I hate keyswitches (so I made this)

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[@ZachHeyde]

Want to master your MIDI mockups? Check out my Orchestral Mockup Fundamentals course! payhip.com/b/Kpot5

[@imperialdawnaudio]

I have always wondered how to do this. As a rather proficient logic user, I am so ecstatic to see my workflow can improve exponentially as well as resource management!😱 Thanks Zach, your videos are always informative and fun.😄 Your personality is very people friendly and I love watching you get excited, it makes me so happy!😊

[@ZachHeyde]

Thank you, that's very kind!

[@CurtisSchweitzer]

What has always bugged me is the fact that it isn't like the articulations themselves aren't standardized-- no one is going to try to play a pizzicato flute-- so I don't get why there isn't something in the VST or VST2 or whatever spec for a DAW to say: this note spicatto, this note staccato, this note something else, etc. You could even have a few assignable empty ones for weird things that the VST dev wants to do. Honestly I have been doing most of my recent work in StaffPad for this reason. If I want staccato, I write a staccato note. If I want pizz, I write pizz. Etc. Keyswitches were always a clever hack-- that they are still around is baffling to me. Great video!

[@ZachHeyde]

Great points Curtis!

[@anatomicallymodernhuman5175]

The reasons they aren’t standard become obvious if you try to standardize them for yourself. You mentioned one - the set of useful and even possible articulations varies by choir, and sometimes by specific instrument. The main one, though, is range. From contrabassoon to piccolo, the entire 88-note key range is potentially used for the musical notes themselves. It took me a couple years of using Spitfire libraries to realize that that’s why their KS defaults to MIDI notes well below the standard piano range. Once I got a separate controller with lots of buttons and assigned those to MIDI notes 0-16, I was in business. I investigated the possibility of having 0 always be legato, 1 always sus, 2 always trem, etc. But the total number of distinct articulation types in any decent orch library exceeds the number of buttons the human brain can easily keep track of, even with labels on a screen. Once you have to start paging them on an iPad or even a Streamdeck, things have gotten unmanageable.

[@AmourEtRespect]

I'm pretty sure it could be achieved with MIDI 2.0, but it probably won't become a standard in software before a very long time, as it would have to be implemented in DAWs, controllers, plugin formats, and plugin themselves

[@rgferreira78]

This video is pure liquid gold for many reasons, but among them my favorite is: THE MANUAL 😅 Thanks and good luck with your recent project C&C community. Best regards from Spain.

[@Kobozo375]

Excellent tutorial, thank you!

[@TomBaxterMusic]

Hi Zach. Big fan of your tutorials. As an established composer and songwriter I still green tricks off you which are very enlightening to my work flow. My question to you is I’m wondering why you don’t use ‘Art conductor’ ? It’s a great way getting clarity in the many libraries we store. Would love to hear back from you on this . Best wishes Tom

[@ZachHeyde]

Hey Tom! I made my articulation sets custom, and have used them for so long and integrated them into my setup that that's just what I'm used to at this point.

[@ZachHeyde]

Hey there! If you want to learn how to build a career writing film & game music, check out my 6-week Composing Career Bootcamp: zachheyde.com/composing-career-bootcamp

[@homeofcreation]

You can save yourself a lot of work if you head over to Babylonwaves.

[@kaptainkool101]

As a longtime FL Studio diehard, I'm curious how you'd do this in FL Studio. I've tried BRSO Articulate, using the Midi-Out plugin, etc. But as far as I can see, there's so simple, easy, straightforward way to create a template to easily switch between articulations. Nice video though, great insight into seeing how you personally do it in your DAW.

[@joost3783]

I don't think that kind of stuff is even possible in FL (not 100% sure though)

[@kineticstishi]

I use brso articulate without any external plugin...

[@ReubenCornell]

Worth investigating libraries by Impact Soundworks and Red Room Audio that have inbuilt ways to change keyswitches to other control methods... velocity switching, pedal, MIDI CC etc etc

[@RachelHardy]

Hey Zach! Do you know how to get Touch OSC to switch articulation templates depending on what instrument patch is loaded in Logic?

[@wx9cn]

Agreed, never liked keyswitches as well. Each instrument has its own set of articulations and the faster you get lost as the template grows. I'm working in Cubase with Expression Maps and I don't think I will look back soon. I checked out Logic's articulations but I found Cubase EMap way more powerfull. Also the UI is very nice because it shows all the articulations the respective instruments have at once. No drop down menu etc. There are some crazy stupid flaws to Expression Maps and they should be redone from scratch completely (programming interface is a bad joke), but for me the functionality seems the best on the marked. I also had an iPad with Lemur setup but I did not like the absence of tactile buttons so my preferred device is the Elgato Stream Deck plus a lil programmable keyboard from china which is called the Koolertron. But using an app for starters was nice to get a feel for the shortcuts though for me. But I'm sure it works well on touch devices for many people since these apps appear so popular.

