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This comment was split from a FAQ comment, to continue the discussion here
Speaking of MIDI controller, for some polyphonic support, a feature similar to Elektron Analog Four/Keys where you could assign 4 tracks to share voices between them, allowing you to play chords with your MIDI controller when trying to play a second key at the same time, or overlapping in any way - where it would simply insert it to the next track and basically enable polyphony out of 4 mono tracks. Even 3 would be cool, and that would leave 5 tracks for the rest of the song, still plenty. But this is a bit off topic, although it would be an excellent way to allow these multisamples to be played. Is there any other way to play a little piano line live and keep the individual notes and timing for tweaking later?
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This comment was split from a different topic, to continue the discussion here
While this is a wonderful option if you need to insert some chords, there might be another way to go about it that gives much more flexibility.
Say you don’t want to play all the notes or the chord at once but strum them, with the previous notes continuing to be heard. Basically polyphony as experienced by the user.
Elektron Analog Keys was 4 monophonic tracks and one of the biggest complaints was no chords or polyphony or paraphony. So they added an option that allowed you to “group” tracks together (up to all 4) and when playing on any of them, you’d gain more polyphony with each track, as the sequencer would distribute the notes over the 4 (or however many) tracks automatically. You could configure how the overflow would be dealt with, last note played, lowest note, etc.
Would something like this be possible? It’d be more work in the recorder and step recorder to be able to record/program more than 1 track at once. The overflow trigger would need to know whether the sample is done playing before reusing the same track but that could just be the sample tail. Biggest work I’d guess would be implementing this “track group” and the logic of how it’s handled. Without sustain pedal repeatedly pressing note would use up max tracks until the release of sample is finished for example. Sustain pedal release would allow basically instant release of the tracks and and ready for more notes. Maybe the note stealing is smarter and would do that anyway with new notes.
Anyway, I wonder if such a feature could be possible. Unless there is some serious design foundations that make it very hard for a track to affect other tracks, I could probably implement something as such. I’ve done some interesting such work on embedded devices before. The firmware is not open source, but maybe there is a way to help out with it by signing an NDA.
And now - technically that’s already possible by ARMing 4 tracks and live recording with a midi controller. The played notes should spread across the 4 armed tracks then, giving you the polyphony you want.
There just isn’t a way to “group” those 4 tracks and make them visually appear as one, and i don’t expect to see this honestly.
Another thing that is missing - but would be nice - is voice spreading or making sure that every note is always cycling through the 4 tracks so that it would always steal the oldest note played.
Thank you! I’ve been using the Tracker, Play and now Mini, and it’s time to join the forum community to discuss and learn more about these great products.
And it’s been fruitful already. I see what you mean by arming 4 tracks now and it kind of does the trick! Surprisingly, haven’t heard it much and online videos seem to be doing things differently. It’s not exactly perfect but it saves me time doing other tricks to basically end up with the same thing.
I don’t mind that they’re not “grouped” as one track. On the Analog Keys they still remain on separate tracks too, so… in the “compacted view” of 8 tracks it’s easy to see. It’s more about being able to steal the oldest note played as you mentioned. With some rapid fingering it’s like I have missed notes. Same thing happens on some multisample players with limited polyphony. Perhaps it could be an instrument parameter (or even track) that could allow such an implementation. Just some ideas atm.
I like having piano/guitar melody interludes in a track, and that’s one area I find where I’m working against the tracker rather than with. However, I think there could be simple solutions. Like the multiple track arming, I’ll be trying it out for a bit and see how it goes.
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