Avoiding retriggers for pads/drones

Recreating my thread here.

Hi folks,
It’s common to want drones or pads to trigger once when played and then not triggered again when the track loops around, to let the sound evolve. Is there a way to do this on Pyramid? A common workaround with other sequencers is to use legato but this only works with mono synths.

you san try to adjust ADSR on your synt a long relase and a little bit slow attack maybe can help you…for legato pads …drone is quite simple ,is more static melody and you can easly automate filter,transposition,arpeggiator…and start to tweak!

It would be really nice if the Pyramid actually supported a note length of “infinity” for drones. When a note is infinite, the note on event would trigger immediately whenever the first of these condition happened: Playback Start, Track is UnMuted, Pattern Becomes Active. Then the note off event would only trigger with the first of the following: Playback Stops, Track is Muted, Patterns is inactive.

A real drone is a note (or notes) that is sustained for a very long time. This is not the same as a seamless repetition of a note that loops every bar, even if you can sometime use evelope settings that minimize the pop the the note gets repeated

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Many hardware synt can bypas vca…

Probably Hold is what you need? (2nd+Play in a Live mode)

Hold is for live playing only. You can’t program it into a sequence. ADSR’s aren’t the answer either. As o_O says, it needs a note length of zero (which represents note on, without noteoff) to do this. This kind of “one-shot” functionality would be useful in lots of situations. Program Changes trigger at the start of every sequence, which means you can’t live play your synth as the patch resets.

Maybe programmable hardware MIDI filter is the only solution for now. I think something like the MidiPAL/MidiGAL (https://midisizer.com/midigal/) with the appropriate firmware would do the work. But i’m only guessing there, i never tried the actual thing.

It could be programmed to bypass the Note Off message on a particular channel… but this could be a problem if you actually need this message to end your drone :wink:

Sustain pedal maybe? That can be programmed into a sequence too.

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Gonna try that today!

Definitely a sustain pedal for live control over the sustain of the drone. Nice to be able to manually close it down, or create some variation if needed.

Also consider using midi CC to create this effect.

Example:
Track 1
Enter the note for the drone

Track 2
Send midi CC to sustain, or release to open up the drone

Track 3
Send other CC to animate or modify the drone over time

Track 4
Send CC data to close down the drone and “end” if you will

Thoughts:

  • Once the release is opened and the drone is playing it may not be desired to continue playing the original notes. This could lead to layers you don’t want.
  • Might also be a good idea to create a track with the start settings programmed as CC so that if you get out of control or lost it is possible in a performance to return to the default setting without a program change which could potentially interrupt the drone.
  • Using the encoders and the XY pad on the Pyramid can make it really fun to play with CC data over time so in effect your actual note track is quite short, but you may want the CC tracks to be much longer.
  • Playing these CC tracks live also means that they don’t really have to be long either.

This sounds like a lot of fun actually, and I’m going to give it a try myself this afternoon.

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+1
good idea!
(and the maximum length for a note should be longer too)

I don’t see how we can avoid the retrigger as the note track 1 loops around.

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Track run mod: TRIG
http://squarp.net/modeseq#ancre09

TRIG ( icon displayed under TR): track plays once at the beginning of the sequence and does not loop. The track is simply triggered and stops when it reaches its end.

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LOL, the trigger mode I’m guessing everyone has chosen to not ever use (I def don’t use it).

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Yep, that would probably do it.

But even if in TRIG mode, the track will produce a Midi Note Off at its own end, no? Can a sustain midi CC override this message?

So finally had time to test it. Worked.
I created a sustained note that stayed on FOREVER.
How did I do it?

Created a track. Entered a note. On the same note I added a CC #64 message with the value 64. That is sustain.
Next in track mode. 2nd+Track, set the run mode to TRIG (thats the “>1” sign). Now once you unmute this track while the sequencer is running, the note is send and sustain is on, the track gets played only once because of TRIG run mode.
So next I created another track. Entered CC #64 value 0 on a note (sends sustain off).
Voila, you have can now create drones and kill them whenever you want.

This is still not as cool as would an “endless” note be, but this is a working solution.

Hope this helps :wink:

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Newly released Micromonsta firmware now has a drone mode! Audiothingies rocks.

…and MPE compatibility!! Great update! :slight_smile:

Just now I’ve found HOLD and RELATCH modes to useful for this.

While in LIVE mode press 2nd + Play/Pause. The icon at the top right changes to H or R.

Hold mode is awesome for creating arps that repeat indefinitely even if the patten restarts. No Trig >1 mode required. You can then easily add or remove notes from any octave to the arp.

Relatch mode is similar except all notes are cleared when you key in ANY notes.

Hold some notes, add an arp, automate a chance line, maybe the swing, or other fx and you could easily generate a self sustaining, self similar, non repeating melody.

I’m haven’t yet tried to see if it’s saved with the pattern.

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