Ableton Forum

Hi I'm wondering if it is possible to increase the velocity of an already triggered note. Not via a track volume envelope. I've specifically thinking of timpani drum rolls (as demonstrated by the gent below) in kontakt or a sustained violin.

How are you entering the note? When you a hit a key in MIDI, MIDI tells the synth 1) what note you hit and 2) how hard you hit it (and later 3) when you let go of the note)

But if you have a controller with MIDI aftertouch (hold down the key, then press harder), it'll send a message saying "now the key is being pressed harder!" and you can map that to the note volume.

A drum roll is essentially a bunch of tiny little short MIDI notes, so each note would get louder.

A violin would be more like aftertouch.

thanks for that

I'm entering note by midi editing, no midi controller with aftertouch I'm afraid. I noticed you can edit the aftertouch amount in the clip envelope editor, this didn't seem to affect Kontakt. Maybe Kontakt doesn't read it. The timpani instrument I use is a sampled roll which lasts as long as the midi note (ie I don't draw individual hits). I know what you mean though, I use that method with drum sample libraries.

then you must automate the volume itself.

I'm not a Kontakt user, but usually midi data has to be mapped to stuff. So in your Kontakt settings you must somehow link aftertouch to volume. It wouldn't be hardwired to volume all the time, one wouldn't be able to link aftertouch to say filter freq then.

A serious sample library (or physical modeling instrument) shouldn't use velocity to control how loud (as in how "hard" you play) a non-percussion instrument is anyway. The more rational choice would be to use the modulation wheel or an expression pedal - or breath controller (the obvious choice for wind instruments).

Adjusting volume is a poor substitute. A softly played violin is not only less loud than a vigourosly played one, the timbre is different. Same goes for... well, basically any acoustic instrument.

I think racks are the way forward for you.

an instrument rack would let you cross-fade between two or more devices playing at different intensities or map a single controller to a number of different device parameters.

or maybe you can use modulation in your midiclip to do it?