User Manual

i2M musicport © Copyright 2012 Sonuus Limited 11
Desktop Editor Software Manual
useful, you can configure zones to respond, or to not respond, to the hold pedal. In this
way, some zones will hold when you press the Hold pedal, and some zones will remain
unaffected. This can be used, for example, to sustain synth-pad sounds while playing a
lead synth on top of it.
If the “hold” option is on, the zone will respond to the Hold pedal. If it is off, the Hold pedal
will not affect that zone.
Chromatic Mode
The i2M musicport accurately tracks the pitch of notes and outputs pitch-bend MIDI
messages but sometimes it is preferable to send notes without pitch-bend information
(
e.g., when playing piano sounds). This can be done by selecting the chromatic option.
When this is selected, the pitch bend option will be disabled because these two options
are mutually exclusive.
Chromatic mode essentially quantises notes to the nearest semitone. By enabling the
scale option, notes can be further quantised to only those notes within a particular
musical scale, so it becomes impossible to play out of key.
NOTE:
When scales are used, the transpose option (see below) will not transpose the
note by a fixed number of semitones, but will instead transpose by a fixed number of
notes in the chosen scale.
In scale mode, when you play a note that isn’t part of the selected scale, the nearest note
within the scale will be played instead. By enabling gap mode, playing out-of-scale notes
will result in no
MIDI notes being sent.
Pitch-bend Mode
When pitch bend mode is activated, the pitch-bend range control becomes available.
This lets you select the semitone range which corresponds to the maximum range of the
MIDI pitch-bend controller. By default this is set to 2 semitones (which is the most common
setting) but it can be adjusted from 1 to 36 semitones (36 semitones = 3 octaves).
Top Tip: When using the chromatic option, it is very important that your guitar
is tuned accurately and has good intonation. Otherwise the
MIDI notes
produced may not match those you are fretting. Moreover, if you mix
these chromatic notes with the original guitar sound, or with notes
from other zones supporting pitch-bend, there can be dissonance
which can sound unpleasant.
Top Tip: You can make practising musical scales simpler by using the
scale
option with gap mode enabled. It is then very easy to know when
you play a note that’s not in the scale because you won’t hear
anything from your synth — no
MIDI is sent for out-of-scale notes.