Zeppelin Design Labs MACCHIATO, Руководство пользователя, Страница: 15 / 21

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OTHER TOP PANEL FEATURES
9. OUTPUT VOLUME
Turn to the right for more volume. CAUTION: Always turn down the volume before you plug ANYTHING
into the Audio Out jack! The on-board speaker is not very loud, and you will tend to turn the volume
way up. The signal out of the Audio Out jack, on the other hand, is pretty “hot”, meaning your
headphones or desktop speakers will seem A LOT LOUDER at the same volume setting. You could hurt
your ears or damage your gear (or annoy your parents) if you start with the volume up too loud.
10. LED POWER INDICATOR
The LED glows red when there is power to the synth. It will get dimmer as your battery wears out.
11. SPEAKER
The on-board speaker is not very loud, and will deplete your batteries quickly. It is there as a convenience
for monitoring your Mini-Synth when external speakers or headphones are not available.
12. CAPACITIVE TOUCH KEYBOARD
The Macchiato Mini-Synth features two-note polyphony. (We may expand this to more notes in future
software releases. Sign up for our newsletter at
www.zeppelindesignlabs.com to receive product release
notices.) Two-note polyphony means the synth can sound up to two different notes simultaneously. A
third note will knock out one of the earlier notes. This makes it possible to play fluid, expressive
melodies, or sustained diads (pairs of notes). You cannot play three- or four-note chords. When you
play accidentals (black keys), your finger is in a neighborhood where three keys meet. If your finger
lands at that junction, the results will be unpredictable; therefore to play well with the capacitive touch
keyboard you must learn just the right touch. The Macchiato is a real musical instrument and it will take
a little practice to learn to play it well.
The capacitive touch keys work best when the synth has something plugged in to either the Power In
jack, the Audio Out jack, or both. If you power the Macchiato with a battery, and listen via the on-
board speaker, you may find the keyboard becomes a little unreliable. It will behave itself if you keep
a finger on the blue surface beyond the keys, at far left or right. Try it.
Here are some performance tips:
You can hold down one note, usually a low one, as a drone and then play an accompanying melody
above it. This is possible, but if you play at all legato -- slurring one note into the next -- you will likely
lose your drone. Therefore, try to play staccato, and pulse the drone every measure or two. Set a long
decay to simulate a legato sound.
You can set the synth to a low octave, trigger and hold a low note, then turn the octave knob to a higher
octave and play a melody in a higher register! This is nifty, but the moment you lose or drop the low
drone, it will come back in the current, higher register. If you like to play this way a lot, you should
use a MIDI controller keyboard, which will give you total access to all registers, even beyond the four
octaves native to the Macchiato.