User Guide

PC2 Made Easy
29
8. Velocity Switching
You can use how hard you strike the key to switch between zones. This is usually most
effective if you have programs that have samples of the same instrument at different
velocity levels. Most PC2 programs donÕt do this, so you would most likely use this
technique when controlling an external module. The following example demonstrates the
technique with internal PC2 sounds. (The PC2 DOES have some programs, such as
many of the acoustic piano programs, which switch velocities between samples within a
single program.)
1. Create a Setup with two zones, following tutorial #1 (from the section Starting from
MIDI Setups Mode). Assign Program #75 Doo stacc. to zone 1 and #74 Baa stacc. to
zone 2.
2. Press the Velocity button. If you are not on zone 1, press the Zone 1 button. Press the
>> button 3 times. The minimum velocity for this zone is 1. Press the >> button again.
Change the maximum velocity to 80. Press the Solo button so you hear only zone 1. Play
the keyboard with varying degrees of force. The voices gets louder as you strike harder
until you reach a velocity of 80, then it does not play at all.
3. Press the Zone 2 button. The maximum velocity is set to 127. Press the << button to
go back to the Vel Min parameter. Set it to 81. Play the keyboard with varying degrees of
force. Notice you hear no sound until you reach a velocity of 81, then zone 2 continues to
get louder as you play up to 127. Press the Solo button again to hear both zones. Play
the keyboard to hear the switching between the two zones.
Another useful application is to add a zone with velocity. You could create a 2 zone
layered Setup. For one zone, you allow it to play through all velocities. But for the
second zone, you change the MinVel parameter so that zone only kicks in above a
certain velocity. Now when you play the keyboard, you hear one zone or two, depending
on how hard you strike the keys. This is great for adding a little extra kick to a sound, if
you add some type of short percussive program for the second zone. You may also want
to set the volume for that zone lower than the first zone (as described in tutorial #4) so
that the effect of adding the second zone is subtler.
Another possible application is to assign the same program to two different zones
(make sure each zone is on a different MIDI channel), and then set one zone to FX-A and
the other zone to FX-B. Now by choosing a different effect for each effects bus, you can
use velocity to switch your program between two different effects.