There is much wisdom in what you say, but I should like to express a slightly different view on a couple of your points.
1) You say that "on a real instrument, legato means that there is only one attack and several notes". If that were universally true, it would be impossible to play legato on a piano, but if you make that suggestion to any even half-competent pianist, you will probably get a punch on the nose. Yet it is undeniable that every note played on a piano has a very distinct attack and decay phase.
I think the idea that all acoustic instruments have a full ADSR cycle on every note probably comes from the early developers of digital sound software being most familiar with instruments like the guitar and the piano, which certainly do have strong attack and decay. Stringed and wind instruments do not necessarily have an attack or decay phase distinct from the sustain part of the curve. As a flautist, I was always at pains to stress to students that tonguing is not a special effect, but merely a device for giving a clean start to a note after a short break. Similarly, when a string player changes the direction of the bow, there will be no decay, although there might be a momentary attack period as the bow gets up to full speed. Of course one can deliberately play an accent or sforzando on a note if one wants to, but it is not an inherent part of the technique or the nature of the instrument.
2) If one is using samples of a real instrument and there is a clear attack and decay phase, then it is possible to create another sample which omits that. In fact, this is effectively what happens when a sample is looped: at a specified point we jump back to a point in the recording after the attack/decay phase. I can quite see that one might want to change the sound source for the 2nd and subsequent notes of a legato passage, but this is easily achieved. Anyway, that is a problem for the user to solve, and it is great that we now can create a legato in qtractor with a minimum of effort!
Copyright (C) 2006-2024 rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela. All rights reserved.
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