The only button you can really assign to trigger a sample is the [AUDITION] button. You can create a user audition which is a MIDI file that will start playing when you press this button. The MIDI file can simply be one note - the note which matches where your sample is mapped. The button will not be velocity sensitive - so any velocity would need to be fixed inside the user Audition MIDI file.

Your other issues with polyphony are better addressed by someone else. All I can say is that priority of PARTs is different - so if some notes are cutting out that you'd prefer not to and some are sustaining that you'd be OK with cutting out - and they're different PARTs - you can try swapping the PART location.

Example: PART1 = Pad sound, PART2 = Piano. You can swap PART1 = Piano, PART2 = Pad sound.

You say sample - so I assume the sounds you are playing are all AWM2 (sample based) and not FM-X. If this isn't true - it may be worth identifying which PARTs are AWM2 and which are FM-X. I'm not sure if the response to maximum polyphony with respect to the sustain is identical for AWM2 and FM-X.

When I play chords on piano or a pad and hold my sustain pedal....

...You are likely to run your instrument out of polyphony.

The solution is simple... don’t do that. I know that sounds glib but it is not, sorry if it sounds like it is, but truly it is not meant to be. And it is the secret to the cure for your issue. Polyphony issues are to be avoided by your approach. “Pad sounds” are not in the “percussive family” of instrument sounds... which means their behavior is NOT going to stand for the same kind of Sustain pedal antics as an instrument that actually (in real life) has a Sustain Pedal, period.

I don’t want to sound like I’m telling you to learn to play electronic keyboards but there is always going to be a polyphony limit, and we all have to work within it.

No one else in the musical band has the nerve to play 128 musical tones and exceed that number... because no one else in the musical band needs to... and you should be of the mindset that neither should you!!

Over the years of playing Synthesizers, I have encountered those people who run out of polyphony because of their misuse of the Sustain pedal. Learn that very few instrument sounds have Sustain pedals as a real control (Pianos, electric pianos, and not much else)...

Try this: deactivate the SUSTAIN pedal for the non-Piano/EPiano sounds
Select the Part
Press [EDIT]
Touch “Mod/Control” > “Receive Sw”
You can turn the Sustain Off for your Pad sounds... now they will only sustain (use polyphony) when you are actually holding the keys and your (lazy Foot) Sustain pedal action will work on the sound it is intended to work on (Piano). Remember, strings/brass/pad-ype sounds shouldn’t have Sustain pedal reaction... they don’t in real world situations.

I’m not saying this will totally fix your problem, but there is a limited number of notes that can play at a time... if you hire musicians for an orchestra (paying each one a salary) you start to realize that only a certain maximum number of notes can be reproduced by the number of musicians you hired. Running a synth out of polyphony is akin to not knowing how many musicians you hired!

I hope that helps you rethink your approach. I had a piano teacher who was maniacal about *working* the Sustain pedal... meaning she wanted me to be constantly aware of what tones were ringing. Made me study pieces where precise pedaling was mandatory... (sorry, if I sound if I’m preaching, but without knowing it, my piano teacher prepared me well for the advent of Synthesizers.

If your complaint is that you can’t just hold the Sustain pedal down and continue to play indefinitely ... agreed, that’s correct. The thing you want to do is learn where the limits are and work within them... I’ve worked (up close and personal) with some of the top keyboard/Synthesizer players on this planet... every one of them has to come to grips with use of polyphony in the technology... their approach to Synthesizers has to be different from the approach to acoustic piano and until you work that out for yourself, you will continue to have issues.

Hi Jason and Bad Mister,

First of all I want to say thanks to both of you for the detailed replies you always give :D.

Regarding the sustain problem, I'm aware of how to use the sustain pedal. I just wanted to know if anyone else had the same observation. I expected that the first note you play will drop after 128 notes played and that the last note you play will sustain, but that isn't the case. When I play for example a harp glissando or a piano glissando, notes will behave strange after 128 keys instead of sustaining every last note and dropping the first notes played. I just want to know the boundries of my instrument.

How can I make my own audition midi file and can I set it up to only let me hear it when I press the audition button and not when I play the keyboard? I searched on google but couldn't find an explanation.

Thank you.

Regards

Everyone “knows” how to use the Sustain pedal, the issue you are having is more how NOT to use the Sustain pedal!
I would need to talk to an engineer to get the exact type of system used here...which I am willing to do. Winter NAMM is coming up so I may get a chance in a few weeks... (I'll let you know).

I’m sure the eight KBD CTRL Parts would have some form of priority over those sounds not under KBD CTRL and likely there is some sort of first-on/low note priority function — given the typical piano use (Sustain pedal being a piano-centric function). I don’t usually concern myself with what happens AFTER I exceed the polyphony limit (other than lifting my foot off the cause of this operator error)! That’s kind of like looking for a landmark two exits past where you should have gotten off the freeway... I understand you want to avoid running out, “know the boundaries”... this, I believe, can best be served by learning how to count polyphony and then avoiding exceeding 128.

