Percussion Velocity

Controls: Sgram/PT Dialog >> Pitch-to-MIDI >> Percussion Setup
Changes: vv=n

When a MIDI Percussion sound is played, its loudness is affected by the overall Percussion Level (volume) setting, and also by a velocity value for the individual sound.

MIDI velocity refers to the speed or force with which a percussion instrument is struck. On a real instrument the force typically affects tone color as well as loudness; on a MIDI synthesizer, a given sound may or may not change tone color with velocity, but the effective volume always changes.

Each Percussion Instrument A-F has an associated Velocity control that can be used to set relative loudness among these percussion sounds. This becomes the effective upper limit of the MIDI velocity for that sound.

If Velocity Track is active for an instrument, the effective Velocity value is scaled proportional to the current Pitch Track input amplitude.

The effective Velocity is also affected by the corresponding Percussion Velocity Pattern, which can further scale it on a beat-by-beat basis.

MIDI Changes Script:

vv=n sets the Percussion Velocity for instrument v (which must be A to F, case-insensitive) to the value n, which may be any unsigned integer or valid expression, including current MIDI control values, random values, current computer keyboard states or mouse position, input or buffered notes, oscillators, and User Variables. Values will be limited to 0-127.

For example, vB=64 sets the B instrument Velocity to 64 (mid-range default).

You can use G instead of A-F to set all instrument Velocities at once.

See also Percussion Setup Dialog Pitch-to-MIDI dialog, Pitch Track Toolbox - Overview, Spectrogram / Pitch Track Controls, Spectrogram / Pitch Track (Sgram/PT)