Any way to balance out the velocity dynamics when two hand tapping?

I have it balanced out pretty well when playing with a pick and fingers, the same attack will have about the same velocity no matter what string I pick, but when I wanna do a two hand tapping run, the velocity values get lower and lower as you tap along from the lowest to the highest strings. The only thing I can think of is having a foot swtich that would change the velocity curve when you wanna tap. Anyone got better ideas?

Hi @Mizmiz

How about the Tone knob? Do you use that at all? I feel that is the best way of compensating for dynamic differences caused by the differences in string energy (supposing that thicker strings sound more). I think about it as a sculpting tool most of the time. I certainly depend on what instrument I am playing as well. For software pianos I tend to lessen the dynamic headroom by using a rather steep sensitivity curve or just roll back on dynamics if possible!

There is something to what LoFiLeif said. I am doing nothing but 2-handed tapping. Each software instrument reacts different so I to save a MG2 custom patch for each type of instrument since the dynamics are pretty good for one instrument and not so good on another. Also, for piano type instruments where the dynamics are a bit whacky, the bridge pickup with treble up and if u have an active circuit where you can decrease the bass tends to help a bit. If I am using piano and “real” guitar sound simultaneously then I just live with the dynamics issues by really tweaking the tone/gain/curve settings. When playing real guitar simultaneously with something like piano, the dynamics seem to be less noticeably a concern since you have another sound masking things. Not perfect but this is what we live with and still am getting some real amazing results.

You misunderstood, I meant that it’s hard to keep velocity dynamics when switching techniques while using the same MG2 patch. For example if I’m playing something with hybrid picking, the velocity is pretty consistent throughout all stings, but then if I want to do some two hand tapping it’s hard to keep the velocity consistent
Example tapping from low to high strings:


I actually tried to increase the curve setting in MG2 and got some better results, but people recommended to not mess with that some time ago.
Also there’s still a really big amount of artifact notes so you have to edit them out a lot if you want to record something, still too hard to manage them for playing live.

I made this little piano take :stuck_out_tongue: (with artifacts partially removed)

I understand your question - I was trying to help with the tapping thing. So playing around with picking and tapping - what seems to help for me is find the gain/tone/curve settings that are a compromise for both picking and tapping - its kind of the nature of the beast. Then adjust your playing where you might pick softer or harder in some areas as well as doing the same during tapping; again, a compromise but it does work fairly well. ( i lean towards the settings to enhance the tapping because I think its easier to control your picking dynamics). If you are getting more artifact while tapping, then 2 things - practice technique and probably more important is to add dampening to your strings. I will do a light strum to see which strings are triggering the most and concentrate on dampening. Using the matt “earthquake” material in big box stores works very, very well - i use it standard on all instruments. Using those V straps don’t work nearly as well unless you add some of the earthquake material between the string and the strap… Also, try lowering the volume (if possible) of the lower pitched strings by lowering the bass EQ. On active this is easy. I am not sure if you could EQ the signal in your DAW while using MG2 - that will be an experiment to try. If you have a guitar that you do not use that often you could try reducing the string gauges in the lower register and increase a bit in the higher. I know this helps as well. In the end, Piano is the hardest to control in my opinion but can be done. I mostly concentrate on a blend of real guitar sound blended with some kind of synth sounds to create a real cool unified tone - that seems to be the real power for me. But then again, I just did a cool test recording using Vhorns Sax, Ample Sound Upright bass and Ravenscroft 275 using the guitar and the triggering was flawless for this example and sounded SO REAL! I took the piano MIDI track and ran it thru the EZ drummer 3 Bandmate and it spit out a great drum track for it. So I really love what MG2 does for me - I think you can get this working well. By the way, tapping using the Roland gear is not too different when it comes to dynamics - I use the same advise as above for Roland MIDI.

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