Friday Tips: Keyswitching Made Easy

As the quest for expressive electronic instruments continues, many virtual instruments incorporate keyswitching to provide different articulations. A keyswitch doesn't play an actual note, but alters what you're playing in some manner-for example, Presence's Viola preset dedicates the lowest five white keys (Fig. 1) to articulations like pizzicato, tremolo, and martel .

Fig. 1: The five lowest white keys, outlined in red, are keyswitches that provide articulation options. A small red bar along the bottom of the key indicates which keyswitch is active.

This is very helpful-as long as you have a keyboard with enough keys. Articulations typically are on the lowest keys, so if you have a 49-key keyboard (or even a 61-note keyboard) and want to play over its full range (or use something like a two-octave keyboard for mobile applications), the only way to add articulations are as overdubs. Since the point of articulations is to allow for spontaneous expressiveness, this isn't the best solution. An 88-note keyboard is ideal, but it may not fit in your budget, and it also might not fit physically in your studio.

Fortunately, there's a convenient alternative: a mini-keyboard like the Korg nanoKEY2 or Akai LPK25. These typically have a street price around $60-$70, so they won't make too big a dent in your wallet. You really don't care about the feel or action, because all you want is switches.

Regarding setup, just make sure that both your main keyboard and the mini-keyboard are set up under External Devices-this just works because the instrument will listen to whatever controllers are sending in data via USB (note that keyboards with 5-pin DIN MIDI connectors require a way to merge the two outputs into a single data stream, or merging capabilities within the MIDI interface you're using). You'll need to drop the mini-keyboard down a few octaves to reach the keyswitch range, but aside from that, you're covered.

To dedicate a separate track to keyswitching, call up the Add Track menu, specify the desired input, and give it a suitable name (Fig. 2). I find it more convenient not to mix articulation notes in with the musical notes because if I cut, copy, or move a passage of notes, I may accidentally edit an articulation that wasn't supposed to be edited.

Fig. 2: Use the Add Track menu to create a track that's dedicated to articulations.

So until you have that 88-note, semi-weighted, hammer-action keyboard you've always dreamed about, now you have an easy way take full advantage of Presence's built-in expressiveness-as well as any other instrument with keyswitching.

LINK:	http://blog.presonus.com/index.php/2018/11/30/friday-tips-keyswitching...
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