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Ensembles, Parts, Instruments

The projects you work with in SynC Modular are called Ensembles. They are stored in files with .sme extension. E.g. Example.sme.

The ensemble consists of a number of Parts. A part can be thought of as a virtual musician having a set of Instruments at its disposal to play.You do not create parts yourselves. Instead there's a fixed number of parts available, 16 PartBox parts (corresponding to 16 MIDI channels) + 1 Ensemble Part. The MIDI channel for the ensemble part is set in its instrument settings.

A PartBox part can own up to 128 instruments (corresponding to 128 MIDI programs). The Ensemble part owns only one instrument.

An Instrument is a virtual device capable of creating a certain range of sounds. With SynC Modular you can create instruments yourselves or use instruments designed by other people. E.g. you could create an instrument simulating the sound of a Hammond organ. Such instrument could have a number of faders representing the drawbars and also whatever other controls you want it to. The window containing the instrument's controls is called the instrument's panel. The window containing the internal schematics of the instrument is called the instrument's structure.

Two different common practices exits. The first is for creating a single-instrument ensembles. Primarily used for live playing. The only used instrument is created within the ensemble structure and thus assigned to the ensemble part.

The second practice is for creating multitimbral ensembles. Primarily used for sequencing. The instruments are created within PartBox parts. The ensemble instrument may be used as a place for master effects processing (routing the PartBox outputs through the effects modules to the output). In this case the ensemble part is usually set up to respond to no MIDI channel or to an unused MIDI channel if you want to control the effects in realtime by MIDI.

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