User Guide

5-16
Descriptions of Parameters
Setup Editor Parameters
The Velocity Menu
The parameters in this menu control the PC2R’s response to the attack velocity of the notes you
play—how hard you strike the keys, for example, if your MIDI source is a keyboard. The
settings for the velocity parameters affect both the PC2R’s sounds, and the MIDI information the
PC2R transmits via its MIDI Out port.
A Bit of Background
When you play a note on your MIDI source, the PC2R generates a Note On message with an
attack-velocity value corresponding to how forcefully you play the note. Attack-velocity values
range from 1 to 127; they never go lower than 1 or higher than 127. A value of 1 is the softest and
127 is the loudest.
The velocity parameters interact extensively with each other, so changing one parameter’s value
can alter the way that others affect the PC2R’s velocity response. We’ll give you a few examples
of this interaction. More to the point, it’s quite complicated to describe all the possible ways you
can use these parameters in combination with each other. As we describe each parameter, the
description assumes that all the other parameters are at their default values. Experimenting with
different combinations is the best way to understand how these parameters interact.
You can use the velocity parameters in several interesting ways: customizing the feel of your
keyboard to your playing style; compensating for velocity-response differences in instruments
receiving MIDI from the PC2R; triggering different sounds as you play softer or harder (see
Velocity Switching on page 4-24 to learn how to trigger different sounds at different velocities).
To illustrate how the velocity parameters work, we’ve included a number of graphs with the
parameter descriptions. In each graph, the horizontal axis (labeled Keystrike Velocity)
represents how hard you play. The vertical axis (labeled Final Attack-Velocity Value) is the
attack-velocity value that gets sent to the PC2R to and to the MIDI Out port after any
adjustments resulting from non-default values for the velocity parameters. The lines in the
graph are the velocity curve—which shows the relationship between every possible keystrike
velocity value and the resulting final attack-velocity value.
Velocity Scale (Vel Scale)
Increases or decreases the PC2R’s velocity sensitivity. The value for all zones in the default setup
is 100%—think of this as the normal value. Higher values increase the sensitivity; notes get
louder faster than normal as you play harder. Lower values decrease the sensitivity; notes get
louder slower than normal as you play harder. You’ll notice the difference more when you’re
playing hard than when you’re playing softly.
You can set negative values for Vel Scale, but doing so isn’t useful unless you also change the
value of the Vel Offset parameter (this is one of those interactions we mentioned). See Vel Offset
for more information.