Native Instruments Monark Manual page 42

Overview of MONARK Ensemble
View B─Overview of MONARK User Interface
LEGATO Parameters
The Legato section allows detailed settings of the keyboard behavior.
(1) PRIORITY: With a monophonic synthesizer whenever two or more notes are played at the
same time a decision has to be made of which of the notes should be generated by the audio
engine.
MONARK provides three different schemes for this: LOW, HIGH and LAST note priority. In
LOW or HIGH note priority mode, when more than one note is played simultaneously the lowest
or highest note respectively is processed by MONARK's audio engine. In LAST note priority
mode MONARK keeps track of the order in which the notes were played and always switches
processing to the last (or newest) note.
Last-note priority has become the de-facto standard behavior for monophonic synthesizers. In
the predigital or computer controller era monophonic synthesizers usually offered either low or
high note priority since these modes were easy to realize. So for authentic playing you may
want to give e.g. LOW priority a try. Really, it makes a huge difference!
All three modes have in common that as soon as you let go of a key (generate a MIDI Note
Off), while at least one key is still pressed, the current keyboard state and the note priority is
reevaluated, and the pitch will change accordingly.
(2) ENV RETRIG.: The envelope retrigger section determines the envelope behavior when two
or more notes overlap and the note priority evaluation switches the audio engine to a new note.
MONARK offers three different envelope retrigger behaviors:
In the NEVER setting, overlapping notes don't cause MONARK's envelopes to be triggered.
This is the classic legato behavior and authentic to how the instrument MONARK was inspired
by handles overlapping notes.
Alternatively, the NOTE ON option allows the envelopes to be retriggered with a new note. This
is another classic mode. Since it allows separating notes more clearly it can be useful for play-
ing (or sequencing) typical sequencer sounds.
The third and possibly most unusual is the ON/OFF option, which is to restart the envelopes
not only when a new note is being played but also when a note is released.
MONARK - Manual - 42