If you don’t have a keyboard with Poly Aftertouch, download this gig file and check the scriptlet inside. It works very well (check out this thread to learn more)!
Here’s how the story goes:
I recently purchased a Hydrasynth Desktop and quickly learned that in order to make it shine - you need a Polyphonic Aftertouch keyboard. In addition to Hydrasynth keyboards, there are very few that generate PolyAT and I have one. It’s a Kurzweil MIDIBOARD … and It is from back in the stone age … but it does send PolyAT. So, I used it as a control for my testing.
I created a rackspace that has 4 test cases (see Bonus below):
(test 1) I used my Kurzweil MIDIBOARD playing the Hydrasynth Desktop directly through Gig Performer. I checked the MIDI data being sent using a MIDI monitor. … and of course, the Hydrasynth liked the PolyAT coming from the MIDIBoard.
(test 2) I used my A-800 Pro which sends Aftertouch to two instances of InsertPizHere’s "MidiConverter3 ". The first instance converts velocity to PolyAT and the second instance converts Channel Pressure to PolyAT. Next, I had to merge the extracted MIDI data. Finally, I had to merge the PolyAT MIDI data back in with the original note data. This is a lot of overhead and quite convoluted … but it does work.
(test 3) I used my Physis K5EX keyboard controller and Tim Shorebridge’s PPG plugin which does all the Aftertouch-to-PolyAT conversions and extractions for me. The problem here is that you need the “Voltage Modular Plugin” as a wrapper and then “Tim’s PPG Plugin” to run under Voltage Modular. It is a little convoluted but PPG itself is very cool and does some more advanced tricks as well … but as it turned out, I didn’t need all of them to drive the Hydrasynth. It works but it is a little tedious to set up as you have to know how to add plugins to voltage Modular.
(test 4) I used my Kurzweil Forte and the PolyAt Scriptlet to drive the Hydrasynth Desktop. I noticed that the Forte did not generate enough Channel Pressure from Aftertouch to really ignite my Hydrasynth. So, I added 30lb. of turbo boost right in the scriptlet … now the Hydrasynth knew I meant business and responded accordingly! The scriptlet is very small and does the job well and has almost zero latency.
For tests 2 - 4 I could have used any keyboard that generates Aftertouch but I just wanted to make sure various keyboards would not give me trouble … and they didn’t. Using GP’s MIDI monitor, I was able to check all the detailed MIDI activity being sent to the Hydrasynth.
Conclusion: This PolyAT scriptlet is the obvious choice because it’s a simple solution with low CPU overhead. Put a scriptlet between your MIDI In block and your plugin! Best of all, you can add features later as you need them.
Download: PolyAT with Scriptlet.gig (23.9 KB)
Credits: @Phil , @pianopaul (Script)
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Bonus: Four Test Cases for creating PolyAT → 4 Test Cases for creating PolyAT.gig (59.3 KB)