I created a bass line, where each note is 1 bar long. I wanted to create an effect where I could “shorten” the note based on the “Chance” effect. However, the “note length” option only goes in one direction – positive.
I want a condition where my long notes are shortened in half roughly 1 out of 5 times. What I would have done is set the Chance, Note Length FX to be -50% and set the Chance itself to 20%
What if I create the notes to be half-the length I want at the start. Then set the Note Length to +50%, and set the chance to 80%. Will this give me the “long” notes approx 4 out of 5 times? It’s still not perfect, and it’s not the same as an occasional shorter note, because in this workaround the short notes are “standard.”
Will this work? Should I submit a request that note length option on chance be allowed to have a negative percentage?
Like all Effects, CHANCE acts in real time. It has no way of knowing when a note stops before it receives a MIDI NOTE OFF message. So a negative percentage is not possible, because that would be predicting the future.
Yes. I know it flips the reasoning on its head, but it’s compatible with real time constraints.
my first thought was to simply use the ‘unipolar’ solution.
so, to program notes as the shortest possible length, then ‘extend’ up to the maximum.
( a trick often use from unipolar modulation)
however, the issue is in this case, is chance… since a low % means you are always going to get the shortest note length most of the time - rather than the mid length point.
I think the solution @Thibault_Squarp (in a real time context) would be to have a distribution curve for chance… if you imagine a simple bell curve, then in this context, it would make the mid values much more likely… so combined with short notes, would allow this use-case to be solved.
I generally thing using distribution curves on things like chance could be very interesting…quite a step up from simple linear distribution.