Pushing The Envelopes

The ideal way to create a seamless transition between two notes is by fading the first as the other rises – just like a volume crossfade between two pieces of audio. Each note should also play at a constant level throughout. In theory, it’s easy, but some amplitude envelopes aren’t set up to help you do this…

The first thing to do is to remove that fiddly decay/ sustain lump in the middle of the envelope. Push the decay setting to 0, and whack the sustain up to full, so there really isn’t a lower level to ‘decay to’.

Your attack and release settings, then, should be mirror images of each other. The most ideal set-up is to use a logarithmic curve shape, as the merging attack/release stages should coincide at -3dB, keeping equal power throughout. For those not in the know, logarithmic curves are shaped a bit like the top two quarters of a circle, and exponential curves are shaped a bit like the bottom two quarters.

But this can be a bit of a problem: many synths and samplers don’t give you much control over the shape of the attack or release stages. Some offer a little control over the attack and none over the release.

Some go-to synths that give some extra control over your attack and release envelope stages are Native Instruments’ FM8 and Absynth, Rob Papen’s Albino and Cableguys’ Curve.

If you can’t get your envelope running as you like it, and your synth doesn’t support envelope stage shape changes, you can also try changing the lengths (and therefore overlaps) between the MIDI notes, and tweaking the portamento/legato settings to promote more of a crossfaded character.