note-on velocity takes control over how the note is expressed - and play or paint in each note you want.


@gamma-ut I have been trying to understand how various controller settings work together to deliver and shape the sound in the exact way AM SWAM break it down in the manual:






This one is using regular attacks. If I understand what you're saying correctly, then setting velocity to Hard would mean the velocity value is more readily "punching through" the overall CC11 curve, for lack of a better word, to shape and sharpen the attacks. A bit like a compressor, no?

This makes perfect sense to me and it's how I've been programming it into Dorico expression maps: namely, narrowing the overall velocity range and then directing it to the higher portion of the range to get to accents, marcato and so on. So, for example: Velocity=Hard, Velocity range: 40-110. 

So - to set double-tonguing and triple-tonguing in an Expression Map in the way Rob's revealing MIDI graph shows would mean setting Expression to very low values and note velocity to Hard and very high values. 

But the second time Note-On appears in this graph is still a bit of a puzzle - specifically Auto-Expression. In an expression map, I'm using Velocity Hard (range: 30-90) combined with regular Legato note length to automate Portatos, by ear. Higher velocity values combined with Legato transitions seem to work very well, but I'm never able to hear or figure out what Auto-Expression means.


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## gamma-ut (Mar 28, 2022)

youngpokie said:


> This one is using regular attacks. If I understand what you're saying correctly, then setting velocity to Hard would mean the velocity value is more readily "punching through" the overall CC11 curve, for lack of a better word, to shape and sharpen the attacks. A bit like a compressor, no?


The thing with physical-modelling instruments is that there isn't quite the one-to-one correspondence between settings and results that you might expect from classical synthesis. On the old Yamaha VL, you had to experiment with things to get an idea of how they really affected the sound even though the manual was overall pretty good. Because, behind the scenes, there is a mathematical model with inputs that don't necessarily align that well with the actual inputs and are using proxies to emulate the mechanics of the real instrument.

I see where you're coming from but the compressor analogy doesn't work for me. I think it would be better to consider that the instrument considers the combination of two sources to come up with a "blow+lip pressure" input to the model. In breath-only, velocity has no effect. In the other two, expression provides a base level of pressure and velocity is modelled as a sudden impulse that either dominates the calculations during the attack period (Hard) or just provides a bit of a boost (Soft). Without a clear indication from the manual, I can't be sure but that seems to be how it works.

There are things like overblow threshold that aren't explained well in the manual and don't seem to have an entirely predictable outcome, again probably due to the way the settings interact with the model.



youngpokie said:


> So - to set double-tonguing and triple-tonguing in an Expression Map in the way Rob's revealing MIDI graph shows would mean setting Expression to very low values and note velocity to Hard and very high values.


It depends how Rob has his version of SWAM set up, but that seems reasonable.



youngpokie said:


> But the second time Note-On appears in this graph is still a bit of a puzzle - specifically Auto-Expression. In an expression map, I'm using Velocity Hard (range: 30-90) combined with regular Legato note length to automate Portatos, by ear. Higher velocity values combined with Legato transitions seem to work very well, but I'm never able to hear or figure out what Auto-Expression means.


The manual isn't a great deal of help here. My guess is that a script partially overrides the expression inputs when playing overlapped (ie legato) notes to try to make the transition sound right - backs off a bit like vocal or string libraries so that it's less synthy. I haven't experimented with it all that much and if the expression is dominated by velocity, it probably has limited effect whatever the setting.


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