Really love the Synth. The need to use shift while holding notes is a big workflow issue, as it occupies a hand holding the shift button. It’s hard to operate knobs at the same time. Hold and hold release being tied to shift is in the way of real-time filter work or wavetable action. The solution, which ought to be fixable in firmware, would be to add a “touch” mode for hold behavior. It would be a system setting selection: optional, so people who like the current behavior can choose it.
What should this feature achieve?
It would make real-time changes MUCH easier. By freeing up the hand that holds shift while playing, other actions can be combined with arp/sequence holds. It could be set to an arbitrary time (such as 3 seconds=hold), or, if it’s not too much trouble, user could select seconds until hold. The other key behavior is that held notes should also be released by touch…in this case, momentary touch would be sufficient to deactivate a held note.
Are there any workarounds?
I have seriously considered building a manual switch on the shift button. This particular behavior is so annoying. But this solution should be easy to add in a firmware update, and no weird contraptions necessary.
What about adding some system CC’s for it? That way an external (foot)controller could activate it. It would be similar to the novation circuit tracks/rhythm in the way that each track gets it’s own midi channel, which is similar to how the Synth works atm, plus a dedicated set of system CC’s on channel 16 that would include this function.
Not to derail your idea, but it did get me thinking of ways to approach this issue.
Well, it’s a good idea, but it wouldn’t solve the problem I’m experiencing…if I get to turning knobs, my held notes are playing too long. I have to stop whatever I’m doing to deactivate the note w/shift, select another note, with shift…because it takes both hands to play held notes, there’s no way to get into a groove with knobs. I might try putting a weight on the shift when I play…I’ve thought about how to jury-rig it with some kind of whammy bar.
External foot controller would mean I can’t clock externally. But I do appreciate your suggestion. I think it would be solved with firmware code in the manner described, there’s no physical reason it couldn’t be implemented immediately.
Greeting @amar and welcome to Backstage. Great to have you join us here
I’m with you on this one. In fact there was a “bug” in an old beta where you could release the Shift if you went into the global settings. Some of us jokingly asked Polyend not to fix it
Of course I understand it needed to be fixed because it wasn’t expected behavior, but I do hope we see this implemented properly. It would be a big QoL improvement.
I wish I could. My votes are currently spoken for as I also have the Play+ and Tracker mini. This is certainly on my radar, as I plan on getting a Synth soon and I can already see myself fumbling over this. Hopefully I’ll be able to free up some votes in the next wave of updates, and if they haven’t addressed this by then, I’ll be tossing my vote in the hat.
