How to create glissando??

Do you have a keyboard controller of some sort? If so, you could just play it. Otherwise, you could always punch it in note by note or use the midi editor, but that would be rather time consuming.

Well - a continuous glissando on a piano wouldn't really sound natural.

Why wouldn't it sound natural if you played it? It would be like playing a glissando on a real piano, sliding the back of your finger across the keyboard.

By continuous, I mean ... well, a continuous pitch bend like you would create with a pitchbend wheel on a keyboard. Your second alternative, entering the single notes, will sound okay, though it's tedious.

Christoph Drösser wrote:
By continuous, I mean ... well, a continuous pitch bend like you would create with a pitchbend wheel on a keyboard.

That would sound unnatural! (Although... perhaps that's what he wants). Not sure what the OP meant, but when I read glissando I assumed he meant a piano-style glissando, not what I would consider a portamento-style glissando created with a pitchbend wheel. Although... who knows?!

I guess glissando's an ambiguous term (even in the purely acoustic world - comparing the opening measures of the orchestral vs. piano version of "Rhapsody In Blue").

Your second alternative, entering the single notes, will sound okay, though it's tedious.

Nightmare tedious!

Ah, now I'm getting what you meant with your first post. Just play it! 🙂

Nightmare tedious!

Well - once you created one (preferably chromatic), you could copy and paste it. Though it will probably still sound more mechanical than the real thing.

Christoph Drösser wrote:
Ah, now I'm getting what you meant with your first post. Just play it! 🙂

... and now I understand what you thought I thought! Ah, the endless potential for misunderstandings through internetted exchanges of small boxes of text. 🙂

Helixer wrote:
Uh... thanks!?
So I should just enter in like 32nd notes, 'cause I don't have a keyboard to play it... or musical typing?

Ummmmm.... you're welcome?!

OK. Here's a quick and easy method even Rachel Ray would approve of:

Go to the Window menu and select Keyboard. Get a track ready to record, like a piano track. Start recording. Click your mouse on the picture of the piano keyboard and as it's recording, slide your mouse from left to right over the picture of the keys. Instant glissando!

This lets you glissando the notes pretty fast, but you could always slow down the tempo as you do this so that when you speed it back up the notes fly by even faster.

If you want to edit, just zoom into the MIDI information so there's a detailed grid, and then edit, quantize, move things around, to your heart's content.

Alternatively, you could enter a single octave using, for example, the Musical Typing option under window (if you prefer it to Keyboard). Then as Chris suggested, copy and paste the octave repeatedly, transposing each successive octave up an octave (add an additional 12 pitches). Where I differ from Chris is that I wouldn't necessarily use a chromatic scale if you want to get a natural sounding glissando on a piano-like instrument, since piano players typically glissando on the white keys only, which is a diatonic (C major) scale. Even in Rhapsody in Blue, to continue with that example, the opening glissando is a diatonic not chromatic scale.

In any case, as the least tedious method w/o a controller: Window ->keyboard, record, click, slide!

And did you see Rhapsody in Blue at the Grammy's?
SOOOOOO GOOD!

Agreed!

Helixer wrote:
... I only understood about half of that, but thanks for trying!!
I'm really new to GB and only know how to work like half of it.
I want to, like, glissando a chord, so maybe I should use musical typing (since I don't have a keyboard), but the problem is the notes are in almost four octaves.
So would 32nd notes work instead?
And also I don't really get the whole pitchbend thing... (see my other question, if you can).
I'll try the 32nd notes for now.....

Well, pitchbend is to get a kind of gluey continuous glissando, like a slide whistle. On a piano keyboard, each note would be distinct. This was the misunderstanding Chris and I had above, since the word refers to both.

I take it you want distinct notes, as if you were sliding your finger across a piano keyboard.

Anyway, the 32nd notes should work. Also - this may be another misunderstanding - there's a keyboard option everyone has on GB, not just if you have a literal keyboard. If you go to the Window menu, you can pull up a picture of a keyboard as well as musical typing.

Anyway, if you wanted to glissando up a chord, you could start with just a one note glissando in one octave, 32nd notes (I guess what you're talking about).

Then, create 2 similar or duplicate tracks in GB below that, and copy and paste that octave into each of the newly created tracks. In the 2nd track, if you bring up the edit pane, it gives you the option of raising or lowering the pitch. Raise the pitch by the first interval in the chord. In the 3rd track, raise the pitch by the 2nd interval in the chord. That way, your chord glissando is now being played by 3 tracks. The purpose of all this is that it may be easier to copy and paste across tracks and change the pitch, then type 3 notes of a chord going up an octave on your computer keyboard.

The next step would be to extend the glissando beyond the first octave. On each track, copy and past the first octave a few times, and add 12 pitches to each successive copy.

Not sure if this makes sense or not... it probably sounds more complicated than it is.