Zone Parameters
Velocity
Musician’s Guide 5-9
and cannot be used for note-ons). You can think of Scale as being a proportional change to the
velocity, while Offset is a linear change. The maximum values for Offset are ±127. The
illustration below shows the effects of Velocity Offset. Note that Velocity Offset is the only
parameter changed in this example; the other parameters are set to their defaults (scale = 100%,
curve = linear, min = 1, max = 127).
Offset and Scale work together. If scaling takes the velocity out of the ballpark Ñ for example,
you want to set it to 300% but that puts all of your notes at maximum velocity Ñ using a
negative offset, say around -60, can make it possible to still play at different volumes, although
your curve will still be a lot steeper than normal. If you use a negative scaling, then you must
use an offset: otherwise all of your velocities will end up as zeroes (well, ones actually, since a
MIDI note-on with velocity zero is something else). So to get true inverse scaling (that is, -
100%), you must set an offset of 127 to get the full range of velocities. Setting the offset to 127
and the scale to -100% produces a slope like this:
Velocity Curve
Vel
Curve lets you taper the velocity response. The default setting is ÒLinearÓ, which means
that the output velocity changes directly proportionally to the played velocity. ÒSin+Ó sets the
taper to resemble the Þrst quarter-cycle of a sine wave, in which there is a ÒbulgeÓ as the
velocity increases from 1 to 64. If you start playing softly, and then progressively louder, the
response will increase more quickly than normal until you reach the middle of the velocity
MIDI Velocity
127
0
127
Strike Velocity
64
64
Velocity Offset: -64
Velocity Offset: +64
low velocity keystrikes result in MIDI velocity of 1;
maximum MIDI velocity reduced
low velocity keystrikes produce
medium MIDI velocity and greater
MIDI Velocity
127
0
127
Strike Velocity
64
64
To Next Page
Loading...
