Sound Variations in Studio One 5.3: MIDI Channels, Musical Symbols & Global Track

In this video, I demonstrate the new Sound Variation features and improvements in the new Studio One version 5.3.
Contrary to what's mentioned in the video, you need to install Opus 1.0.3 in the VST3 version.
#PreSonus #StudioOne #Tutorials
@PreSonus Audio Electronics

[@KevinKuschel]

Thanks for the video! Exciting update, looking forward to playing around with the MIDI channel option for Sound Variations!

[@andressarmiento384]

HUGE thank you, I will now forget the possibility to move to cubase, since the only last thing that I needed from studio one was the capability of using Midi channels for different sound variations. Thank you ever so much for the work you have put in this Daw Lukas!

[@inkpapers-1]

Great! Very informative! Thank you for this!

[@jimmydekeersmaeker6921]

Thanks for this awesome tutorial. Really helpful!

[@PoundSound]

Just keeps getting better and better! Glad you're working with them Lukas.

[@snarf1504]

Omg yes!

[@petersvan7880]

Awesome and welcome improvement, thank you Presonus! The variations lane is also a smart find. Still missing: variations list that 'sticks' in the inspector. This gives at once an overview of all variations without having the large variations editor window in the way.

[@mortengu1385]

thanks for a great tutorial!

[@CHOKSTARmusic]

Lukas is killing it. Great man. I always love your videos. -Anubhav Ukil

[@studioonetutorials]

Thanks Anubhav :))

[@ronnyb5890]

great video Lukas,thanx

[@hdesouza9901]

This is a great feature in Studio One 5.3 I've still got to get my head round it but the options are very good will be trying this function out with the N.I synths I already have thanks Lukas. very helpful indeed

[@boomish69]

Wow S1 getting better & better

[@kevvvvv01]

Thanks. We needed this

[@studioonetutorials]

Yes :)

[@nfq-en7js]

Thanks for the video! This is really helpful.

[@MrSimonjan78]

Hi. Great vidoe and nice update. One thing will be cool with sound variation that Atom SQ: show variation color on pads. For instance, I set Atom SQ range from C0 to C2 and i will be able to see all keyswitches on my pads

[@kwameryan]

Thanks for this great video Lukas. I’m also enjoying your composer toolbar! Does S1 have a feature that reads the previously selected sound variation when you start playback after the switch. I’m finding that when I don’t let the playhead run over the variation switch, S1 plays the last active variation and not the variation that is assigned at the playhead location. Logic has a “look back” feature, so I’m sure S1 has it too! I just don’t know what it’s called! Thanks for all you work on S1!😊

[@snarf1504]

I assume the score symbols integrate with the notation view? If so, wow, I was wondering how you'd pull that off :)

[@judsoncrane1496]

Thank you for your videos! While they are a welcome advancement in the world of articulation management and these updates are great, I think there is one workflow shortcoming with Sound Variations - I wish that Studio One would _automatically_ insert whatever the active Sound Variation is at the time of recording. If I record a keyswitch trigger of course it does this on the timeline, but if I activate the sound variation before entering record, Studio One does not acknowledge that I want this articulation for this recording, and it must be set manually after the fact, which feels redundant. The plus sign is a nice addition, but it still feels like a redundant task. 80% or more of what I record is likely going to use the active variation at the time of recording. I do appreciate Logic in this regard, that it automatically sets the recording to whatever articulation is active when the recording occurs whether it was triggered while in record or not. Hopefully this is an improvement that can be made.

[@studioonetutorials]

Thanks for your feedback! Yes, I totally agree that this behavior could be optimized - especially for spontaneous recordings. I'm not sure however if for every first note in a recording (without any Sound Variations being placed before) the current Sound Variation should be inserted... I think we need a good concept and maybe some "intelligent" decisions to get a good solution for that.

[@judsoncrane1496]

@@studioonetutorialssure thing! What do you imagine needs to be "decided" by studio one? Would be interesting to play out some scenarios. I guess all I would say is that I've been using articulation sets in Logic for a few years now, and that's essentially how it works ... and I've never run into a use case where it created a problem that I can remember. Worst case I'm changing the articulation to something else, which I'm doing anyway if it wasn't set at all! But I'm always starting with the closest thing to what I want - shorts, legato, longs, etc... and I'm typically toying around with it freely before playing along with or recording to the timeline, hence the reason it gets set before I go into record more typically. On another note, the short cuts for applying similar-named variations are brilliant! I was able to very quickly assign variations on a 9 minute symphony midi file using those.

[@studioonetutorials]

@@judsoncrane1496 I mainly was thinking about avoiding redundant Sound Variations changes in the automation lane. But I'm currently involved in some other topics so I need to think about it again and re-check a few things... If you like, write me an e-mail or Facebook message and let's discuss this in more detail.

