I’ve been fiddling with my Kronos and noticed that I can slowly “build up” notes by holding the sustain pedal and repeatedly hitting a key. Unfortunately, this only works in one direction.
That said, this might be a good way to simulate polyphonic aftertouch on a normal keyboard.
- You hit a key and press sustain.
- You release the key.
- While still holding sustain pedal, you hit the key again with different velocity. The “velocity” of the note starts sliding towards the one you just entered with pre-determined speed.
This is already something no keyboard I know of can do. With a bit more software, you can do better:
- If you keep hitting the key, the keyboard increases some counter. It decreases that counter every N milliseconds. This counter becomes yet another parameter applied to sounds. I.e. drumming the key would make the parameter go up, hitting it at a steady pace would hold it steady, doing nothing would eventually fade out the paremeter.
With this approach, you could simulate what boards like Osmose are doing by using a bit of software and a sustain pedal. Moreover, while this not as intuitive as polyphonic aftertouch, it’s a real piano-playing technique people clearly can master. The only limitation is that you need to time the release of sustain precisely (which is the case with any use of pedals anyway).
Which leads to to the second idea. What if instead of on-off switch, this would be how Hold sequencer worked on OP-1 field?
- You would hit a key to sound the note. It would auto-sustain.
- You would hit the same key with more velocity to make it louder.
- You would hit it softer to quiet the note down.
- At a certain threshold of velocity, the note would stop completely.
This would be amazing for drones and pads. It would also be much more intuitive than on-off switch that we have now.