The basic problem: Selecting octaves is "sticky," which means that the same fingering can yield different notes at different times.

For example, suppose I play the following:

A (left thumb in center position, and left index and middle fingers down)
High D (left middle finger down, all others up)
High A (left thumb in top position, left index and middle fingers down)
High D again (left middle finger down, all others up)

When I play high D the second time, the Sylphyo has remembered that my thum was in the top position, so that D sounds an octave higher than the first one.

This behavior is un-recorderlike, to say the least!

Specifically, I'd love to see a fingering attribute that my old WX-5 has (at least in some of its fingeringoptions) and the Sylphyo does not seem to share: If the index and middle fingers of my left hand (i.e. the two keys closest to the mouthpiece) are UP and the ring finger of my left hand is DOWN, the result is a pitch one octave higher than it would be if all three fingers were DOWN.

This gives me a full octave+fifth range, C to G, without changing registers. I like that feature so much that I've duplicated it as custom fingerings on my Aerophone--but at least so far, the Sylphyo doesn't allow custom fingerings either.

@Peter-Ostry If the Sylphyo had no internal sounds at all, it would essentially be a newer version of the Yamaha WX-5, which is a wonderful instrument.

On my Sylphyo, I see sounds 1-35, as I would expect. 35 is no sound (MIDI Out).

Then sound 36 appears to duplicate sound 1, except that it has a little circle in front of its name. Sound 37 duplicates sound 2, and so on, up to sound 70, Then the cycle repeats again: Sound 71 duplicates sound 36, and so on. And finally the cycle repeats again starting at sound 106, only this time, of course, the sounds run out at 128.

A quick look through the manual did not turn up an explanation of this behavior. Can someone enlighten me?

I've been playing a Yamaha WX-5 for something like 20 years, but they don't make them any more so I've been looking at alternatives.

So far the Sylphyo looks very nice! Incredibly lightweight and playable. I'm sure that I'll have questions and comments as time goes on, but I figured I'd introduce myself at any rate.

Just for fun, here's a video of me playing my WX-5 and my friend Kathy Haynie on keyboard, backing up singer Fiona Tyndall. Don't worry if you can't understand the lyrics--they're in Irish.

Youtube Video

@Clint Hmmm...This could definitely be a problem.

As a general rule, when you are playing legato, you want the note-on message for a new note to happen before the note-off message for the old note. For example, that is how a monosynth knows that it should not retrigger the envelopes when the pitch changes.

But if the old and new notes are the same, I think that the way MIDI is designed is that the note-on message has no effect (because the note is already on) and then the note-off message turns the note off.

That suggests to me that changing fingerings to yield the same note should either send note off, then note on, or should suppress both of them. If the Sylphyo does not already do that, then I think that behavior should be treated as a bug.

I suppose you could use something like a MIDI Solutions Event Processor to massage the MIDI stream. It would have to introduce some latency, but remember that 1ms of latency has about the same effect as moving one foot further away from the loudspeaker.