Is it possible to use the touchpad on the Pyramid to basically act like a kaossilator? In other words, to set the x-axis to pitch, the y-axis to gate length, and then use the touchpad to send midi notes with those parameters to an external synth, arpeggiated in time with Pyramid’s clock?
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Simpler question-- Can the touchpad alone send a note-on message to an external synth?
That’d be an interesting use! I don’t think it can trigger new notes out of the blue now but I’ve used it to modulate the arppegiator FX with X on arp rate and Y on octaves range with interesting results. Maybe you could apply something similar to a repeating note pattern to alter the pitch being sent out. But I guess having gate time would require the touchpad to remember which note_on it sent to later send the required note_off.
That’s interesting. Could I send a midi note out to that channel, then use the touchpad to basically un-mute it (and also to affect its pitch)?
Yeah, maybe sending aftertouch & pitch bend messages would do it, not sure if they’re regular CCs though. And map aftertouch to the VCA (volume) on the synth side. You’ll still a held note for this to work.
For the “held note”, the Squarp has a “Latch” and “Relatch” feature in Live mode (2nd + Play), so you dont have to sequence it at all, just play a note once and it’ll hold it for you until you turn off the latch or stop the sequence.
Hey, I just discovered you can totally do what you wanted if you just assign the touchpad to “smartpads”. You then pick the octave range covered on the X axis and another parameter of your choice on the Y axis. Thanks, Squarp!
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Nice, this looks promising for my purposes. The problem I have now is that the smartpad always triggers a chord. How can I get it to play a single note?
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Ok I worked that one out, not having that specific problem anymore, it’s working to where just touching the touchpad will trigger the arpeggiating notes. don’t even need to touch the smartpads at all.
The problem I have now is that the assign function for the touchpad is a little unintuitive. When I hit “assign” and move my finger along the x-axis, it says "Assign touchpad x to … " I choose smartpads, then 2 octaves, then it asks me for the “Y Axis Assignation.” I want the y-axis to control the gate % of the arpeggiator, but the only options I have are velocity, aftertouch, pitch, or modulation.
Alternately if I try to independently assign the y-axis separately, I can go through “Effect Param” to assign y-axis to arp gate (success!), but that wipes out the x-axis assignment of “smartpad, 2-octave” and just leaves me with the “X not assigned” box when I touch the pad. Can you get those 2 assignments working at the same time?
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Ha, I had the same reflexion yesterday going crazy with the arp, I guess that would be a feature request for a future PyraOS release. Assiging Y axis to chance or random FX parameters could also be interesting. And stacking multiple assignments to a single controller would also be nice, but might be too much to deal with on the config side (which to unassign, etc). Maybe just quick-recall different controller assignements.
I’d also like to be able to control CV / gate output with the touchpad, that should be easy to implement…
I’ve always thought the touchpad was left out of the Youtube demos I saw although it should really be a killer live feature. Using it to draw CCs automation is nice but it could do much, much more.
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