[Bluemusic-users] Tracker SoundObject
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From: Steven Y. <ste...@gm...> - 2006-04-27 05:31:09
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Hi All, I had a request from Will Light for a Tracker SoundObject which I think is a good idea as tracker interfaces can be very quick and easy for entering in certain types of musical data and I think would fit in quite well within the blue environment. I thought I would raise that issue here as I thought others might be interested to voice some opinions on how it should be implemented and I also have some questions about it too. (I haven't used a tracker in probably 12 or 15 years and even then didn't use them very much to remember implementation details). First off, is there any particular tracker people are fond of and would like this SoundObject to imitate in usage? I've looked at Renoise on Windows and thought it nicely done, and honestly don't know what's out there anymore to know what to look at. Now, for it to be usable in a blue/Csound context, there are certain things I think may need to happen to make it generic enough to handle different users' instrument building preferences. I guess the best way for me to start is to explain how I'm envisioning it now. The tracker object would start with a single track. The track would have a note template, much like the PianoRoll, something like: ix <START> <DURATION> <FREQ> <AMP> Users can customize that however they like. The tracker then would have two default fields, freq and amp. For freq, the types of values to generate could be MIDI numbers, PCH, bluePCH, or Frequency, and the types of entry could be MIDI, PCH, bluePCH, or possibly HEX (to keep with the tracker convention). For amplitude, the values could be set for absolute, db, or anything really, again with customization for what the user will enter and what the range and format of values to be generated. The tracker would default to 64 steps and a duration field would be needed for the object, which I assume would default to 16 beats (4 measures at 4/4 time, with 16th note subdivision). That would be for absolute time, while TimeBehavior would ultimately affect what the final value is generated. You could insert as many tracks as you like, and would have to setup each one as noted earlier in terms of template note, freq generation method, and amp generation method. Extra fields would be able to be added, so you could have a <CUTOFF> column defined, etc. I'd want to add the ability to tie notes together by pressing the minus key. This would allow users to have good control over notes for doing portamento I think (barring the instrument is designed to take advantage of tied notes). The object would require a bit of configuration before anyone used it, but even in default setting could be used with blueX7 out of the box.=20 The process of configuring to customize for one's one usage really only has to happen once, and after that is done, the SoundObject is ready to copy and reuse for the rest of the project and can be easily copied to new projects or added to one's template .blue project.=20 (This is a common usage pattern I find for myself, something which I have wanted to discuss in getting a faster setup for music making; I'll try to document this in the manual sometime). Having a tracker SoundObject also makes me wonder if a simple-sampler Instrument corollary should be created that works similarly to how Sample instruments work in trackers. (Sampling in general has been on my mind a lot too lately as I see it as the single most deficient aspect of Csound in that with other tools you can have access to massive sample libraries but not so easily within Csound; another issue for another time though). If so, any suggestions on programs to reference? Any advice on this would be very much appreciated! steven |