Legato vs Always On Portamento

[Mutiny in Jonestown]

Hi all, I'm using a Motif to control my Radias for mono lead sounds. My Motif understands something called 'Portamento Mode' but my Radias does not. 'Portamento Mode' = whether the portamento (aka glide) effect will occur between every note (note 1 played and released before note 2 is played) or just between notes played legato (note 1 held down while note 2 is played). This is an extremely important parameter to give character to your lead synth solo playing. Since our beloved Radias doesn't understand portamento mode, are we doomed to having portamento occur between each and every note played whether we want it or not? Luckily no!

I found something buried in the Korg M3 forum that works perfectly for Radias as well & I want to post here for anyone interested.

Here’s how to implement portamento mode on a Radias:

1) Set the voice for monophonic, single trigger mode, portamento=0
2) Setup envelope generator 3 for Attk=10/Decay=0/Sus=127/Rel=0
3) Modulate Portamento Time with envelope generator 3, choose an amount of modulation which equals the portamento time you want when playing legato

That’s it! And it works great...you now have exclusive legato portamento on a synth that doesn’t have exclusive legato portamento!

Here’s why it works:

“The way it works is that EG3 stays at its max value of 127 (sustain) when playing legato (because of the single trigger mode), but when releasing the key, EG3 quickly goes down to 0 (release), and takes a little while to get back up again when playing new notes (attack: 10). So when releaseing the key, the portamento that is controlled by EG3 stays on 0 for a little while so that there is no portamento. But when playing legato (overlapping notes), it stays on 127 and produces portamento.”

Credit for the how and why goes to rfoshaug from Norway on Korg forum thread: http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... 6e2a56bda5

Have fun!

[CharlesFerraro]

Genius! This belongs in the Tips and Tricks thread

[Mutiny in Jonestown]

Hi Charles, sounds good, I'll post it to the tips&tricks thread.