[@robgerman4000]

Thank you Lukas, I switched to Studio One recently after a long love/hate relationship with Sibelius and a few years with Dorico with mostly VSL libraries. Neither handled DAW features sufficiently in my opinion. I love your serious development for notation and especially the integration for sound variations. What a joy. Two feature requests (please forgive if I have missed current features). 1) a great "explode" feature was often used to copy from an initial piano/chord track into a string or brass section (4-6 instruments} automatically placing each note of the chord into the likely instrument, with several options when deciding where and how to place them. 2) Macros for chord building by interval, i.e. add -3,-5,-7 to a single note. Dorico does this well with what they call popovers. Any discussion on these type of features? Keep up the great work!! Thank you very much. Rob

[@studioonetutorials]

I like these ideas! Very valuable feedback. Thanks Rob! Some chord building macros are already in my "Music Editing Toolbar". You can find it in the macro toolbar.

[@robgerman4000]

@@studioonetutorials Thank you again! Cheers!

[@Umitto]

subscribed

[@studioonetutorials]

thanks!

[@citizenworld8094]

Thank you so much Lukas. Do you have a video on changing sound variations using buttons on your master keyboard? Plus I bough a Kontakt Library for Chris Hein which is old (harmonica) why can I not create sound variations with it in your opinion? It dates from 2011. (The vendor haven't a clue what Sound variations are)

[@studioonetutorials]

You can use Sound Variations with any library that uses keyswitches, MIDI channels or MIDI CCs. Here is how to assign sound variations to keyboard shortcuts: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWLJY6ihbdCNgqM And here how you can assign commands to buttons on your MIDI controller: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l6G5eKaXrNaBZq8 Does this help`?

[@citizenworld8094]

@@studioonetutorials I will check these out and repond. Many thanks for your diligence.

[@frankD.baere-orchestralmockups]

When I draw in notes in the score view and then give the first note a (P) and the last note a (FF) dynamic mark with a crescendo in between then my piano sound goes from quiet to louder and I see the markings appear on the musical symbol lane. So far so good! What strikes me is that there is no visual representation of the note velocity because the velocity lane does not respond anymore, it is overruled by the symbol lane. I suspect that the notes are very neatly gradual go to louder, which is quite mechanical! Is there a way to tweak this?

[@stigc56]

Very fast progression in Studio One. So much better than Cubase in this field.

[@davidviera3347]

Can I use several instruments at the same time in the self editor? For example; suppose my channel 1 is Violins Spiccato and channel 2 is Cellos making sustained notes. For arrangements of strings or brass that are not extremely detailed, I feel more comfortable and useful to write them all in the same channel, in FL Studio it's as easy as drawing with the color that corresponds to the channel ... it doesn't matter if the 16 channels sounding simultaneously with different articulations or instruments ... but I think in Studio One, you can't do that yet ... I hope they keep that in mind for a future update... In the meantime ... this great feature that I waited for so long is still INCOMPLETE 🙁

[@toddwmac]

Thanks Lukas, I have a simple question. Can you have the note color on the piano roll to match the color of a variation? My note colors do not change despite having variations (tagged with different colors) applied and I'm almost positive I saw one of your videos on variations where the colors matched. Thanks you.

[@studioonetutorials]

No, this is not possible currently, but there's a feature request for it: answers.presonus.com/67462/colorize-notes-according-to-sound-variation-colors

[@NormanYoungMusic]

Great video, but I have not found a way to get any of the EastWest Opus patches to update the keyswitch display in the latest version of Studio One 5

[@studioonetutorials]

Thanks. You need the VST3 version of Opus (and of course the latest version of it) to make the auto-update work.

[@NormanYoungMusic]

@@studioonetutorials I was aware that it only is supposed to work with the vst3 version, but no success yet. Mind you, the VST 3 version seems a bit unstable - when I export the mixdown, it frequently freezes reporting an error with the Opus vst3. I changed the plugin to VST2 and it doesn't freeze on mixdown.

[@studioonetutorials]

@@NormanYoungMusic You should report that to East West. Here it works as expected - no stability issues with Opus currently on Windows 10.

[@ioannispapadimitriou3460]

Thank you for the information! If there are overlapping notes on the MIDI track and you change the MIDI channel from one note to the next, what happens with the note off message for the first one (overlapping the other). Is the transition smooth? I'm asking because I see in your examples that when there is a channel change you have a gap between the notes routed to different MIDI channels. Thank you!

[@studioonetutorials]

Good point! :) The gap is just to hear the different syllables better. Don't worry about the Note Off ... Studio One will always send the Note Off message on the same MIDI channel as the Note On.

[@ioannispapadimitriou3460]

Thank very much for your response!

