Legato-Enabled Sounds; Assigning A Midi Channel To The Part - Roland Sound Canvas SC-8850 Owner's Manual

Parts and Sounds

Legato-enabled Sounds

The SC-8850 provides legato-enabled sounds, which are ideally suited to legato
playing, and can realistically simulate this instrumental performance technique.
To understand this feature, consider how most string instruments produce sound.
Usually, a brief attack-like sound will be heard only at the very instant the string is
made to vibrate. After that a much mellower, attack-free sound continues to emanate
during the string's vibration. The legato-enabled sounds simulate such variable at-
tack-portion characteristics of string sounds by switching on or off certain special
voices within an Instrument according to the way the keyboard is played.
Instruments with a : at the end of their names (such as Violin :) are the legato-enabled
sounds.
Try out one of these sounds to hear how it works. Play a note and keep your finger
on that key while playing another note. You should hear a distinct attack portion
with the first note you play, while the second one contains almost no attack compo-
nents, and sounds much smoother.
At this time, L will be displayed following : of the Instrument name.
fig.4-21
If you want to sound the attack portion each time, simply release your finger from a
key before playing the next note.
At this time, L will not be displayed following : of the Instrument name.
fig.4-22

Assigning a MIDI Channel to the Part

To each of the SC-8850's 64 Parts, there is assigned an Instrument and also a Chan-
nel. Channels are a concept used in MIDI to distinguish notes that should be played
by different Instruments in an ensemble. Normally, there is no need to change the
channel of a Part when using the SC-8850. However, it may sometimes be interesting
to set two Parts to the same channel so that two sounds will simultaneously play the
same musical line. To change the MIDI channel of a Part, use the following proce-
dure.
fig.4-23e
MIDI channel 1 MIDI channel 2
Sound 1
46
MIDI IN
MIDI channel 15 MIDI channel 16
Sound 2 Sound 15 Sound 16
Legato control cannot be
switched on and off on an
Instrument basis. You
should choose and edit an
Instrument that meets your
intended usage.