I was in the store the other day and tried to record something on Motif or Triton..

I was horribly surprised that there is no HOLD feature/button when recording strings or any synths!!! I hope I am wrong though!

Let's say I want strings to be in my song, smoothly transitioning from one chord to another throught the whole song... Obviuosly, not using auto-arranger feature cause Motif/Triton don't have it.

Anyway, while changing chords it is very hard to do a smooth transation (without a tiny and noticable interval). Is there a HOLD feature or something like that like on all arranger keyboards to do that? I know arpeggiators have HOLD feature...

How the hell they doing it???

Am I just stupid or what?

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New Yorker

Pro synths use what's called Portamento for a smooth change.. If I'm correct some arrangers have this function as well

New Yorker, if I have understood your question well, that's got something to do with the way a string orchestra plays. What on an arranger we call chords, in an orchestra is composed by many different players, each playing a separate harmony. The overall result can be very complex. For example, while the violins play melodic line A, the cellos could play melodic line B (sometimes an octave lower, sometimes just a third down, sometimes completely different) and the overall result is what amazes the listener.
To make a simpler example, think of a vocal quartet like Manhattan Transfer (since you live in New York...); well, each one of them sings a different note, and all four together make a chord. That's the way it goes and that's the challenge of emulating acoustic instruments with an electronic keyboard.

Dreamer, thanks for reply but you're way off the subject, sorry.

Squeak: thank you too. So, you have to use portamento feature to smoothly record chord changes of the synth? Is it that smooth like on arrangers or noticable?

To make sure we're on the same subject, do you remember the song Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Sprinsteen? It starts with the drums and then cool synth comes in in the background that goes on and on continuensly, just the chords change throughout the song.

So it's done on Motifs and Triton using portamento? No HOLD feature?

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New Yorker

New Yorker,
I don't think that portamento will help you, because that's the kind of feature that a trombone player would use (or a synth player like Keith Emerson in the "Lucky Man" solo).
Now that you mentioned Springsteen, I realize what you mean: the chords taken with the synth pad in that song linger for a long time because the release time of the sound was long enough. So it all comes down to programming the right patch that does not end too abruptly, I guess. A good reverb can help too.

I think portamento is primarily used for solo voices to get a smooth change. My old Roland XP-60 and Yamaha EX-7 had this feature and it worked really well.. Dreamer is right too.. You can program a voice so that the changes are smoother.. You have to adjust the release rate of the sound.. I remember doing that when I had the Casio MZ-2000.. I too was using strings and I wanted a smooth transition so I adjusted the voices release rate and made a few other small adjustments and got the sound to work...

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 08-12-2002).]

Thank you all. So it's a release rate, eh?

That means that on arrangers it's done automatically when press HOLD?

Why non-arranger synths don't have this feature? To me it's obvious that it should be a MUST!

I really don't know why workstations don't have this feature.. You think they would considering that voices such as strings are used quite frequently.... I'm not sure which workstation it was, but if I remember correctly there was a workstation produced in the past couple of years that had a string voice that was already pre-programed with a longer release rate and had a real nice transistion.. I can't remember which board it was though....

Just to clarify, portamento is the feature that allows synth notes or chords to "slide" from one note to the next. Usually there is a controllable rate that determines how quickly the notes transition. The "Lucky Man" solo is a good example of portamento. This is nothing like a hold or sustain feature, which I think was the question. I have also heard this feature called "latch".

In common additive synth terminology, you have ADSR for attack, decay, sustain and release. If the decay and the sustain were set to the max, then the tones would continue as long as you held down the keys. If release is set to max, the notes would sustain indefinitely even after you released the keys. So an ADSR setting that would be similar to "indefinite hold" is fairly common.

A simpler answer to the Springsteen- Philadelphia question might be that the keyboardist had a keyboard patch with no decay and just held the keys or used the sustain pedal to get the effect. You could also use a sequencer to edit the chords so they sustained as long as you liked and changed when and where you wanted.

The Pro, can I email you in case I have a question?

To ALL: thanks a lot who replied.