How does Legato/Portamento Work?

(i dont know engl)
...i have problem, my portamento work only in Live mode...
Whot is with single??

kwfk, the portamento makes a note "slide" to another, and it works great on monophonic patches.

Let's say you press C3. Then, while holding it, you press C4. There will be a "glissando" from one note to another. How long it will take for the sound to change from C3 to C4 dependes on the time parameter.

Portamento also works on poly patches, but it will sound weird...

Legatto defines if the second key pressed (in our example C4) will sound "separated" from the previous one, or connected, like in a guitar when you hit a second note without strumming the string.

You can find both definitions on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legato
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portamento

I see that both articles actually sound a little alike, but in my experience the big difference between legato and portamento is that you speak about portamento when you are talking about the slide between only 2 notes (that are usually far apart from eachother), whereas you speak about legato when you are talking about a whole phrase of notes that should be "tied together".

Portamento is best heard with a MONOPHONIC patch i.e. a patch that is only able to sound one note at a time, for example most of the soft/hard lead sounds are monophonic.

So when you increase the TIME parameter the pitch from one note goes slower to the pitch of the next note. If you do this with a polyphonic patch I imagine it would sound weird (or maybe you have a layered live set?)

Also, Legato is the "opposite" of Staccato. Legato means notes are connected when played and Staccato means there is a space between the notes.

For example, on a Hammond organ, the percussion effect will sound on each note when you play Staccato, but only on the first note when you play Legato.


Portamento is related to Gissando, which has to do with pitch rather than articulation.

Thank you all for the help. I tried it out with some soft/hard lead patches and now it all makes sense!