Expression
How It Works
What happens to a note after you play it
Everything in Chords - the strums, the squeeze, the shake, the touch - comes down to one idea: every string carries energy, and a note lasts exactly as long as its string has some.
- Playing a string gives it energy. How much depends on how hard you played - a flick fills it, a graze barely wakes it.
- Energy drains on its own. A ringing string fades the way a real string fades, and when the energy is gone, the note ends. Nothing else decides when a note stops - there's no fixed note length anywhere in the instrument.
- Low strings hold energy longer. A bass note outlasts a high one from the same strum, so a rung-out chord dies from the top down.
- Playing a ringing string tops it up. Re-strike before it fades and it swells rather than restarting cold.
Everything else on these pages is a way of pushing that energy around:
| Gesture | What it does to the energy |
|---|---|
| The squeeze | Drains it - gently for a palm mute, completely for a choke |
| The shake | Feeds it - ringing strings keep ringing while you move |
| Shaping by touch | Rides it - your finger sets how loud the ringing chord sits |
| The plant | Holds it - a planted string doesn't fade at all |
How long strings ring by default, and how much your playing speed matters, are the Ring, Bias and Dynamics settings - see the settings panel.
Alongside its energy, every string carries a second quality - how bright or plain its voice is - that your touch also steers. Where both of them go when they leave the instrument is the MIDI story.