how play chord on first controller and strum on second ?

trogluddite · 2 Jun 2011

Ah yes, now I see why you asked for polyphony in your old thread. So when there is a note on 'Strum' controller, all of the 'Note' controller notes are sent as one big chord. it is a clever idea, and definitely it can be done with SM...

The 'Notes' part just needs a memory of 'Note On' and 'Note Off' messages from the MIDI to find which keys are held down right now - that's why your other design was mono - the MIDI splitter has no memory for old notes, only the one most recently played. Spooky coincidence - I am making a MIDI 'note memory' just now for a MIDI looping plugin. It is working pretty good, and I will post it on the forum to share - I just need to make it tidy and easy for others to use!! After that, the sending 'strums' part should be quite easy.

Tzarls · 2 Jun 2011

It´s not that simple trog. I haven´t used the actual you rock guitar controller, but I think I know how it works. When you place your fingers on the fretboard, it checks in which fret AND string your fingers are (and if there´s a string or strings not being pressed by a finger, it´s set as if it is being pressed at fret 0). So each string has a MIDI note number assigned to it. (Actually, I think there are no strings by the fretboard, but rather some switches built to feel like strings. Anyway, you get the idea).

That´s for the left hand. Now the right hand: There´s no actual strumming going on, at least not automatically. Each string is an individual "trigger". When you pluck string number 6, it fires a noteOn message, with noteNumber = the note you assigned when fretting and velocity = the intensity of the pluck. You create a struming effect by triggering (plucking) one string after another rapidly.

To address the OP matter: if you wanted to do such a thing, you would need to somehow create 6 individual "voices" from the chord you play on the keyboard, preferably all arranged in the way the voices are arranged in the guitar. Then, when you pluck a string on the you-rock-guitar controller, you just need to fire the corresponding voice, and that´s about it.

trogluddite · 2 Jun 2011

tracert wrote: it is possible to combine all, to don't need to know the position of the finger on the neck ?

Unless I misread the question, I think trancert already thought of the problem of keyboard vs. fretboard, and tamed the spec' accordingly.

My 'All Green' voice manager is looking well capable of doing the held note recognition - I have it running now with 8 voice polyphony, and there's no noticeable delays or dropped/hanging notes. I'm just working on making it modular, so that it is easy to make a schematic with an arbitrary number of voices, then I'll post it up. Arranging voices as in a real guitar chord could involve some tricksy pattern recognition, but I'd be willing to bet that 90% of listeners would be fooled by simply arranging the notes in pitch order, which ought not to be too taxing for a max of 6 notes. Trying to do an auto-strum kind of stepping through the notes would be the trickiest thing to do is SM I think - the green timing just isn't good enough for the tiny time delays needed - though the inherent randomness might make the plugin sound quite 'human'! I wonder if some kind of quantising of the pitch or mod wheels might be used instead for triggering - simply waggle up and down really fast to simulate up and down strums; would also give some rudimentary control over the strum speed (hmm, would need to be a pretty sturdy controller!).

Tzarls · 2 Jun 2011

Some time ago I tried the mod wheel strumming thing (actually I did it with the pitch wheel, since it auto-centers it seemed a better choice). It worked well for slow strums, but when doing it fast it skipped some values, hence skipping some "strings". But to be fair I didn´t try too hard, so it might actually work with some tweaking.

trogluddite · 2 Jun 2011

Ah, maybe I stole your idea 😊 - now that you mention it, I do seem to recall reading some posts a long time ago about the trouble you were having with it. Anyhow, I have now posted my 'Green Poly Voices' schematic - you can find it HERE.

Tzarls · 2 Jun 2011

😀 No problem... I´ll check yout schematic tonight!

tracert · 3 Jun 2011

Thanks all for your help on my question, but when i go to: [old link] i get : You are not authorised to read this forum. It is not possible for me to get our schematic, what must do about ?

tracert · 3 Jun 2011

Hi trogluddite, it is no possible for me to find your Green Poly Voices, can you show me only the schematic ? many thanks !!!

trogluddite · 3 Jun 2011

Are you using the Free or FruityLoops version of SM? That may be the problem, some areas of the forum are only available to people who bought the full version of SM directly from OutSim. If you did get the full SM, and you are still having problems, you should contact [email removed] - could be the forum hasn't registered you properly.

Anyhow, here's the schematic - I just posted it elsewhere to make it easy for other people to find when using the search box.

tracert · 3 Jun 2011

Hi trogluddite, sorry for my ignorance, but dont understand how to connecy my two controllers and how to get out midi note ! 🙁

trogluddite · 3 Jun 2011

Your 'Notes' controller will be the one connected to the 'Green Poly Voices' part. Your strum controller will need to connect to a set of MIDI Events (like in your original post - but one for each voice). Each MIDI can then take its note number (maybe velocity?) from the 'Note' outputs of the big bus extract. Each of the note event generators will probably need a little 'Greater than' comparison to stop the event trigger if the note number is zero (note zero = silent voice) - like the way you filtered the MIDI channels in your old schematic, but using the note number instead of channel. Then connect all of your MIDI event primitives to the MIDI output (it should just mix them all together properly)

tracert · 3 Jun 2011

Ok trogluddite, now better understand, i have upload attachment, can you suggest some trick to optimize my simple work ?