PART TWO of "Blast Off with Instant Orchestra - a How To video tutorial"

[rbowser-]

Zoom back into the Stratosphere with the second chapter of "Blast Off with Instant Orchestra." The special controls in ARIA for Instant Orchestra are explored.

The thread with Part One can be found HERE.

By the end of this series of tutorials, all newcomers will be able to create music with Instant Orchestra they can be proud of!

Click the rocket ship to blast off to the full, widescreen video - AND be sure to have the quality settings (gears at lower bottom right) set to 1080 for high resoluton playback.

You'll be able to read every word on the screen and follow along easily.


(click the picture for the video)
"BLAST OFF WITH INSTANT ORCHESTRA!"

Randy

[filkertom]

Excellent, Randy! I presume that there are as many Blend knobs as there are components of a given preset? And what precisely is being manipulated by those Brightness and Saturation knobs? MIDI CC charts are maddeningly vague.

Thanks again for doing this! It's amazingly cool and very clear and useful.

[rbowser-]

Excellent, Randy! I presume that there are as many Blend knobs as there are components of a given preset? And what precisely is being manipulated by those Brightness and Saturation knobs? MIDI CC charts are maddeningly vague.

Thanks again for doing this! It's amazingly cool and very clear and useful.

Did you grab some popcorn for chapter two, Tom? hehe---Glad you're enjoying these and getting some use out of them.

The Blend Knobs only appear for the "Blending Textures" patches, like the EZ String patch I have in the project being put together in the tutes. All the instruments/patches in IO have customized controls available in ARIA's Controls page, and so what's available is different from instrument to instrument. In the case of the Blending Textures, there will be those balancing/blending knobs, one for each layer used in the patch.

A large number of the MIDI control numbers available in the official MIDI spec are left open for programmers to use as they need. IO's programmers have come up with things like "Saturation" and "Brightness" which are unique and specific to IO. You can see on the Controls window of ARIA that Saturation is controlled by CC24 and Brightness is controlled by CC27 - those are the MIDI control assignments the programmers assigned these features to, but those CC numbers could control different parameters in different synths. Some CCs are constant and universally used by soft synths - like CC7 controls the volume faders of a synth, and CC10 controls L and R panning. But the effect other controllers have will vary from synth to synth.

So, the effects you're hearing when using controls like Saturation and Brightness are bits of programming the IO developers came up with - Brightness seems to be doing some complex manipulation of high frequencies akin to what an EQ* plug-in does. But whatever specific programming was used on those controls is really only known by the programmers. And the CC numbers they've assigned them to is just their particular use of MIDI CCs--you see?

Randy

* typo fixed, thanks Tom!

[filkertom]

I do indeed, and thanks for that insight. Except... "EG plug-in"? Do you mean EQ?

< /popcorn >

[rbowser-]

I do indeed, and thanks for that insight. Except... "EG plug-in"? Do you mean EQ?

< /popcorn >

Ha! Thanks for the typo alert - I'll go fix that so it's not confusing.

Keep that popcorn handy-- The third, juiciest and longest chapter yet is coming next week. A theme is improvised, with some "instant arrangement" tricks coupled with the instant big IO sound.

Randy

[SysExJohn]

Another great tutorial Randy,

It would be fair to say that I'm moderately familiar with much of the CC stuff and how it can be used to control synths, having an old Cheetah MS6 (now upgraded with the latest PROM) and a Yamaha PLG 150-AN (Prophet 5 emulation) in one of my MUs.

Having said that, I guess I didn't realise just how customisable IO is, and that is something I'll be experimenting with right away. I suspect that'll come in useful in my next project "Urlicht" from Mahler's 2nd.

I think tutorial 3 is where I'm going to learn a lot.

Great work, and very well explained.
SXJohn.

[rbowser-]

Another great tutorial Randy,

It would be fair to say that I'm moderately familiar with much of the CC stuff and how it can be used to control synths, having an old Cheetah MS6 (now upgraded with the latest PROM) and a Yamaha PLG 150-AN (Prophet 5 emulation) in one of my MUs.

Having said that, I guess I didn't realise just how customisable IO is, and that is something I'll be experimenting with right away. I suspect that'll come in useful in my next project "Urlicht" from Mahler's 2nd.

I think tutorial 3 is where I'm going to learn a lot.

Great work, and very well explained.
SXJohn.

Good deal, John - Glad you're gleaning some things from this. Lots more to come!

Randy

[RichR]

This is an excellent demonstration of controllers and how they work. Nice Job, Randy!

[fabiolcati]

i suspect that'll come in useful in my next project "urlicht" from mahler's 2nd.

wow!......

[GRB53]

Another great tutorial Randy,

It would be fair to say that I'm moderately familiar with much of the CC stuff and how it can be used to control synths, having an old Cheetah MS6 (now upgraded with the latest PROM) and a Yamaha PLG 150-AN (Prophet 5 emulation) in one of my MUs.

Having said that, I guess I didn't realise just how customisable IO is, and that is something I'll be experimenting with right away. I suspect that'll come in useful in my next project "Urlicht" from Mahler's 2nd.

I think tutorial 3 is where I'm going to learn a lot.

Great work, and very well explained.
SXJohn.

+1 !!!!!!! Thanks so very much for taking the time to make these vids Randy...very much appreciated my friend!!!