Using Sculpture’s Global Parameters

These are found across the top of the Sculpture interface, unless otherwise specified.

Figure. Global parameters.

Choosing Sculpture’s Keyboard Mode (Poly/Mono/Legato)

A polyphonic instrument allows several notes to be played simultaneously—an organ or piano, for example. Many older analog synthesizers are monophonic, which means that only one note can be played at a time, much like a brass or reed instrument. This shouldn’t be viewed as a disadvantage in any way, because it allows playing styles that are not possible with polyphonic instruments.

  • If you choose Mono mode, staccato playing will retrigger the envelope generators every time a new note is played. If you play in a legato style (play a new key while holding another), the envelope generators are triggered only for the first note you play legato, and then continue their curve until you release the last legato played key.

  • The Legato mode is also monophonic, but with one difference:  The envelope generators are retriggered only if you play staccato (release each key before playing a new key). Legato playing will not retrigger the envelopes.

All modes simply retrigger a potentially sounding voice with the same pitch, instead of allocating a new one. Therefore, multiple triggering of a given note results in slight timbral variations, depending on the current state of the model at note-on time.

If Sculpture’s string is still vibrating for a specific note, retriggering that same note will interact with the ongoing vibration, or current state of the string.

Important: A true retrigger of the vibrating string will happen only if both Attack sliders of the amplitude envelope are set to 0. If either slider is set to any other value, a new voice will be allocated with each retriggered note. See Using Sculpture’s Amplitude Envelope Parameters.

Setting Sculpture’s Glide (Portamento) Time

The Glide parameter controls the portamento time. This is the amount of time it takes for the pitch of one played note to travel to the pitch of another played note.

The Glide parameter behavior depends on the chosen keyboard mode.

  • If the keyboard mode is set to Poly or Mono, and Glide is set to a value other than 0, portamento is active.

  • If Legato is chosen, and Glide is set to a value other than 0, you need to play legato (press a new key while holding the old one) to activate portamento. If you don’t play in a legato style, portamento won’t work. This behavior is also known as fingered portamento.