Lead articulation (velocity, legato, late vibrato, drop-off)

What it is#

Making a sampled or synth lead sound played: per-note volume (velocity), legato slides between notes, vibrato that arrives late, staccato and grace notes, an echo, and the "drop-off" at the end of a big note. A tracked lead without these "sounds even worse" than a synth one because the sample is static and every note restarts identically (necros, source: s-tw012-advanced-tracking-tips).

Why it works#

Live players never hit two notes at the same velocity, connect some notes without re-attacking, and only add vibrato once a note has settled; the ear reads those cues as intent. Two perceptual rules from the same source: high notes sound louder than low notes at equal volume, so hold the top notes back except on accents and push the low ones; and a lead that keeps oscillating "just refuses to die" — end vibrato before the note ends (source: s-tw012-advanced-tracking-tips).

How to do it#

LSDj (wave channel)#

The wave instrument's table does the articulating, and the trick is that a note without an instrument number does not restart the table (source: s-chipmusic-lsdj-wav-instrument-tutorials):

• Attack / tonguing. Make the synth's first frame noticeably louder than the rest, set PLAY to MANUAL and put F01 on the first tick of the instrument's table. Every note that carries the instrument number gets the loud frame as its attack; notes typed without it are slurred into the previous one.
• Flutter tonguing. Give a third frame a slightly different volume and shape and alternate between two frames from a second table — F01 forward, FFF back (FFF is −1 in F's relative arithmetic) — started from the phrase with an A command.
• Breath. A frame or two of near-noise at the start "simulate[s] the attack phase of a musician blowing into the flute" (tyler-barnes); a very quiet noise-channel layer with a slow decay underneath does the same job from outside.
• Vibrato with varied Vxx speeds rather than one fixed setting (vibrato). Victory Road's verdict: "it's all about articulation, really. LSDJ is really good for flutey articulation."

Worth reading against the counter-argument in the same thread: chasing an orchestral instrument on the Game Boy mostly disappoints, and "other people will only hear '8bit' anyway" (an0va) — the articulation is worth more than the timbre.

Scream Tracker 3 / Impulse Tracker#

Necros's worked example (E minor run; ST3 letters, identical in IT/OpenMPT; source: s-tw012-advanced-tracking-tips):

1. Velocity in the volume column — ramp a run up to its held peak and back: E-4 40 · G-4 40 · A-4 50 · B-4 60 · E-5 64 … G-5 60 · F#5 50 · B-4 40 · C-5 40 → 50 → 64 · A-4 50. Multiples of 10 are quick to type; the volume column, not D20, so the effect column stays free.
2. Legato with tone portamento so the sample is not restarted: GF0 for any jump over three semitones ("practically instant"), G20/G06 for a slow slide over a small step, and a GF0 on the row after a slow slide to guarantee it lands, "since some players tend to play Gxx/3xx effects too slowly" (pitch-slide-and-portamento).
3. Late vibrato on the held notes only: HA1 a row or two after the note, then HA2, never the main event except in hard up-tempo tunes; fade it back or fade the note (vibrato).
4. Echo track: copy the lead column, ALT-J its volumes down to a third at most (22 from 64), shift it 2–3 rows at speed 6 (4–6 at speed 3), pan it the same distance on the other side of the lead (fake-echo, stereo-panning).
5. Drop-off ("made infamous by Purple Motion and other siner junkies"): slide up into the top note, sustain it with vibrato, and at the very end fall away with an accelerating down-slide and falling volume:

Catspaw's version of the same shape mixes volume-column values with K/H/E commands (C#6 02 33 UC3 → K20 → 44 H82 → K01 → 32 H71 → 20 E0E; source: s-tw058-the-finishing-touches; see volume-slides). The cheapest cousin of the drop-off is vegas's release tip of 1996: "Dont use a ^^^ to kill a note in the lead, just drop the volume to 10, 15, or 20 and volume slide the rest away. It leaves a reverb-ish effect thats really good on flutes, piano's and violins" — no pitch fall, just a volume-column 10–20 on the release row and a D0x slide to silence (source: s-tw062-interview-vegas).

Staccato and grace notes (Dan Hartrell's funk sax run, source: s-tw021-tracking-tips): D0F on a note and the row after it for "4 staccato" notes, G90 on each note of a phrase for a "wavey" pipe-or-reed sound, SD1 (note delay) to turn a note into a grace note that slips into the next, and alternating A05/A08 speeds so the run swings (shuffle-funktempo). Greg Heo's definition: a note cut SCx after x ticks is staccato, the absence of it legato (source: s-tw074-intro-to-musical-theory).

Tips & pitfalls#

• Velocity first, then slides, then vibrato, then the echo — each layer is audible on its own; the echo is what makes the others "sound really good".
• Keep the echo quiet: a loud delay "makes the lead very muddy and cluttered" (source: s-tw012-advanced-tracking-tips).
• On chips the same ideas map to per-note volume (SID sustain levels $5x, LSDj E), portamento flags and delayed vibrato in the instrument (vibrato, pitch-slide-and-portamento).

Related#

melody-writing · vibrato · pitch-slide-and-portamento · volume-slides · fake-echo · instrument-design

Sources#

s-tw012-advanced-tracking-tips · s-tw021-tracking-tips · s-tw058-the-finishing-touches · s-tw074-intro-to-musical-theory · s-tw062-interview-vegas · s-chipmusic-lsdj-wav-instrument-tutorials