[@darrinsiberia]

i prefer keyswitches for example with cello. if i have a melodic line and suddenly i switch between legato and spiccato i want to see the melody in one line, not jumped between two tracks. also i can slide my keyswitches so i always have them the same and i have memorized them by now.

[@DJaycerOfficial]

This would have really helped me if I had the money to purchase these things. I’ve said many times but miss score just isn’t the way to go for writing orchestral music. All it really does is make you feel like a professional writer, but instead you’re wasting your time since doing it the old fashioned way is much easier and much less work.

[@psriniv1]

Friggin Pro Tools doesn't have any of this functionality. I'm supremely jealous lol. (okay it DOES have TouchOSC compat but being able to make an articulation set, select some notes in piano roll and just switch them like that is incredible)

[@Midrule]

FL Studio BRSO Articulate gang

[@Amplifimusic]

omg I forgot that existed 😲

[@trevan5035]

LETS GOOOOO

[@HenryBCassidy]

Literally, brso does the same thing, and for free

[@ilmansalt]

Woohoo!

[@Artur_Chernyavsky]

Blake Robinson made the BEST way of using KS EVER! This color coding scheme lets you change articulations on a fly - it's the reason I write music in FL))

[@CharlesParente]

Mahalo, Zach. Keyswitching (KS) means you will end up with more than 1 articulation per midi track (the solo Vln track might have sus, then stay, then port, etc). Don't you mix down with one track per articulation anyway? I'm trying to understand how KS itself is actually helpful here.

[@rasputin1917]

Yes, generally, key switches are not recommended for virtual orchestration when producing/arranging. But they have a big advantage at something else: when manually trying out a library to check very quickly how different patches sound BEFORE using them separately. Ps: however, there may be some really specific instances that they may come in handy when producing too. The odd “lick” added combination on the fly here and there. But this is rare with me.

[@SaveManWoman]

Keys 🎹 being played is what musicians want but buttons with our velocity just doesn’t do it for me. But great for recordings, just not live. Most of us never sell these master pieces we create in our head. My AI does most of this stuff pretty easily now. It’s great to understand how samples are called. In recent months I have moved away from sample base systems. SWAM is amazing for that. Great video for understanding.

[@Med2402]

It worked for me on Studio One, thank you

[@maurogiochi4044]

But Studio One has an articulation manager built in. It's a breeze to switch articulation once you have the articulation mapped (one off). And the beauty is that you can grab the various mapping for whichever library from the browser pane without leaving Studio One. The community of users has already covered all libraries in existence

[@flingar]

That is very cool but how do you deal with different negative delays in different patches of the same library? That’s a problem that forces me using different midi tracks for every articulation…

[@anatomicallymodernhuman5175]

I wanna see a vid about what trauma has made you want to avoid CC values of zero. Is it an aversion to the abstraction of nothingness, or did you once use some software that was buggy in that regard?

[@scottfoster3643]

Thank you! quick ? on CSS, I know in the manual it says to use -60ms for shorts and they say about a quarter of a second on legato however in my experience it isn't always the case. Wondering how you deal the various articulations/delays. I have been using an off set in logic track delay. Do you do this as well? It seems you are playing on time in the videos. Do you anticipate the delay and play ahead of the beat? Thank you for your time if you (or someone could reply) :} Lots of blessing to you. Looking forward to becoming a patreon supporter your content is GOLD!

[@ZachHeyde]

Thanks Scott! Yep, I play ahead of the beat (sometimes using low latency legato if I need quick note entry). Then I have shortcuts to mass-assign velocities using the User Transform feature in Logic 👍🏻 All the best!

[@scottfoster3643]

@@ZachHeyde Thank you good sir :}

[@jenssieckmann]

Nice video, Zach. Seems to be really helpful. For what I've seen with the Logic articulation switches regarding CSS: it seems to me that you cannot cover all articulations, at least not with CC58 alone. For example you shouldn't be able to switch to marcato legato. Legato on/off is a switch, so must trigger CC58 with two values, one for marcato and one for the legato on. I use Studio One with the builtin sound variations tool that cover circumstances like that.

[@ZachHeyde]

Yep you're right about that--I keep legatos on the separate track because of that lack of a workaround. Good points!

[@es__music]

I always wondered why you can’t record keys witches as you play them

[@klaus9688]

Thanks so much for this, I also hate key switches. Or rather: they simply don't work for me

[@unconditional--love]

Great video! Is there a way to input these articulations manually? In other words, I don’t want to record anything on the keyboard with the iPad articulations (I mess it up all the time). It would be easier for me to set each midi note to a particular articulation with with the click of a mouse button! 😅

[@memorablemusicformedia1337]

I use Infinite brass and infinite woodwinds. No need for keyswitches or articulation maps. I eagerly await the introduction of infinite strings, which might avoid keyswitches to some extent.

[@es__music]

Babylon Waves Art Conductor is a life saver!

