Can someone explain 'slew' to me?

[kevinplaystheblues]

I've been aware of the term 'slew' for some time, and I understand that it's about delaying the response to something, but I don't really understand the impact of making it higher, lower, or anywhere in between in the Mod Matrix?

[SoundQuest]

It's not so much of "delaying" a response, rather it makes a response more gradually applied. I use it on the Muse for aftertouch, whereas it would be too abrupt when you press the key, so I add some slew and it makes a smoother response. Another example, the Pro 2 has slew on the sequencer- which applied to the individual steps it can slew between the notes making a glide-like sound between two particular steps.

[Derek Cook]

Imagine a square wave with its shape transitions from high to low. Now pass it through a slew circuit which is adjustable from no slew to lots of slew. At no slew you will get a square wave still on the out of the slew circuit. As you increase the slew, the transitions will no longer be vertical but will "slew" towards the horizontal.

Slew is a good thing for many reasons. E.g. I have some patches which heavily modulate the VCA shutting the sound on and off (what Pete Townsend did on the intro for "Wont Get Fooled Again"). If you just use a square wave LFO to modulate the VCA the transition can feel a bit too abrupt. Add some slew into the mod matrix and the transition is a little smoother.

And as mentioned above if you find the Aftertouch a little too abrupt then add some slew to it and it is easy to set it to taste

[davlippo7]

Like a global portamento that will glide between notes on the scale this does the same thing on a components scale, not the voice as a whole but just the elements of the voice on a smaller scale. Not at all sure where that word originated "slew" but had they called it "portamento" or "glide" or "slide" or "smoothing" you'd probably understand it better.

[kevinplaystheblues]

I did write a thankyou to you all for the advice but it seems I never posted it or something got lost along the way. I only half understand some of the comments here, but there are quite a few lightbulbs dimly showing light in my brain, and I can think of a few factory patches that will be good candidates to soften the aftertouch one - I am intending to dig these up and read along these replies in front of my synths.

Thanks all.