User`s manual

ARTURIA – HIPHOP PRODUCER – USER’S MANUAL
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4.3. General organization of Lounge Lizard Session
The graphical interface of the synthesizer is shown in Figure 8. One can choose from a selection of
4 different pianos and apply different effects to the sound. The effect section includes a Tremolo
module, a Drive module, a Multi-Effect module and a reverb module. A master level control and
level meters appear on the lower right corner of the interface.
Figure 8: Interface of the Lounge Lizard Session.
4.3.1. MIDI LED
The red MIDI LED toggles when a MIDI signal is received by the Lounge Lizard Session. This is very
useful to see if Lounge Lizard Session is receiving MIDI signal from your keyboard or other
controllers. If the LED does not blink when you play your keyboard, check your connections and the
transmit/receive channels you are using or the MIDI settings of Lounge Lizard Session as explained
in Section 4.6.2.
4.3.2. MIDI Channel Combo Box
Displays the current MIDI channel on which Lounge Lizard Session is receiving MIDI information.
The channel can be adjusted with the drop down menu from the combo box. In omni mode, Lounge
Lizard Session responds to all MIDI events from all channels. Note that in this configuration, MIDI
links from different controllers having the same controller number but different channel numbers
become equivalent.
4.3.3. Polyphony Combo Box
Displays the number of voices of polyphony (2 to 32). The number of voices can be adjusted with
the drop down menu from the combo box.
4.3.4. General Functioning of an Electric Piano
The electric piano was invented by Harold Rhodes (1910-2000) during the forties when he was in
the army. The first instruments he built were made of aircraft pieces and were intended to
entertain army servicemen. It became a very popular instrument in jazz and rock and its warm
tone still appears in about all new musical styles these days.
The mechanism of the electric piano is, in fact, quite simple and is illustrated in Figure 9. A note
played on the keyboard activates a hammer that hits a fork. The sound of that fork is then
amplified by a magnetic coil pick up and sent to the output, very much like an electric guitar. The
fork is made of two parts: the tine and the tone bar. The tine bar is where the mallet hits the fork.
The Lounge Lizard synthesis engine faithfully reproduces the functioning and interaction of these
components taking into account their physical and geometrical properties. In the original version of
the Lounge Lizard EP, the user interface enables one to adjust these properties and get a wide
variety of tone colors. In this Session edition, these parameters have been adjusted for you in
order to model different types of pianos which can be selected from the Piano module.