Virus C - How To Control Timbre of Multiple Parts Simultaneously?

[ADwellingOx]

Hi,

I was planning on getting a Virus C but just want to find out if parameter changes can be set to affect all parts at the same time when in Multi Mode? As in, if I tweak a filter will it be controlling just one channel/part at a time or can it change all parts globally?

I'll be using Multi mode so as to get polyphony with microtunings (using pitch bend info in each part) but I don't want to find that when I change parameters they only affect one voice and not the others.

Any advice would be great!

Alex

[oscillator]

FWIK you could do it setting all parts in the same midi channel, and tweak them all using an external controller.

Sorry to not be 100% sure about that at the moment, I need to verify it on my Virus.

[ADwellingOx]

Thanks for the reply.

Only problem is that to get polyphony with pitchbends you need to use a different MIDI channel for each note. So I don't think I would be able to set all the parts to the same channel unfortunately.

Does that mean you think it won't be possible to tweak all the parts at the same time if they are on different channels?

[TweakHead]

think you may be confusing voices with multi-timbral parts(??)!
you can change the pitch on a polyphonic patch, no problem. but that patch can be a single, meaning just one part is enough to give you that. if you play a patch in "poly" mode (means polyphonic), it's got one voice in there for each key pressed to a limit of 32 available on the Virus C.

so with such a patch of up to 32 voices you could adjust the pitch with pitch wheel easily, you can decide the range of the pitch shift.

for multiple patches playing at once, then the answer is no. but you could get near that with a pitch shift plug-in and assigning pitch parameter to the pitch wheel on your keyboard, which is what you'd have to do if you had a recording of a group of sounds (maximum of 16 on Virus btw) and you wanted to pitch shift them all (unless you're making some huge build up on some crazy EDM track can't see why you'd want to do that anyway...), so...

The Virus seems to be able to cope with what you want with just one part going, so you're in luck!

[ADwellingOx]

Hi TweakHead, thanks for the response! I'm not sure I totally understand though.

My aim is to use the H-Pi Tuning Box with the Virus C to get microtonal scales. This means that the Tuning Box sends in MIDI notes accompanied with unique pitch bend data for each note, in order to create a specific scale. So it sends each note on a different MIDI channel to allow for polyphony, otherwise all the pitches would be shifted by the same amount.

So what I'm wondering is if I tweak parameters when this is happening will the timbre just change for the first voice (channel 1) or can it change the timbre for all the voices simultaneously?

[TweakHead]

guess it would change just for each part, separately. didn't get that's what you're going for before (sorry)...

but if this H-P Tuning Box would send the pitch bend data to each of the channels, the Virus would be able to interpret it, just you wouldn't be able to simply reach for Virus's pitch wheel and do it for all the patches from there at once. you could get near that effect using a pitch-shift plug-in, with the pitch parameter assigned to a knob or wheel on a controller, and processing the group of sounds together - if that's what you're looking for. If it's just making sure the Virus would interpret each pitch bend data for each channel sent by another midi unit, like seems to be the case, it would presumably work flawlessly - as long as you can send this "per voice" pitch bend data from this unit. You'd just have to select the pitch bend range on each patch, so that it reacts according to your needs, otherwise it's a short (-2, +2) range by default (I think).

But this would be easier to figure out if you could develop on what you're trying to achieve a bit further. Will check out the device you mention. Cheers