How to use the Keyboard Range View?

The Keyboard Range View is the RANGES page of PolySWAM. Click RANGES in the header to open it. It gives you a clear visual overview of how your ensemble is structured and how it responds to your playing:

• Ensemble visualization: how the instruments are distributed across your keyboard.
• Polyphony overview: an immediate sense of the polyphony of your ensemble.
• Performance feedback: while you play, the instruments light up and show the note that they play, so you see which parts of the ensemble your keys trigger and how a chord is distributed.
• Customization: you can change the keyboard ranges and transpose the ensemble directly on this page.

What you see

• Title: at the top center, the algorithm of the preset: MULTI POLY, COMPLETE VOICES or MULTI MONO. The algorithm is part of the preset.
• Colored bars: one bar for each section (in MULTI POLY, for example 3 cellos) or instrument (in COMPLETE VOICES and MULTI MONO), placed above the keyboard over its range. Under the name, each instrument has a line with its number (the same as on the STAGE page), a level meter and the note that it plays, for example (C4). Middle C is C4.
• Keyboard: from A0 to C8, with the range of the selected bar highlighted.
• Information panel: at the bottom, the values of the selected bar.

Click a bar to select it.

Change a range

Drag the handles of the selected bar: the top corners move the low key and the high key.

• In MULTI POLY the sections are always adjacent: when you move a limit, the adjacent section gets smaller or larger by the same amount. A section always keeps at least one note.
• In COMPLETE VOICES and MULTI MONO each range changes on its own.

Type or learn a value: click a box of the information panel (for example LOW KEY). A small window opens with buttons to increase and decrease the value, and a LEARN button: click LEARN and press a key on your MIDI keyboard to set that note.

A range always stays inside the range that the instrument can really play.

Overlap (MULTI POLY)

The overlap is a zone in which the notes of a section can sound inside the range of the adjacent section, but only when you reach them in legato. When you play detached notes, the normal split applies. Set it with the arrow handles under the bars, or with the LOW OVERLAP and HIGH OVERLAP boxes (in semitones).

Folding (COMPLETE VOICES and MULTI MONO)

Folding repeats the last octave at the bottom or at the top of the range, so the instrument covers a wider part of the keyboard. For example, a baritone sax does not play very high notes: it keeps repeating the last octave of its middle range instead. Set it with the handles at the bottom corners of the bar, or with the LOW FOLDING and HIGH FOLDING boxes.

Transpose the ensemble

At the top right, TRANSPOSE sets the global transposition, from −48 to +48 semitones (click the arrows or type a value), and its mode:

• Smart: the ranges on the keyboard stay where they are; only the pitch of the notes changes. The transposition is limited to the values that the instruments can actually play.
• Traditional: classic transposition. The whole range, with all its split points, moves on the keyboard: with +12, the ranges move down one octave, so the same keys sound one octave higher.

Polyphony

MAX POLYPHONY is the number of notes that you can play at the same time. In COMPLETE VOICES it is shown at the top left; in MULTI POLY each section has its own value, shown at the bottom right of the information panel for the selected section.

When Polyphony Lock is on, the polyphony is frozen at the number of voices that are playing at that moment, and the notes are played only by the instruments that were playing when you turned the lock on.

All the changes that you make on the RANGES page are stored in the Scene: save the Scene to keep them.