Portamento question

Ok, I will simplify my question.

Dear Fantom O owners can you please confirm this?
1. Choose a voice (either Flute or a violin)
2. Turn on Portamento
3. Press key C3 and without releasing C3, press B3. (You should hear a portamento from C3 to B3) Pay attention to the B3 voice.
4. Now Release the two keys (C3 and B3) and just press B3 again.

Question: Does the B3 that you heard in step 3, sound different from the B3 you hear in Step 4?

I just did an experiment. I used two partials that are split over the key range, to make it easier to hear. Based on that, the following seems to happen:

When playing the second note, it uses all parameters from the second note, except for the pitch. The pitch starts at the previous note and then smoothly changes to the second note.

With that:

• Does the B3 after a portamento pitch change from C3 sound like a B3 without portamento? Yes.
• Can the volume change due to velocity? Yes.
• Is the transition from C3 to B3 smooth? No.

Thank you so much for taking the time and replying back.

Unfortunately, the place I am from, doesn't even have decent musical shops, let alone display the keyboards and so I have to rely on forums like these.

xp30 wrote:

• Is the transition from C3 to B3 smooth? No.

Your response gave me good confidence except for the above point.
So, Let me understand what you said based on my example.
if you press C3 and hold it and press B3, the following happens.
1. The C3 waveform will immediately stop and change to a waveform of B3 but pitch'ed down to C3
2. The pitch will then proceed to move from C3 to B3.
Did I understand you correctly?

I didn't understand the concept of two partials, split over the key range.

Thanks in anticipation.

MusicianIndia wrote:

Your response gave me good confidence except for the above point.
So, Let me understand what you said based on my example.
if you press C3 and hold it and press B3, the following happens.
1. The C3 waveform will immediately stop and change to a waveform of B3 but pitch'ed down to C3
2. The pitch will then proceed to move from C3 to B3.
Did I understand you correctly?

Yes, that is correct. However, it is not just the waveform that changes. The envelopes also start again, and the manual describes it as "retriggering".

However, I just noticed that there is another set of options that affect the behavior: Legato Switch and Legato Retrigger Interval. These options can be used with portamento (only if in Mono mode), and the legato options affect the "retriggering".

If both legato and portamento are enabled (and effective), then the second press will not retrigger. Instead, the original note will continue playing and the pitch changes. The new velocity also takes effect, which can change the sound instantaneously, if synth parameters are mapped to velocity (e.g. amplitude).

Example with portatemento and legato turned on, and legato retrigger interval set to 12 semitones:

• Press C3, and the C3 waveform plays with C3 pitch.
• Legato to G3: The C3 waveform continues playing (without retriggering envelopes), and the pitch slowly increases to G3.
• Legato to D4: D4 is more than 12 semitones away from the currently sounding C3 waveform. That means legato will not take effect, and it will retrigger. The D4 waveform starts playing with reset envelopes. The pitch starts at G3 and slowly increases to D4.

That means you have slightly more control over how portamento behaves. However, there is no fading between old and new waveforms/envelopes. Either the old waveform/envelopes keep playing, which can sound strange if you move far away from its original pitch. Or you immediately trigger the new waveform/envelopes, which can result in a sudden change of sound.

If something is mapped to velocity, then things get more complicated.

xp30 wrote:

That means you have slightly more control over how portamento behaves. However, there is no fading between old and new waveforms/envelopes. Either the old waveform/envelopes keep playing, which can sound strange if you move far away from its original pitch. Or you immediately trigger the new waveform/envelopes, which can result in a sudden change of sound.

Portamento in strictly sample-based instruments is tricky. Samples change in character as they are shifted in pitch, and so there are compromises involved in implementing portamento. As you point out, there are different ways to set things, which can allow you to choose your compromise, but I think there always is one.

It seems to me that even a cross-fading approach would involve compromises. I mean, at the half-way between point two pitches, simultaneously sounding half-volume versions of a low-note sample shifted upwards and a high-note sample shifted upwards won't sound the same as a single sample of that in-between pitch, plus what happens if the samples you're cross-fading from and to are at different points in their sampled envelopes, sampled vibrato, or other "baked in" characteristic?

Back to the OP, have you tried this with the SuperNATURAL string sounds? That's where they add modeling, which could conceivably possibly be used to address this kind of thing.

