Articulation Settings

The waves associated with instrument regions might not sound truly musical in their raw form, where they are usually just sustained tones. Real instruments produce complex notes with variable amplitude, pitch, and other characteristics. For example, a tone on a xylophone starts suddenly, and quickly fades, but a guitar tone starts with less velocity and takes much longer to fade before it is released.

Using DirectMusic Producer, you can configure the characteristics of how an instrument produces its tone by defining articulation settings. You can define a default articulation for each instrument, and you can also define articulations for one or more regions within an instrument. For information on how to create articulations for instruments and regions, see Managing DLS Collections.

Select one of the five buttons in the Instrument Articulation or Region Articulation area of the DLS Designer window to display settings for one of the following tone characteristics:

• Volume
• Pitch
• Mod Low Frequency Oscillator
• Vib Low Frequency Oscillator
• Filter

Select the DLS1 check box to display only settings that are supported by DLS Level 1.

Note Changes made to the articulation are stored in the currently selected articulation in the project tree.

The following figure shows the window as it appears when the Volume button is selected.

Articulation settings can easily be duplicated from one instrument or region to another. To copy settings, right-click anywhere in the Instrument Articulation or Region Articulation area, except in a text box, and click Copy on the shortcut menu. Open the DLS Designer window for the destination instrument, display the shortcut menu in the same way, and click Paste.

Note   To restore the default settings for any of the sliders, click on the slider while pressing CTRL.