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Post by feijai on Oct 28, 2023 18:06:57 GMT
MIDI Polyphony and Note Distribution. So one of the notorious problems with modular is that it's often monophonic bleeps and bloops. There are many reasons for this, but one challenge is note distribution.
I had mentioned this to namke, but have thought a bit more about it. Because it's 5V and has a bus, AE is uniquely positioned to make this reasonably easy. Wonkystuff have the right idea but at present their modules break out notes by channel. But what would really be useful would be to break out notes on the same channel. That is, build a note distributor.
Imagine we had a 1U module which took MIDI IN and distibuted notes up to N voices, outputting for each voice:
- Gate - Pitch CV [Adjusted by pitch bend]
- Velocity/Volume - Option [Poly/channel pressure, or a CC, selectable]
With 3 voices, you could do all four of these options. With 4 voices, you could have the first three options. With 6 voices you could have the first two options.
There'd be room for one pin for aftertouch or a CC, selectable, and another pin for a CC. A final pin would send out MIDI THRU stripped of the allocated note messages, so you could daisy-chain to more modules for more voices. You'd need a knob stating how many voices to allocate and how another stating how many total voices of downstream modules there were [so you didn't do preemptive voice stealing]
To this you could just rig up classic synth voice module chains.
MPE Note Distribution. Another option would be an MPE note distributor. Wonkystuff's modules can *effectively* do MPE already I think, since MPE is just distributing per-channel [it's really a very simple protocol]. But this assumes that all the synth voices are MIDI ready. You might have an option to state which channels your distributor is listening to (rather than distributing a single channel).
Finally, I'm sure that Tangible Waves is working with Wonkystuff to think about how to incorporate MIDI... but I have a suggestion.
MIDI and Other Stuff on the Bus. It seems to me that B.Stop isn't particularly useful, and Ctrl is underused. I would like to suggest that future MASTER I/O modules reallocate these as follows:
B. Stop can be changed to MIDI IN, selectable on MASTER I/O.
Ctrl can be changed to MIDI Note Velocity, or to Ctrl 1 I/O IN, selectable on MASTER I/O.
I don't think that this would have any significant negative effect on downstream modules. Can anyone think of any? And it'd allow future modules to take MIDI IN (!!!), plus Ctrl 1 and (sigh) note velocity.
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Post by Kyaa on Oct 29, 2023 5:09:23 GMT
I'm quite keen on the idea of a midi bus.
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Post by pt3r on Oct 29, 2023 8:45:17 GMT
I won’t loose my sleep over mpe or other MIDI polyphonic modules, since this is not what got me into AE modular. I do like the midi implementation of namke since it still leaves loads of room for patching and experimentation which is what modular means for me. I don’t need pristine sounding all singing and dancing modules that only require a midi connection and some power, for those systems are plenty available out there. |
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Post by pt3r on Oct 29, 2023 9:41:46 GMT
Another obeservation, if my modular only sounds like monophonic bleeps and bloops then it is more ofthen than not the patch causing this, not the absence of polyphonic modules.
I believe the AEtherwaves prove my point as those compilations sound nothing like monophonic bleeps and bloops to me, despite the clear lack of polyphonic modules on the time of their recoding. One of my pet peeves with modular is the omnipresent train of thought that another module will propel my music to the next level. This is modular, if I encounter a problem then I will try to patch the solution around said problem. The beauty of modular is that many modules can perform different task depending on the way you use them.
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Post by feijai on Oct 29, 2023 10:58:21 GMT
I mean no offense! Certainly my own music on modular is bleepy, if not downright bloopy. But I'm not looking at this in terms of my own music: I'm looking at it as a developer. 5V AE Modular + MIDI on the bus would be something really unique, opening up a number of venues for compact polyphony and multitimbralism that other modular systems simply cannot do. And it'd be *really* easy to implement. The main issue, I guess, would be whether it'd induce too much noise on the bus. |
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pol
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Post by pol on Oct 30, 2023 20:08:36 GMT
I feel most Modular synth music is bleeps and bloops as many people creating are at least as much interested in the electronics and exploration as the end result. I'm not in this camp but I'm quite happy that my AE is mostly used as a monophonic sound source (there are ways around this, as was done with much synth music in the 1970s in particular, before the Phophet 5 came along), also with some "cheating" with the Solina module. In my last AE piece it produced 4 different sounds which is where a modular really shines to me. I feel the complex sounds you can generate with even a pretty simple set up are lost when turned into chords etc, and lose the modular synths USP. There's loads of cheap polysynths out there so don't need my AE (my most expensive piece of gear!) to emulate them...
On a related note I am actally debating removing my master module and using a power one instead, as I mostly trigger my AE via CV/Gate, or it is a self contained patch....
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Post by pt3r on Oct 31, 2023 12:07:19 GMT
When I built my third rack I had to get another power source since 4 x16 rows of modules were really pushing my master module. I opted also for a simple power module since I'm not using MIDI that much and most of the times I only use its clock and start / stop signals in my patches. this said it could be fun to try to patch a polyphonic voice using the midi interface of the standard master module.
Perhaps an idea for a patch challenge?
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