how important is aftertouch?

[Cold Truth]

hey, i am getting a midi keyboard, and i found one for $65 with 49 keys (seems a bit more practical than the 88 i just got...... and it has velocity sensitive keys, but no aftertouch. i can not recall ever needing or using aftertouch. what exactly will this enable me to do? if it has a major effect on things then i will likely wait and get something that has it...

 

[Fade]

Just a quick note about what Aftertouch is:
https://www.illmuzik.com/technical/glossary.php

And I got this from this site: http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/midispec/aftert.htm
While a particular note is playing, pressure can be applied to it. Many electronic keyboards have pressure sensing circuitry that can detect with how much force a musician is holding down a key. The musician can then vary this pressure, even while he continues to hold down the key (and the note continues sounding). The Aftertouch message conveys the amount of pressure on a key at a given point. Since the musician can be continually varying his pressure, devices that generate Aftertouch typically send out many such messages while the musician is varying his pressure. Upon receiving Aftertouch, many devices typically use the message to vary a note's VCA and/or VCF envelope sustain level, or control LFO amount and/or rate being applied to the note's sound generation circuitry. But, it's up to the device how it chooses to respond to received Aftertouch (if at all). If the device is a MultiTimbral unit, then each one of its Parts may respond differently (or not at all) to Aftertouch. The Part affected by a particular Aftertouch message is the one assigned to the message's MIDI channel.

It is recommended that Aftertouch default to controlling the LFO amount (ie, a vibrato effect).

 

[Cold Truth]

hmmm.. so basically, it wont stop automatically after i let go, right? it will ease off if i ease off, depending on how hard/soft i let go? just trying to make some sense of it before i go and wind up needing to trade up/in again.

 

[Fade]

Yeah that's basically what it is. What's the keyboard you're talking about?

 

[Dj Dezerk]

its not inmportant but it is cool to have .glad i do