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Chapter 2: Playing the A6
ANDROMEDA A6 REFERENCE MANUAL 59
PORTAMENTO
A Italian term (from a Latin root) that means sliding, portamento causes the A6’s
Voices to “slide” (sometimes called “glide”) to the notes being played. When you are
playing the A6 normally, played keys or MIDI Note On messages activate the Voices
with the appropriate notes instantly. With portamento active, it takes a period of
time – set by the
TIME knob – for the Voices to reach the played notes by “sliding into
them”.
The first important concept to understand here is that the sliding direction is
determined by the notes that were previously played. For example, if you play keys
in the lowest octave, turn
PORTA on and then play keys in the upper range of the
keyboard, the Voices will slide up to the higher notes. If you then play lower notes,
the Voices will slide down to the new lower keys being played.
The second concept to understand is the distance between played notes. Musically
speaking, we’re referring to the interval between successive notes. In contrast to the
above example, if you play notes in a certain octave then continue to play in that key
range, there’s a good chance that portamento may not be that distinct since the
distance (interval) between the old notes and new notes is not that great.
The third concept to understand when using portamento is that it is the voices that
are doing the sliding, not the keys. The A6 keeps track of all notes played and
which voices played them so that it knows the most current note values of each of its
16 voices. Therefore, depending on what voices were played before portamento is
turned on, you may get sliding from all directions or not much at all. The distance
and direction of the glide depends on which voice is getting the new note relative to
what note this voice played before.
PORTAMENTO CONTROLS
Portamento is fully programmable
per Program.
TIME Knob
This control varies the portamento
rate, or the amount of time it takes to
slide from previously played notes to
the target notes. Portamento time is
adjusted in either seconds or
seconds-per-octave depending on the
selected portamento mode. Turning
this knob selects the
TIME parameter
on the
PORTA page.
MOD Button
Pressing the MOD button displays the MOD page of modulation parameters for
portamento. This page provides parameters for creating a mod route to the
portamento’s
TIME parameter (displayed on the MOD page as PORTA RATE),
providing variations in the portamento speed. If a mod route has been created by
turning the
ENABLE parameter to - ON -, the MOD LED will be illuminated. Using a
modulation on
TIME, you can affect the rate of sliding in countless ways.