On a fine day, 29-07-2004, Mac Duff wrote: >On 7/29/04 12:18 PM, "Julie Larson" <julielarson@...> wrote: > >> Hey Mac, > >> I have a question here though. Is it standard for an >> instrument that has multiple layers for....say keyswitching, to use >> polyphony for all layers even though only one layer is playing? > >> I play one note and the polyphony use is 4. Is there something I'm >> missing? > >According to the "Used" indicator on my EXS24's interface, no. I have a >big-ass bass instrument with finger, slap, acoustic and distorted samples, >all key switched. When I play one note, however, that event only consumes >one note of polyphony. So, I don't know what's happening there... Unless >maybe the stereo sample is actually two mono samples panned and therefore >two voices??! The answer to Julie's question is: it depends. If you have multiple layers and switch between them using velocity (the usual way of layer-switching), only the currently triggered layer is played (or more if you've applied x-fading). This is all common sense of course. However, if you've set e.g. Controller 1 to determine "Sample Select" instead of velocity, so that the mod-wheel cycles through the layers, _then_ all layers are played at all times, no matter how many actually sound. If you think about it a bit, this makes sense as well: when using the mod-wheel, you can access a layer at all times and there's no way for the EXS to know when that will happen, so the best it can do is trigger all layers at note-on. Besides, if the EXS only triggered a layer when it's really needed, you would always hear the attack-phase of all layers as soon as they're accessed. In the mod-wheel-triggering situation this generally is not what you want -- you want to move smoothly between layers, and for that it's (again) necessary for all layers to be triggered at note-on time. I'm not 100% sure about key-switched layers but it's easy enough to try out for yourself: make a 4-layer instrument and set up key-switching for all layers. Play one note and watch the polyphony indicator on the EXS: does it say 1 or 4 (probably the latter)? I think I remember that using _anything but velocity_ for Sample Select causes the EXS to trigger all layers at all times, so there you go... -- Hendrik Jan Veenstra h @ k n o w a r e . n l Omega Art: http://www.omega-art.com/