[@onurkarabiber5860]

Hi Lukas, First of all, thanks for amazing tutorials. Is there a bug with sound variation preset deletion? Deleted presets continue to appear in the list. Even after deleting presets from the folder (documents/studio one/presets/user presets/key switches) where they are stored, the result is the same. Thanks.

[@studioonetutorials]

Thanks Onur. I've never seen problems with deleted presets not disappearing. You shouldn't delete preset files outside of Studio One. If you do, you need to click "Re-Index Presets" in the Home tab of the Studio One Browser. This should re-read all the Sound Variation files and update the lists.

[@onurkarabiber5860]

​@@studioonetutorials Ah yes, I guess that's the problem. I deleted some presets outside of Studio One. When I right click on the preset folder in the browser and refresh, everything is fine. Thanks a lot for your help.

[@jacobbillings3692]

Thanks for the video. I'm having a problem in EW where I'm trying to get around the 16 MIDI channel limit by using e.g. the celli keyswitching patch (6 articulations) in one MIDI channel, then putting the rest of the stand alone articulations I want in the remaining channels. This doesn't seem to work because the keyswitch patch causes its variations to auto populate and I can't add the rest of the variations. Is there a way around this?

[@studioonetutorials]

There's probably more info / screenshot / video needed - can't reproduce this so far. Maybe VI-Control or PreSonus forums would be a better place for this question?

[@jacobbillings3692]

@@studioonetutorials Hi thanks for responding so quickly! I started going about recording a video to demonstrate the problem and found that all I had to do was not make the keyswitching patch the first one I add to the instrument stack. So in a way you solved it by prompting me to do that.

[@homayoonkazemi9654]

Hello, I cannot get my hairpins to work properly, do you have any idea how to get them to work? my head is exploding!!!! Cheers and thanks!

[@alejandrovarey679]

The problem with the mode you have chosen to control channels (I would have preferred something more like FL Studio: Color = Channel) is that only one articulation can be activated (and executed) at a time ... Instruments like virtual guitars, where channels correspond to strings or libraries with more complex articulations (articulations + other arguments) or...maybe I want the same choir saying Aaah on C4 and Oooh on G3... this cannot be executed, the idea of ​​Sound Variatons is great, that it can be interpreted with its correct association with symbols is impressive, but the way of editing is still inefficient

[@christianmelching8061]

Hallo Lucas gibt es bei Studio one die Möglichkeit die Audioloop Bearbeitung ähnlich wie in Ableton zu machen ...z.B Startpunktverschiebung oder Bereiche im Audioloop einzugrenzen und als loop abspielen...oder gibt es da einen Trick ? ..Beispiel ich möchte mir 3 loops untereinander legen und jeder soll einen anderen Startpunkt haben daraus entwickeln sich immer sehr spannende und inspirierende LOOPS oder man möchte von den einem loop 5 Bars abspielen und von den loop darunter nur 3 ...ist sowas möglich ?

[@MartinWeeksmw]

Question... can You combine channels as well in variances? Like for example the music starting at 2:57... Could I then combine say Synth and Harp for that last chord?

[@studioonetutorials]

No, unfortunately, you can't stack Sound Variations and have the notes sent on different MIDI channels at the same time. This would probably make the whole feature a lot more complex. It's basically meant for articulation switching rather than sound design purposes. If you want to do that, I would just create different instrument tracks with different MIDI channels and copy the notes or parts over to the different tracks.

[@MartinWeeksmw]

@@studioonetutorials Thanks that's not a big deal since I was already used to creating new tracks anyway...lol! thanks for reach out so quickly. Really loving Your videos. too. Thanks for showing up at the Live Stream tonight too. You and Mika need to start collaborating... ;-D

[@rautshsale1948]

was hoping to find the answer to my question in this video, but is it not yet possible in S1 to send individual notes within the same clip/item to different midi channels? ie in your 1st example, one note from the chord would go to 'aah', one to 'ooh' and one to 'mm'

[@studioonetutorials]

It's possible with Sound Variations. You can set Channel Change in the activation sequence. Check my other SVs!

[@rautshsale1948]

@@studioonetutorials thank you so much! will look more into this

[@GeorgeZwierzchowskipianomusic]

WHY DONT I SEE THE LITTLE VARIATIONS TOOL WRENCH IN MY TRACK INSPECTOR LIKE YOU HAVE AT 1:35? iM ALL UP TO DATE IN STUDIO ONE AND OPUS AND WAS USING THE VST2 VERSION. BUT I HAVE NO VARIATIONS EDITOR FOR SOME REASON.

[@studioonetutorials]

Hard to say without seeing what's going on on your system. Maybe the editor window needs to be higher? By the way, why are you writing in upper case?

[@GeorgeZwierzchowskipianomusic]

@@studioonetutorials not angry, just an error in typing. lol love your stuff Lukas and I also solved the problem. need to show the automation track....im not sure if you mentioned that somewhere, you go rather fast for us noobs. lol checked out the presonus manual.

