Idea: Envelope (sidechain) Effect

Hapax
1

I was thinking about a possible new effect, but before I will send this as a feature request to Squarp, I would like to hear your opinions about this:

What about an envelope effect, where you can send automation to any device for each note played of the current poly track, or a chosen lane in a drum track.

The automation would follow an ADSR envelope, maybe with customizable curves.

You can send this envelope to the same midi port + channel as the current track, or select a different port + channel to create a sidechain effect. When applied to a drum track, you could choose which drum lane will cause the envelope to trigger.

When the envelope is retriggered while the envelope of the previous trigger was not finished yet, it should not reset to 0, but catch up from the point where it left, similar to an analog envelope.

You can sort of do this with the current LFO effect in one-shot mode, but you cannot change the shape, apart from the default LFO shapes and you can also not change the destination: it always sends midi to the current track. Would be nice if this could be changed as well btw.

So the parameters would be something like this:

  1. Attack (hold for curve)
  2. Decay (hold for curve)
  3. Sustain
  4. Release (hold for curve)
  5. Depth
  6. Offset
  7. Mode (legato on, legato off (retrigger for each note), loop
  8. Destination: similar to the LFO destinations, but with addition of Midi Port + Channel settings

Visual feedback of the envelope shape on the screen would be awesome and it would also be really nice to be able to draw the envelope shape using the grid as an alternative!

What do you think about this? I guess sending envelopes over midi wouldn’t be really snappy, but for slower envelope settings it would do just fine. I think it might work good enough for volume ducking sidechain effects, right? Or would midi be too low resolution to achieve smooth sidechain ducking effects anyway?

Obviously, it could also be used for many more creative uses, like sidechaining the filter of another instrument, or just applying an extra envelope to any of the current synth’s parameters. Or send the output internally to another’s track FX parameters, for example to the arp rate for a ratcheting effect to another track for every note of the current track. You could even use “ghost tracks” for just sending envelopes without actually sendint the notes to an instrument. The possibilities are endless! :smiley:

5 Likes
2

Lots of good ideas, there.

Just FYI:

5 Likes
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Oh wow awesome! I see I actually liked that post of yours, but totally forgot about it :stuck_out_tongue:

Looking really forward to it!

I hope it will look something like I suggested (allowing adjustable curve settings, usable for ducking (pseudo sidechain compression) effects → negative depth and in case of a drum track, select the drum lane that triggers it :slight_smile:

Anyway, I guess this thread can be closed then :slight_smile:

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This sounds great. I think an envelope effect would be amazing. For me I’ll like an adsr with option for delayed start. Also it’s important that the envelope is in milliseconds/seconds and not just numbers. And for the last exponential to linear control and looping/ one shot Mode.

1 Like
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Controlling CC7 with a loop envelope looks like a lot of fun.

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So, a new envelope effect has been added in the 1.10 firmware! :smiley: and it does have negative depth and customizable curves, just what I was hoping for!

I can’t test at the moment, but I can’t figure out using the manual wether it is possible to send a cc message to another midi port/channel?

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Sadly not, but you can send it to one of the CV outs, just not another MIDI channel (that I can see?) You can also send to Pitchbend, (channel) Aftertouch, Program Change (mad!), and NRPNs.

However, you can send the output to any other Effect in that track (although not the Matrix or the global LFOs (but you can send to track effect LFOs) and any parameter in that effect, it looks like - including itself (which seems pretty wild, looking forward to playing with that just to see what happens?)

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So with the new Output FX you can send the sidechain CC message to another track! :smiley:

There is multiple ways to do it, but the easiest (for me) is like this:

Track 1 (drum machine):
FX1: Output → to the actual drum machine, so the midi is sent directly to the drum machine without the added FX (which we’ll filter out later)
FX2: Envelope → Sidechain set to the kick drum note / Destination midi CC of the volume/any other parameter
FX3: Filter → Filter out all notes and midi CC except the one set as destination in Envelope
FX 4-8: Output with destination to any synth(s) you want the parameter to be modulated by the envelope CC

You can also just set the track output to the destination, as the actual notes are not sent to this because of the filter in FX slot 3.

Still, it would be much easier and cleaner to just have an option to set the output port+channel inside the envelope FX… It would also make it easier to send different Envelopes with different midi CC’s to different outputs.
Hopefully in a future update :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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sending envelopes over midi doesn’t sound right. Midi is so limited in bandwidth and resolution… i’d not even try it.

Maybe one day if someone implements Midi 2.0 … we talk again.

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For slower envelopes, it works fine! :wink:

But I agree, higher resolution (midi 2.0) would be much better and gives much more possibilities

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hapax can send nrpn resolution (14 bit) which is also its internal cv resolution. nrpn can be sent over usb to an fh-2 to control its cv outputs so youre not restricted to hapax’s 4 cv outs. this might work better than cc (7 bit) and fh-2 lets you expand up to 68 cv outs