Individual Note and Gate lengths

[2disbetter]

It would be great if we could have individual note and gate length times. I might want one note to sound for a bar, and one for just a quarter of a bar. It would be nice to have this. This in conjunction with the overall note length per step could allow for some very complex sequences using what would amount to micro timings.

I know there is still a lot more to come from this module, but this one thing would make the toolbox infinitely more useful.

PS: Happy holidays! Hope you guys have a great one!

[Dan]

This is one of the issues I brought up a lot when I was beta testing toolbox.

I agree that it would make the note sequencers much better and more usable!

Happy holidays to you too 2d

[2disbetter]

This is kind of a must for me. The sequencer would be just too limited without it. I know hardware wise this is totally possible. 1010 might not have initially aimed for it, but the toolbox could be the ultimate sequencer. As the intro to the series 2 hardware set there is such great potential here and I'm a patient guy.

[Aaron]

Tell me more about how you would control the duration. I have a BeatStep Pro and I find that having a knob per step to control the duration is tedious. There has to be a better way and I look forward to hearing about it.

[2disbetter]

I'm a big Elektron sequencer fan. They focus on pattern length (how many steps) and the tempo (BPM). The default length is four steps per bar. If you don't set a specific note length yourself this is the default duration. You can set a step to whatever length you want, so long as it is divisible by the initial 4 steps per bar. This limits you in that you can't have odd signatures or whatever but you can some what get around this using micro timings.

How the toolbox could do it, would be similar. There is a default step length accessible via info. I think one way to do the individual timings would be to have it accessible from the info screen.When you first hit info, you see the page that comes up now with number of steps, step duration, etc. If you hit the info button again, you would be taken to another screen that lists out all of the gates and their length. Here you could touch a step and then use a knob to dial in the desired length. On the screen a way to copy a length and paste it somewhere else would be very useful, especially in longer patterns.

Now the problem with this approach is the discontinuity with the cv or note sequencer. I guess one work around to this would be have an option to merge these two screens for simplicity. On the piano roll, when you place a note, you would then determine that notes lengths.

The other solution would be to allow a double push of info to bring you again to a step length page. This could be powerful as you could sequence gate and note length seperately. This could be cumbersome though if you don't want your CV and gate out of sync. Still just adding a step length page to the info menu seems to be like the quickest way to get it into the UI.

[Dan]

I think that being able to select a note/s in the note sequencer window (by double tapping or holding down, maybe?) and then use a control knob to extend it outwards, however many steps you needed, would be the easiest way to implement this feature without extra screens.. That way the duty range could still be the same for all of the notes, but some of them would be multiple steps in length, so for example, if the duty range is set to 50% and a note is 3 steps long, it will cut off at half way through the 3rd step.

[pascalm]

I would just keep it simple:
-add a "note/gate input step length" to the info screen of the sequence (maybe start with multiples of step length to make it easy to implement?)
-every note you input will have this length
-change it in the info screen every time you want to input longer-shorter notes

[2disbetter]

So in using the toolbox and thinking about this more, there are some overlapping UI elements here that individual note length would kind of exaggerate. For one, it would be nice to have 8 gate boxes, and 8 CV boxes so as to use all of the outputs. One other thing that would be nice, is if you are playing notes and not sequencing drums, that you could merge the note and gate screens into one. This way the piano roll would show note length as well as the note. It would also be nice to be able to merge more than just 1 CV out and 1 Gate out per track. If you could for example have 2 CV and gates per track. This would help approximate MPE playback, in that you could use 1 cv for the note, 1 for the traditional note on and note off (gate), and then use the additional CV to control a filter cutoff, LFO speed, etc.(thus emulating velocity or vibrato) and the gate could be used to turn on an effect, or start and stop another sequence during note on times, etc.

You might be asking, well how do I depict UI for all of this? Honestly I think the easiest way to is just use the piano roll or the seq roll for curves. Let the burden of figuring it out rest with the user. Maybe let us switch between the piano roll and bar curve.

Of course being able to manually define where each of the 4 parts above are routed would be awesome as well. In addition it would be great if you could also add more than 1 out on individual parts (parts being a CV1, CV2, Gate1, and Gate2)

What are your thoughts on such a scenario? Are you able to give us any feedback on what is currently in the pipeline for the toolbox? Thanks and keep up the great work!

2d

[Aaron]

Dear all,

Thanks for keeping this conversation going. Yes, we know that toolbox needs some love.

I am intrigued by the idea of offering length as a multiple of the step count. Of course, this limits the possibilities somewhat and could be an effective way to go. Would this approach solve 80% of your needs?

Aaron

[2disbetter]

If you mean, for example, with the step count set to 32, and each note is typically 1 step you change the length of the note by steps (IE: one note is 2 steps, another is 3 steps,and another 1, for example) that would work as the clock and step count could be used to get the proper timings.

Would this also work for gates? That would solve 80% for me, as I can use additional tracks to give me the additional cv and gate outs I need.

Any chance we can get more than 4 tracks so we can take advantage of all the outs?

2d

[bbartokk]

I would also love to see this added. Having the ability to set gate lengths and/or note lengths would take this from a robotic sequencer to a more human sounding sequencer.