Performance Editor Controls

Assign Mode

The assign mode determines which of the eight possible voices turn on as you play each note. The two possible settings are normal and alternate. When a key is pressed in normal mode, all of the instruments sound off that are on the channel of the note-on message. In alternate mode, all of the notes assigned to a channel act like a chain, and when a key is pressed, only one of the notes in the chain is played. The next key will play the next note in the chain, and this continues until it circles around.

For example, say you have a performance set up like this:

Max Notes 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0
Voice I01 I02 I03 I04 * * * *
Channel 1 1 2 2 * * * *

In normal mode, if you were you play the notes C-E-G-B on channel 1, then you would hear voices I01 and I02 for all four notes. In alternate mode, you would hear voice I01 for C-E, and I02 for G-B, because there are two notes assigned to each.

It's kind of a strange feature, but you can do some nifty things with it.

Effect Select

This is where you select the effect you want to use for the performance. These effects are described in the Effects Editor section. Unfortunately, you can only have one of these effects activated at a time.

Microtune Table

This is where the microtune table is selected. Don't ask, I have no idea what they are or what properties they have — I just copied the names out of the manual :-)

Microtune key

This is where the microtune key is selected. This only applies to certain microtuning tables: Pure Major, Pure Minor, Mean Tone, and Pythagorean. If this setting doesn't apply to the selected microtuning table, then this control will have asterisk in it to indicate that it has no effect.

Instrument Controls

These controls are where the individual instruments are edited. An "instrument" is a voice along with some performance parameters. The performance parameters are completely independent of the parameters that are set in the voice editor.

Max Notes

This determines how many notes are assigned to the instrument. The TX81Z has a limit of eight note polyphony, so all of the max note settings for all the instruments of a performance must add up to eight or less. If you attempt to assign more notes to an instrument than there are available, the unit will attempt to rob notes from higher numbered instruments in order to fulfill the request. This also means that the Max Notes setting of low numbered instruments takes precedence over that of higher numbered instruments. For instance, if have all 8 notes allotted for instrument 1, then you won't be able to assign any notes to any of the other instruments until you decrease the number of notes allotted for instrument 1.

Voice

There are two controls for selecting the voice: a menu button and an LCD control. Pushing the menu button will bring up a menu of all available voices. These names come from the snapshot, so if the snapshot isn't fully loaded, then some or all of the names might be missing. You can still select the voice and it will edit the unit just the same.

The slider does the same thing, but a little more inconveniently. I originally had the slider by itself with the voice name statically displayed, but I swapped the static display with a menu button and I just left the slider in there. You can type the voice number into the slider and use the other LCD control features, so it's not entirely useless.

Channel

This sets the MIDI channel for the instrument. Setting this to omni will make the instrument respond on all channels.

Low Limit
High Limit

This sets the keyboard range in which the instrument will sound. Useful for creating split performances.

Detune

Detunes the instrument. It's good for thickening up instruments in layered performances.

Note Shift

Transposes the instrument.

Volume

Sets the overall volume of the instrument.

Out Assign

Sets the output jack for the instrument. Either I, II, or both, or if the TX81Z is exciting you too much, you can turn the output totally off so you can take a breather.

LFO Select

The TX81Z has a limitation of only being able to use 2 different LFOs and a generic "vib" LFO for all instruments. The unit will only allow you to use the first two instruments with note assignments greater than zero for the LFOs.

Microtune

In addition to the microtuning table and key settings, each instrument has the option to use the microtuning settings or not. This is where you toggle it off and on for each instrument.

Instrument Menu Button

The instrument menu button gives you a couple of high level editing operations so you can edit multiple instruments. You can copy one instrument to another or swap two instruments, which is useful when you want to use the LFO of a certain voice and you want to move it to slot 1 or 2. You can also copy an instrument to multiple instruments. When this function is selected, you'll see a dialog box that looks like this:

Just check which instruments you want to copy the settings to and click OK to copy them.

Note the rules for max notes always apply, so pay careful attention when using these functions because it's possible for notes to be robbed from other instruments.