In FL studio, there is a plugin called BRSO articulate, mapping the articulations with different note color. You can map keyswitches or midi cc to switch articulations.
I always thought phrase editor can do the similar stuff, but I can’t because of two issues:
I can’t automate midi cc in phrase editor
Impossible to having a note that plays a constant pitch for keyswitches while other playing a pitch according to the input.
Am I missing something? I wanna use CSS (Cinematic studio strings) in Renoise, but I don’t seems to find a good efficient way to do other than memorise the exact pitch or midi cc value.
Here are the steps and thought process just in case if someone struggle in a similar ways, considering Orchestral stuff is quite rare in music tracker communities:
Instead of loading one instance of CSS, I decided to load multiple CSS instance with different articulations.
To save ram, I can alt-click the articulation to disable it
Set each instance of CSS with a unique midi channels.
Set up alias for each midi channal, treating them as separated instruments.
After that, modwheel is the only control I need to automate, so I can control them using *Instr. Midi Control for dynamics and vibratos.
256 instrument slots is a bit limited, but it should be enough because there are only 7 articulations type I would really used; included solo strings, I would need 10 kontakt instance for all 10 string instruments, filling up 80 slots. For CSW, I can reduce them to 4 for reed instruments, and 5 for flutes, that means I can fit 4 instruments within a single kontakt instance, taking around 60 slots. I can spend another 60 slots for CSB, leaving 56 slots for percussion, choirs and synths which is plenty, but since I have infinite brass, so I can save a couple of slots due to the lack of keyswitches. For layering libraries, I can load another instance with the same midi channel while giving out a separated output for mixing, so I can play two libraries with the same instrument slot while editing the sound separately.
Wish me luck, let see if this can help me to write some epic orchestral stuff.
Edit: Seems this post has closed, I am going to add additional tips here:
*Hydra is really helpful for grouping multiple CC controls from different alias. If you have split a CSS in multiple instances, you can use Hydra to sync all the long articulation at once, unifying the dynamic control.