Thank you all for your responses. Really appreciate

xp30 wrote:

• Press C3, and the C3 waveform plays with C3 pitch.
• Legato to G3: The C3 waveform continues playing (without retriggering envelopes), and the pitch slowly increases to G3.
• Legato to D4: D4 is more than 12 semitones away from the currently sounding C3 waveform. That means legato will not take effect, and it will retrigger. The D4 waveform starts playing with reset envelopes. The pitch starts at G3 and slowly increases to D4.

Thank you xp30
Well explained. My doubts are cleared.
Owned two keyboards from the other two flagship brands and yes this played a spoil sport.
And sadly yes, again Sadly this one factor is going to be detrimental for biting the bullet as my kind of music requires a lot of portamento. (Shall talk more below)

anotherscott2022 wrote:

It seems to me that even a cross-fading approach would involve compromises

Thank you for your response, Scott, However I have to slightly disagree here.
Crossfade (Morphing between samples during a portamento) isn't bad, or atleast didn't sound so.
A Big brand has achieved this on its latest arranger keyboards. I have spent nearly an hour and never felt it lacking for my style of music.
(You can search for Portamento crossfade on youtube)
Also not to compare with, but DAWs achieve this fantastically. But I have been trying my level best to stick on to hardware keyboards but competing with macs on the Tonal quality. Let's see how far I will last before making the switch.

So, what's stopping me from buying the keyboard with the crossfade portamento?
- Absence of velocity to control the volume during a portamento. (A big minus) There is a limitation to what a foot controller / joystick can achieve during fast play.
- Their boards generally have a problem with split voice. If I play a chord with a left voice and play a portamento'ed voice on the right, the notes played on the left, somehow seems to interfere with the Portamento'ed notes on the right.
- Limited voice editing.

anotherscott2022 wrote:

Back to the OP, have you tried this with the SuperNATURAL string sounds? That's where they add modeling, which could conceivably possibly be used to address this kind of thing.

There are very few "serious" musical shops around, and even if I travel to a large city around 800km's away, those deal only with the other two big brands.
I am keeping my eyes and ears open for reviews.


An admission.
My first and last tryst with Roland was back in 1996 Feb when someone was using an E16.
I was BLOWN AWAY with the tonal quality, and I say this even today, this mini toy'sh keyboard could give the bigger keyboards like Ensoniq a run for their money.
I spent my entire lunch time with the keyboard (switches for pitch bend and vibrato) quite novel back then.
To this day, I have a secret love for Roland and believe that they have the best tonal quality.

After owning the other two brands, (unless there is a miracle from the other two) it would be either Roland or will surrender myself to Software.
Apart from Portamento Crossfade, I wish Fantom O / fantom has the ability to create custom accompaniment.

Thank you all for your responses.

MusicianIndia wrote:

Thank you for your response, Scott, However I have to slightly disagree here.
Crossfade (Morphing between samples during a portamento) isn't bad, or atleast didn't sound so.

I wasn't saying it would be bad (and I have no personal experience with it)... what I was trying to say was that, at least conceptually, I could see where it could work better on some sounds than others, e.g. I think there's no perfect single way to implement portamento on sampled sounds that will always work best.

MusicianIndia wrote:

So, what's stopping me from buying the keyboard with the crossfade portamento?
- Absence of velocity to control the volume during a portamento. (A big minus)

Check this video at 2:25 for a demonstration of a Yamaha arranger with crossfade portamento also employing velocity controlled portamento... though the velocity is controlling portamento time rather than volume in this demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjtxaXofeg

The manual for that board indicates that velocity can also be used to affect the volume of portamento, screenshot below.

https://i.postimg.cc/q7zSRtmd/Screen-Shot-2023-01-03-at-10-21-26-AM.jpg

And then, really interestingly, check out the thread at https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php?topic=60270.0 (and the video it links to)... it seems to indicate that, even on the higher end models that don't have this capability (e.g. PSR-SX700/900 and Genos), you can program those portamento parameters with their YEM software, load the voices into the keyboard, and play them with the behavior you want (even though those models will not let you manipulate those parameters from their own editing screens).

anotherscott2022 wrote:

And then, really interestingly, check out the thread at https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php?topic=60270.0 (and the video it links to)...

☺That thread was started by me, before I sold off the PSR S975.
(I deliberately did not want to bring in the name of a competitor to this forum though.)

The said advance portamento features are only available in the Middle Eastern version which isn't available in my place + I will have to sacrifice stuffs that the SX 900 offers.