[@GeorgeZwierzchowskipianomusic]

thanks for the swift reply.

[@studioonetutorials]

@@GeorgeZwierzchowskipianomusic Ah I see. Well, you don't really need to show the automation lane - there's this wrench on the left in the editor which should appear without any automation lane. I thought this is the wrench you were talking about :)

[@wolfgangkundrus5551]

Contrary to what’s stated it is version 1.0.3 of Opus and VST3

[@studioonetutorials]

Why are people reporting that the VST2 works as well (sends Sound Variation lists to Studio One) and 1.0.2 already seemed to do have certain Sound Variations functionality?

[@dano9681]

I cannot get midi CC to go to the correct midi channel selected in the Sound Variation. Please tell me I am doing something wrong and that it is not something they omitted!

[@DSchwachhofer]

I have exactly the same problem. The notes I play change the midi channels but all midi CC stays on midi channel one.

[@dano9681]

@@DSchwachhofer I have found a solution. The problem is related to a bug with vst3. If you use the vst2 plugin CC will be routed properly

[@DSchwachhofer]

@@dano9681 Thank you for your suggestion. With VST2 the midi CC works, but then I can't select different midi channels in Vienna Ensemble Pro. It seems that this feature is only available with VEP's vst3 plugin.

[@dano9681]

@@DSchwachhofer Ugh how annoying. I hope presonus fixes this mess. Right now for my template I have to use vst2 for some instruments and vst3 for others because of this. There is also no way I have found to select different midi ports with Sound variations as far as I know... right @Lukas Ruschitzka ?

[@Monomorphismus]

How do you open the "Apply Sound Variation" dialog in 2:45?

[@studioonetutorials]

As I mention at 7:40 I made a whole video on the "Find and Apply Variation" command: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWLJY6ihbdCNgqM I hope that helps!

[@MrSimonjan78]

Hi Lukas. I have Opus version 1.0.3 now and sound variations not working. S1 shows all key switches and all are assign but Opus not respond when click or add keyswitch. I'm not sure where is the problem, in S1 or EastWest. Please help. Thank you

[@studioonetutorials]

Hi Simon! So Studio One displays all the keyswitches of Opus, but Opus does not respond when you activate them in Studio One?

[@MrSimonjan78]

@@studioonetutorials yes that's correct

[@studioonetutorials]

@@MrSimonjan78 And are you using the VST 3 version of Opus?

[@MrSimonjan78]

@@studioonetutorials No VST2 but I found, when I change in S1 from "Enable Key Switches" to " Use Activation Sequence" it's seems to be working

[@MrSimonjan78]

but in this case I can use only midi notes as a key switch trigger not Sound variation option below piano roll

[@lovemusic942]

Sound Variations is a cool feature, but in general most don’t understand it or will use it (outside of composers/traditional musicians). Same for the show page as it is right now.

[@colinfrancis]

Presonus responds to user demand, so your comment doesn't ring true. Also Presonus is trying to make a DAW for every type of musician possible. Every update they do expands musical possibility and there are more composers and traditional musicians using ST1 every day. As for the Show Page, I think it's totally amazing. Maybe 'most people' whoever they are, don't realise how they could benefit by learning the new features. No I don't work for Presonus!

[@lovemusic942]

@@colinfrancis My point is unless you are a composer or traditional musician nobody outside of that understands this. Yes they respond to user demand, if you noticed they focused on music production related features first over time before the composer stuff. What’s going to sell for Studio One the producer or composer features based on the market now?

[@colinfrancis]

@@lovemusic942 True. I think lockdown has created an enormous amount of home composer/arranger enthusiasm. I for one really appreciate the updates especially from 5 onwards.

[@ianjustin1468]

@Solar Precise there are a lot of composers will will potentially now move over from Sibelius and Cubase now. I think that's what Presonus are seeling to achieve. It's not just about existing users...

[@lovemusic942]

@@ianjustin1468 Don’t expect Studio One to be anything like those. They have Notion for that.

[@wolfgangkundrus5551]

It is supported in Opus 1.0.3 (not 1.0.2)

[@studioonetutorials]

Hi Wolfgang, 1.0.2 is the version that was sent to us. Seems 1.0.2 already supported Sound Variations at least partially?

[@retrowaweru2180]

БРЕД!!!!!!!!!!

[@ChristopheTornieri]

That is a great update. There are still some features missing tough when using libraries with lot of articulations and techniques: like the VSL libraries. For instance, with the VSL strings you can play legato articulations with different bow techniques (normal or con sordino). It is currently not possible to assign the legato symbol (or any other symbols) to several sound variations at the same time. It will be nice to be able to combine a set of musical symbols (and directions) to trigger the right articulation. For instance legato articulation with direction « con sordino » for triggering the con sordino legato articulation.