Misa Tri-bass Manual

HOW IT WORKS

To play a note, you hold down a note on the touch sensitive neck to designate which note you want, and then you press the touch screen. When you release the touch screen, the note will stop playing.

In the standard playing mode, the touch screen is divided up in to four sections. Each section corresponds to a different MIDI channel (numbered 1-4) as in the image below:

When you play a note, the channel it will play on depends on the section on the touch screen that was tapped. You can tap multiple sections simultaneously.

Typically you will assign a different synthesizer to each MIDI channel, so you can control up to four sounds at once. For example, you may assign channel 1 to a synth lead, channels 2 and 3 to variations on a bass patch, and channel 4 to a sound effect.

If you want a sound to continue playing even after you have lifted your finger off the touch screen, you can sustain the note. To do this, drag upwards on the particular section you want to sustain until it turns white. Later, drag upwards again to turn the sustain off. Any pressed notes on the neck will be sustained when the section is tapped.

You can drag a finger across the large touch pad to control multiple effects simultaneously. The large touch pad measures your finger position along the x and y axis. When you drag your finger along the x axis, the tri-bass updates the effects values of any control assigned to CC 16 on channel 1. Similarly, when you drag your finger along the y axis, the tri-bass updates the effects knob positions of any control assigned to CC 17 on channel 1. You can also control effects from the smaller pads. For the smaller pads, only the x axis is measured. Each pad controls CC 16 on its own channel.

NOTE: If you want to assign a touch panel axis to a control in software such as Ableton, you first enable Ableton's "MIDI Learn" function for the particular control you want to assign, and then drag either along the top half or bottom half of the touch panel depending on which axis you want to assign.

 

ALTERNATIVE MODE: SAMPLE PAD MODE WITH TAP

By pressing the two far corners of the touch screen simultaneously, you enable a sample pad mode which does two things:

  1. It displays six squares that behave as sample pads. All pads output to channel 1 and each is tuned to a different note. Since these are sample pads, your hand position on the neck does not affect the sound of these pads. The pads are tuned below the E string (notes B, C, C#, D, D# and E), so you can key split the notes in software like Ableton to get the neck to control a different sound source to the pads. The pads also output a linear x-axis position control (CC numbers 18, 19, 80, 81, 82 and 83). Again by key splitting, if you want you can use these pads to control other parameters without triggering a sample.
  2. Pressing notes on the neck will cause them to be played (to channel 1) even when the touch screen is not pressed. This allows you to do two handed tapping, or use the drum pads while playing on the neck simultaneously. The large X/Y pad can still be used to control parameters (but in this case it doesn't re-actuate the pressed notes, which is a good thing).

 

ALTERNATIVE MODE: SLIDING CHORDS WITH PORTAMENTO

You can enable this mode by pressing the two far corners of the touch screen simultaneously (a second time). In this mode the entire screen behaves as a single touch pad, and each string maps to a different MIDI channel (channels 9, 10 and 11). The X/Y axis controls also send data to each of the three MIDI channels.

I have always been mesmerised by a very specific multi-synth configuration that lets you slide chords in a unique way. I say unique because a keyboard cannot do this. You set up three identical synthesizers on three separate channels (channels 9, 10 and 11) and make sure each synthesizer is monophonic, so that only one note can be played at a time on each synth. Glide/portamento must be enabled for each synth. Each string will output to a different synthesizer allowing you to slide chords while taking advantage of the synth's portamento capability.

 

OTHER THINGS

To see the battery life remaining, press the two corners of the touch screen closest to the neck.