And you are spot on the fact that for the SX / Genos, one can use the YEM (but then, I'll have to depend on a computer for live editing)
There are other limitations of YEM E.g. You can't simply push your multi sample but have to bundle it into a pack. (Topic for another discussion)

Velocity to portamento is the right feature, but sadly only available on the Middle Eastern keyboard.

Lets see if they bring out these features onboard their latest keyboards.

Out of Topic : As much as I have read the manuals of Fantom O, one can't create a custom multisample voice by importing waveforms.. right?

Once again Thank you much scott for the research and time taken. Hats off.

MusicianIndia wrote:

And you are spot on the fact that for the SX / Genos, one can use the YEM (but then, I'll have to depend on a computer for live editing)

Yeah, it would be a nuisance to have to load YEM to adjust these parameters... but once you have the ones you want for a given sound, I would think that at least that sound should be set for how you always want to use it. I mean, it's not a parameter you'd actually need to edit live, right? Though even then, I could see having to go back and forth a few times to get it just right. Not great... but a whole lot better than not being able to do it at all, and at least once you've done the work, you've got the sounds you want behaving the way you want them to, I think.

It is weird that they only have it on their ME version, though. It's not like other sounds couldn't benefit. That video I linked to show it being effectively used just on a violin sound. Having already programmed it into the OS for the ME version, I wonder what the thinking is behind omitting it from others.

MusicianIndia wrote:

Out of Topic : As much as I have read the manuals of Fantom O, one can't create a custom multisample voice by importing waveforms.. right?

That's a good question. I tried importing a multi-velocity-sample soundfont into the Fantom-0 (using Roland's SVZ Sample Converter), and it did not work... IIRC, the different "pieces" of the sound ended up mapped to different keys! Chicken Systems announced Translator support for the new Fantoms over two years ago, but it hasn't happened yet... and who knows what will and won't work until we actually see it in the wild. It looks like it should be do-able manually, though. In the Parameter Guide, under Oscillator Wave Group, you can select waves from these categories:

INT Uses the built-in waves.
EXP Uses the expansion waves.
SAMP Uses the samples as waves.
MSAMP Uses the multisamples as waves.

But I could find no other reference to MSAMP in any of the manuals!

An interesting thing about the Fantom-0: VA is part of the core synth engine, and one huge benefit of VA is the absence of pitch anomalies. At least for pure VA tones, you can do pitch changes (including portamento) over the whole range without glitches.

The FA series had VA in the SuperNatural synth engine. However, it supported fewer portamento and legato features. That means the Fantom-0 might be a significant improvement over the FA for people who frequently need these features. However, I have no idea if it is good enough for your needs.

MusicianIndia wrote:

Out of Topic : As much as I have read the manuals of Fantom O, one can't create a custom multisample voice by importing waveforms.. right?

The reference manual describes multisamples on pages 85-92. The Fantom only supports multisamples that are split by key range. It does not support velocity layers in multisamples. If you need velocity layers, then you need to create a multisample for each velocity, and layer them within the tone.

xp30 wrote:

An interesting thing about the Fantom-0: VA is part of the core synth engine, and one huge benefit of VA is the absence of pitch anomalies. At least for pure VA tones, you can do pitch changes (including portamento) over the whole range without glitches.

Yes, portamento for non-sample based sounds don't have the inherent issues of pitch-shifting samples, so the Fantom's VA engine should have no issues, nor the FM engine in a Montage/MODX, etc. But that may not be much solace if you want to apply portamento to sample-based sounds... ;-) I do wonder if some of the SuperNATURAL Acoustic tones may handle portamento in better ways, though.

Getting back to the aside about using YEM to allow non-Middle-East arrangers to have the advanced portamento capabilities, if you want to apply those portamento functions to the Yamaha's built-in sounds, it looks like that will work on is the Genos, but not the PSRs. Discussed at https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,65022.0/topicseen.html

xp30 wrote:

The Fantom only supports multisamples that are split by key range. It does not support velocity layers in multisamples. If you need velocity layers, then you need to create a multisample for each velocity, and layer them within the tone.

Ah yes, Fantom's usage of "multisample" only means restricted by key range, not by velocity. So for (up to) 4 velocity-based multisamples, you'd need to assign your (up to) 4 key-range-restricted multisamples to the (up to) 4 partials, with the partials themselves then restricted by velocity.