Tascam 4 user manual Articulation Window

Now back to the selection lock buttons. If you know you'll be making broad edits to your instrument, rather than zeroing in on individual splits, the lock buttons can provide a safety net that relieves you of the need to pay constant attention to the selection state. When the All Regions lock is turned on (sticking with our piano example), your edits will always be applied to all 88 keys. When the All Splits lock is on, edits will always be applied to every velocity and pedal state. And if both locks are on, you can forget the selection process entirely because every edit will be applied across the entire instrument.

Note that the All Regions button stands by itself and is simply either off or on. The All Splits button belongs to a group of four, one of which is always highlighted. The reason for this is that in a Giga instrument, not only does every split have its own articulation, but stereo splits actually have separate articulations for the left and right channels. While it's common to perform edits on individual splits, it's fairly unusual to edit just one side of a stereo sample. The L+R mode allows you to edit at the individual split level, while ensuring you will never inadvertently apply an edit to just one side of a stereo split. If you do want to make a one-sided edit, the Left and Right buttons are there when you need them.

The Articulation Window

Each split in a Giga instrument has its own articulation - a set of over 100 parameters that define envelopes, LFOs, filters, and the like. The parameters appear in the lower right portion of the Editor, grouped into categories for easier access. To choose a category, click on the header bar at the top of the list. Parameter values can be edited directly in the list. Depending on the type of value you click on, the list will either allow you to type in a new value, or display a menu with options to choose from.

A small part of a Giga articulation. This shows the parameters that define the amplitude envelope.

Remember that a complex instrument can contain many thousands of unique articulations, but the parameter list can only display one articulation at a time. To understand which split's articulation is currently being displayed, look at the region and dimension windows, each of which will have a single cell highlighted in orange. The split at the intersection of all those orange highlights is the one you're viewing. (If there are additional splits selected in yellow, their parameters may be set to different values from those of the orange split. When this happens, the parameter value is displayed in red.)

When you change a value in the parameter list, the new value is applied to the single region/split designated in orange, and also to any other regions/splits selected in yellow. This is a very powerful feature, but it means that whenever you edit a value, you need to be conscious of which regions and splits are selected. The Selection Lock buttons (see the previous section) can simplify things here.

The next chapter describes each articulation parameter in detail.

TASCAM GigaEditor 4 Manual 149