The idea of using a pedal is to have your normal arco string patch as the default, but override this with the pedal, as long as the pedal is held down. In most patches you’re only going to need two or three articulations, so with a combination of different patches, a bit of option 2 for the occasional pizzicato, and option 3, which I’ll go into now, I tend to cover everything I need. This option is really why I wrote this article. This can be very effective for a simple situation, but it can be lumpy moving between the articulations, and requires a certain amount of control which may or may not be that easy depending on your playing experience and your keyboard type. For instance, you may have legato strings at v < 80, marcato strings from 8 to 110, and maybe pizzicato if you bash the keys to get between 111 and 127 (all MIDI messages have values from 0 to 127). Option 2 - Velocity SwitchingĪ variant on the above - this uses the velocity of the played note (how hard you strike it) to determine which articulations to use. This is now available in the some of the stock libraries with MainStage, and while it is easy to understand it a) requires you to reserve some keys for the switching, b) remember what they were, and c) makes playing two hands a little tricky, though not impossible in most cases. Simply press the key corresponding to the next articulation you want to use. This is a simple concept where unused keys are used to change the articulation. Probably the most obvious is key switching, and is available in some string patches and not others. There are three techniques I use to achieve this, over and above patch switching and splitting the keyboard, which is obvious so I won’t cover it here. The other common one is use of tremolo in the middle of an otherwise arco string patch. However, how do you do this in a live piece where one minute you are playing a fast run and need a staccato patch, and maybe that run ends with a chord? Or perhaps you have a constant run of string notes with some pizzicato notes thrown in the middle. Realistic strings involve the use of many different articulations, and when recording in the studio you would probably have multiple tracks lined up with each of your legato, longs, shorts, pizzicato, etc. When performing live it is common when using string patches to have to switch between the various string articulations in real time, while playing the piece. Strings are complex sections of the orchestra, and this article provides some options for rapidly and easily switching articulations in your strings in realtime when performing in MainStage.
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