Glissandos - What is your method?

J

Jerry W

New member
One could use portamento, pitch bend, LFOs etc. to acheive glissandos but, I would like some of you to share, with me and others on this site, your ways and means for attaining real sounding glissandos on insturments such as bass, strings etc.

For instance, when you want to slide down into a bass note at the head of a new section for emphasis and hit the note with impact and precision timing, how do you set it up. Even more challenging would be what if you wanted to do it on the first note of the song.

I ask this because I assume there are many solutions to this problem. I tend to use the pitch wheel and do it manually but I would probably benefit from some sound programming techniques.

So...how about it?
 
I've found it easiest to program the pitch wheel for the right amount of steps when turned all the way. That way you don't have to worry about releasing the wheel right before hitting the final note. You just slam the wheel and hit the same not again.
 
I know this isn't gonna be much help but when I do Harp Gliss.,I generally slow down my sequencer speed so I can add some nuance and personality to the run instead of just performing a "desperate tear" with no subtlety-kind of half rubato and half in time...
 
Hm, if it's short glisses for horn lines (like the fall-off at the end of a line or stab, maybe an interval of a third or fourth), I'll just play that short interval one note at a time with ma fingerz, then wipe a finger or two down the keys to finish it off.

For solo strings or bass, especially fretless, ribbon control, mmmm ....

... played around with ribbon control but I don't actually have one. My keyboard has the option to add it, and I'm going to in the future ...
 
Ribbon Control, hmmm is right. I will bet thats a great method becasue of the main problem of having to set the start of a slide when using protamento. Therefore, within the context of a tune and with a little practice, you may be able to activate prtamento with a pedal at the precise time and get it. I guess that sounds a bit much which is why I have not tried this method.

Seems to me that it might be best to make a clipping of a gliss and paste it in to the track. Otherwise, the pitch wheel is the best alternative I guess and the first response seems the most usefull.
 
I agree. Ribbons make it much easier to do glisses and really expressive and musical vibrati. Barring that, TexRoadKill's advice would make life easy... but at the risk of sounding precausious, may I suggest that no amount of programming and tricks would really be a substitute for practicing? I suppose in the studio, while sequencing, this may not be as necessary, but for live performances, nothing beats practicing. And even in the studio... once you have the technique down, the performance will sound much more musical and lively rather than "polished and programmed".

My 2 cents.
 
Yeah, I have to admit my advice really is based entirely on the assumption that you are going to play the parts, and if this is for programming, you would basically record those movements into a sequencer (but I thought your question pertained to live performance). I don't know much about sequencers and don't even think I own one (apparently Window Media Player has one that works to dump down sysEx for my Kurzweil program setting, but I haven't done that yet). So I hope it was useful. :)
 
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