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The ARTICULATE option can be a wonderful thing. It can also be a curse!
Here's the deal: When you create a track the ARTICULATE setting defaults to 90.
This is a percentage value and is used to set the actual duration of notes.
So, if you have a quarter note you might think that you will generate a MIDI
note with a duration of 192 MIDI ticks. Well, there are two things wrong with
this assumption.
1. A MIDI note doesn't have a duration. It is a ON or OFF event. So, MMA
figures out a time in the file to set the note ON and a different
time to set the note OFF.
2. It's not 192 ticks. The ARTICULATE setting will reduce this to
.7 * 192 = 134 ticks. Yes, this is perfectly fine. You really, really
don't want all your notes mushed together.
Now, consider what happens when we change the ARTICULATE value to something
larger that 100,
Solo Articulate 125
Now, the 1/4 note will sound for 1.25 * 192 = 240 ticks. Again, this is not a
problem. You get nice overlapping notes. If you have a woodwind sound it MIGHT
be muddy; but with a voice that decays (piano, guitar, etc) it'll sound just fine.
Okay, now the problem. Lets assume you have 2 quarter notes of the same pitch and
you have set an articulate greater than 100 (in this case it's 125). What happens
is best shown with a time line, the number in the left column are offsets (in midi ticks):
0 - event to turn on the note
192 - event to turn on the same note. Unless the volume is different,
it'll be ignored (this is somewhat dependent on the synth.)
240 - note OFF, we hope the note turned on at 0
432 - note OFF, we hope the note turned on at 192.
But, at 240 the note tuned off is the same pitch as the note at 192. So, both
(actually one since event 192 duplicates the one at 0) notes are turned off.
Between 240 and 432 there will be no sound! Then, at 432 we have yet another
ignored event.
Notice that the "problem" only occurs when we have the same PITCH repeated.
Workarounds:
1. Use the UNIFY option. In the above example, unify will delete the events at
192 and 240. You'll just have one long note.
2. If you are doing a SOLO shorten your notes. Either the duration or using
one of the accents (! works nicely).
3. In a pattern sequence pay close attention to the pattern you are using!!!
Having read all this doom and gloom, you can relax. MMA has sophisticated
algorithms to avoid most of these problems. Essentially, it monitors
overlapping notes and will avoid most of the problems. However, it's still
better to be aware and avoid the issue.
Hope this helps.
bvdp/Jan 2014.
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