Sculpture extended parameters in MainStage
Sculpture provides additional parameters that can be accessed by clicking the disclosure arrow at the lower left of the interface.
Extended parameters
MIDI Mono Mode pop-up menu: Choose Off, On (with common base channel 1), or On (with common base channel 16).
In either mode, each voice receives on a different MIDI channel. Per-voice channels support pitchbend, aftertouch, modwheel, Vibrato Depth Ctrl, and Ctrl A and Ctrl B assignment messages. See Define Sculpture MIDI controllers. Controllers and MIDI messages sent on the base channel affect all voices.
Mono Mode Bend Range slider: Set a value from 0 to 96.
The chosen pitch bend range affects individual note pitch bend messages received on all but the common base channel. The default is 48 semitones, which is compatible with the GarageBand for iOS keyboard in pitch mode. When using a MIDI guitar, 24 semitones is the preferable setting because most guitar to MIDI converters use this range by default.
In certain situations, such as when sliding over a wider range in Mono Mode or applying pitch bend upwards after already dynamically modulating string stiffness to higher values, the resulting pitch may not precisely track the incoming pitch bend beyond a specific threshold. This behavior is intentional, aimed at maintaining model stability while still permitting extreme adjustments of model parameters for innovative sound design purposes. Unlike the Mono Mode Bend Range, the standard Bend Range Up is actually used to determine an appropriate safety margin so that notes can still be precisely pitched up by the corresponding amount. As a result, the standard Bend Range Up setting can be used to ensure a specific upward bend range even when operating in MIDI Mono Mode.
Render Mode pop-up menu: Choose Basic, Extended, or High Definition mode.
Sculpture’s string model can roughly be seen as a chain of springs and masses. The maximum number of elements (masses) is set with the Resolution slider. The Resolution slider interacts with the pitch, stiffness and pitch bend range settings to automatically set the number of overtones that are actually used. This Sculpture string model affords advantages over the more common waveguide models, especially when it comes to interactions with the string with multiple or larger objects. An inherent property of this flexible string model is that higher overtones are slightly below integer multiples of the fundamental, leading to increasingly inharmonic higher overtones for a string without any stiffness.
Each Render Mode option changes the number of available elements and/or processing.
Basic: Choose to set a maximum of 100 elements, with some internal headroom for extreme key scaling. Suitable for many sound types, and has a lower processing load than other render modes. There is a direct correlation between the number of vibration modes and elements, resulting in a maximum of 99 overtones in the spectrum of a single voice. For example, a 100 Hz bass note (with no string stiffness) has a highest overtone of around 10 kHz, making the more audibly inharmonic upper third of the harmonic series fall into the audible range.
Extended: Choose to set a maximum of 1000 elements. The Resolution slider, coupled with pitch, stiffness and pitch bend range settings affect the number of elements (overtones) used. This mode automatically reduces the number of audible inharmonic overtones until none of the overtones happen at rates above half the sampling frequency.
High Definition: Choose to set a maximum of 1000 elements and to also turn on internal 2x oversampling, which adds frequency headroom for more overtones. The Resolution slider, coupled with pitch, stiffness and pitch bend range settings affect the number of elements (overtones) used. This mode is significantly more processor-intensive than Extended mode as it runs at double the frequency and allows more elements per string for the same note pitch.