[@RaphaelPerfeito]

I use mostly East West Libraries cause of the composercloud, my daw is studio one, when i open a keyswitch patch, it automatically crate the keyswitches configuration on the daw, so i don't need to edit anything.

[@GiulioPirondiniMusic]

Hi Zach! I’ve got the same question as @RachelHardy posted recently: is it possible to make TouchOsc switch automatically from one articulation screen to another accordingly to the instrument you select in Logic?

[@ZachHeyde]

Not that I'm aware of!

[@acma-prod]

Ah ah you're right! There are too many keyswitches impossible to remember... I'm lucky, with Cubase I use Expression maps. It' simple to use. Have a great day

[@jamesr141]

This is awesome.

[@Leo-st9ti]

My ass thought he was talking about transposing to a new key 💀💀

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

then comes 8Dio with legato, legato II, and strong legato, and power sustains, and the other library with staccato, spiccato sul ponticello, the Britney Spears Spicatissimo and so on. So how do you do? This looks perfect only for CSS

[@pop_polizei]

The way you do it is you create an individual Articulation Set for each library.

[@duded2521]

hey there, thank you so much from germany. I like your nerdy stuff... it is so helpfull. here are much more nerds than u think

[@dafingaz]

Keyswitches are insane. Especially if you have to export the notation for players.

[@tobiaskilroy]

Great video, I’ll definitely be trying this. Quick question: do you setup different screens for different articulation types? (I.e. strings, brass, winds, etc) or do you have them all on one screen? How easy is it to switch if you do?

[@ZachHeyde]

I used to! Super easy to do. Nowadays I use the same screen/articulations for all instruments 👍🏻

[@tobiaskilroy]

@@ZachHeyde thanks for your reply. That makes sense! Do you have an image or list of the ones you use? I’m using EastWest CC+ and there are loads of articulations and I’m not sure where to begin. That would help a lot. Thanks

[@joost3783]

thanks for the tip the app looks awesome! Are you aware of any valid alternatives as well that you maybe haven't used because you've gotten used to touch osc but that may be better overall? Just trying to get the right software here but touch osc really looks great in combination with what you're doing there

[@turtlefeet7722]

Very good.

[@tygoldsmith8896]

Dope!

[@starmg0076]

therefore I like FL Studio, I simply write notes with a new color and they are an other articulation

[@Devon_38]

Do you use BRSO Articulate for this?

[@starmg0076]

@@Devon_38 yes

[@Devon_38]

@@starmg0076 Alright, thanks!

[@nebilusman9679]

what about for ablton

[@tilleyroadaffairproduction6752]

Thank you for your great videos. I have an old Ipad 3rd generation and it will only accept the OSC Mk1. Can you tell me if I can program it for keyswitches? I tried downloading the other one at 19.99 but it's not compatible.

[@mark-ze4en]

what computer are you using?

[@sehee8521]

genius

[@pop_polizei]

Hey Zach. I also use Logic’s Articulation Sets quite a lot. May I ask why you prefer MIDI CCs over keyswitches to trigger the articulations? What’s the benefit of this?

[@ZachHeyde]

I generally find CC's more reliable, that way if you have an instrument transposed an octave up or down, it's not relying on fixed keys to trigger articulations, but rather CC values that don't change 👍🏻

[@pop_polizei]

@@ZachHeyde Yes, this makes sense if you want to perform and record everything live. But when working with Articulation Sets in Logic after the fact, it shouldn't make any difference, should it?

[@g.p616]

I can see the benefit of using a consistent articulation set across all instruments but I don't really get what advantage you gain by using Touch OSC above the keyboard for key switches.... Plus all the libraries that offer specialist articulations cant really make use of this..... Is it worth the hassle, I wonder?

[@ZachHeyde]

Really depends on your workflow and VSTs! I'm Cinematic Studio Brass/Strings/Winds, so I find it easier to switch visually than remember which key switch activates which articulation within each library. But everyone's different!

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

the keys of your keyboard are better used as notes. I would not use more than 3 KS. Otherwise it is confusing. The remote helps with clarity , and can be better adjusted. But it requires that you are very sure aboutyour workflow, because it is a lot of work, depending on template. But with VEP you can give another hope for KS workflow. The advantage is that it helps while performing. BUt we dont need to perform a symphony...this is another myth. The Zack other people show in many videos that is enough to perform some few bars. I don´tn buy the Divisi Mate "dream" of performing a whole piece , as well

[@prodbyrod2507]

Hi! Does it work with BBCSO?

[@zypher9690]

How would you do this in reaper?

[@rano12321]

ReaArticulate.

[@stewartkingsley]

Other DAWs handle keyswitches much better. Studio One is very good, and very easy. Cubase is OK, but they try to make it too clever, and fails.

[@birdcallprrr5837]

I hate key switches too! thanks for the tip -- TIL!!!

[@jonathanparham]

very helpful

[@ArtmanBass]

Wow.

[@Tutnese]

Man oo el? Is that Cantonese?

[@denisekirby4682]

Well even I understood that so I must be a closset nerd or something lol