How can I make my own audition midi file and can I set it up to only let me hear it when I press the audition button and not when I play the keyboard? I searched on google but couldn't find an explanation.

You can create the .mid File, which will be converted to the Audition, wherever you prefer (in the MODX itself, or your favorite DAW).
Press [UTILITY]
Touch “Contents” > “Load”
Set the Content Type = .mid File

Once a .mid is loaded to the MODX (or if created on the MODX) that data will remain in memory until you “Delete” it or “Initialize” your instrument. You can view all the .mid files you have loaded or created in the MODX SONG FOLDER
[UTILITY] > “Contents” > “Data Utility” > touch SONG Folder
Here you’ll see a listing of all your songs. These Songs can be *copied* to the User Audition area as follows:

Call up the Performance, from the HOME screen
Press [EDIT]
Touch “General”
In the lower right corner touch the box “Update User Auditions”
This converts all of the songs recorded on the MODX to User Auditions. If the User Auditions already exist, all User Auditions will be overwritten.
HINT: make sure only data you wish to use as Audition Phrases occupies the SONG FOLDER — DELETE any you do not want to be used as Audition data.

You can see the Audition setup parameters on this same “General” screen... each Performance can be associated with either a Preset Audition, or a User Audition, or an Audition from one of your eight installed Libraries.

Once your Song Folder is copied to the Audition area, the Song no longer needs to be in the Song Folder... it becomes apart of the USER Bank data.

Great thread, thanks Eric, Jason, and Phil.
And Phil, I was surprised to discover that you are NOT an engineer. Being an engineer myself, and after working through your "Discovering MOX" video, I was convinced that you were. 🙂

Thanks,

I changed the place of the piano (first in slot 8 ) and put it on slot 1 now I can play many notes without a sustain problem. With the piano on slot 8 and even when other slots were muted I could only play I think 20 notes and than the sustain problem started, now I changed that and the problem is solved. I just wanted slot 1-4 to use with instruments witch I could control realtime the faders qiuckly without having to press a button to control part 5-8 on the MODX.

Also the audition tip is working, thank you, I'm a happy camper now:D

Very interesting that MODX apparently prioritizes polyphony based on which Parts the sounds occupied, rather than "first in, first out" as is most common (although piano-specific implementations are also often smarter than FIFO, dropping less noticeable notes before more noticeable ones, yet another way to go, and presumably explains why I could more easily create a dropped piano note on my 64-polyphony MOX than my 32-polyphony NP30).

I wonder if the MODX preference for not dropping notes in Part 1 compared to Part 8 of a Performance is not a matter of preferring lower numbered Part locations per se, but rather related to the SSS available for the first 4 Parts. Maybe as part of that implementation, maintaining polyphony in Parts 1-4 ends up prioritized over any other Parts. If that's the case, then moving you piano from 8 to 5 might have made no difference, while moving it from 8 to 4 might have produced the same results as moving it from 8 to 1. If that were the case, then to minimize the chance of dropouts, rather than thinking "l should put my most polyphony-demanding, sustain-pedal using sounds as far 'left' as I can," you would think "I should put my most polyphony-demanding, sustain-pedal using sounds somewhere in the first four Part locations" which is a little less restrictive a guideline for minimizing the possibility of dropouts. If you're up for trying that experiment, it would be interesting to know the results!

Previous user-contributed threads for Montage have concluded that Montage has a higher priority on lower numbered PARTs vs. higher numbered ones. With demonstrable differences from PART1 through PART8. The behavior has several differences in how notes cut out for each PART and no testing was done with (again, for Montage) PARTs 9-16 where SSS would have been invalidated.

So, at least with Montage, the behavior is less tied to SSS and more tied to something intrinsic in the PART's "priority".

Under a different context, PART 1 has been given a sort of "supreme" priority as we designate PART 1 as the "anchor". This is different than polyphony -- but it does "make sense" that the anchor part would be given a higher priority than non-anchor PARTs. The "anchor" PART (PART 1) is the one we label to categorize the entire Performance. Also, regardless of anything else, all Performance MUST have a PART 1 (and must not have any other PART). There are several "tangential" reasons why PART 1 seems well-aligned to have a higher priority in terms of polyphony.

Here's a snippet of the referenced thread (quoting Roberto):

this is the result of my test :
part 1 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 8th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*7 key))
part 2 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 5th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*4 key))
part 3 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 4th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*3 key))
part 4 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 3th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*2 key))
part 5 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 3th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*2 key))
part 6 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 3th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*2 key))
part 7 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 2th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*1 key))
part 8 (all other parts put to zero by volume slider) voice cut on the 2th key pressed (so poly 8(elements)*1 key))

I use sustain pedal to keep the low note pressed and then play higher notes in order to hear the low note cut.

it seems that lower parts have more polyphony priority.

Very interesting, thanks!