Playing Chords using switches (buttons/keys/pedals)

Hello,

Recently I posted few videos about KeyVel, KeyNum and other controllers that could help you to trigger notes using physical controllers. Those setup/multi destinations are a little old-school and are not the most easy to use due to the obvious limitations they have. Still, if mastered appropriately they can be really useful.

But the Forte and Forte SE offer something way easier and more powerful to use. Each switch (switch pedals, buttons, or keys) in multi mode, can be programmed to trigger a chord in a very simple way. Just specifying the notes of the chord and the velocity of the notes (one velocity for all of them at the moment).

Note, that there are 12 keys per zone, whichever you want to, that can act like a switch, sending a MIDI CC or playing a chord. So, you could be physically pressing one key, but that key could be triggering whatever chord you want to. This is incredible useful when you, as a keyboardist, have to multitask and do, for example, bass + chord + solo. You could just program the bass keys to trigger the chords as well and therefore free one hand to play the solo. When you use the keys as switches you have a setting that lets you decide whether you want that key to also sound as it is supposed to, or just act like a switch.

So, with that mind, I have done a small video showing that concept of playing chords using single keys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfGSXszZy0s

One of the goals of this Journal is to do more videos like this one and, hopefully, I could be improving little by little how they look. So, apologies for the imperfections!

By the way, the background music of this video was done using only Forte sounds.

Enjoy,

Fran

 

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