polyphony in M3's combination

jerrythek · Post by **jerrythek** » Fri May 01, 2009 1:06 pm

Thanks Daz!!

I actually didn't realize at the time of my posting that we didn't already "expose" control of the Track Status, and it can't be captured in live recording, since it gets greyed out while recording. I was recently working a bit on my examples, and noticed that.

So your solution IS the only way to get to it. Luckily our implementation allows this type of direct Hex entry/editing as well. When we designed that part of it we were only thinking about being to enter message to control non-Korg gear, but it's already come in handier than I expected. Good thing!

Thanks again.

Best regards,

Jerry

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Fri May 01, 2009 3:56 pm

Thanks Jerry. I learned a lot exploring this ! It's amazing being to able do this kind of low level MIDI manipulation right on the instrument itself. Equally there is a whole load of really powerful automation things you can now do without going low level because most of it is wrapped up really nicely.

I had a couple of extra thoughts to add :

* When I first tried this all the RPPR patterns were associated with Track 1, but as soon as you disable track 1 a subsequent message to re-enable was ignored as it is disabled

That's why all my RPPR patterns are associated with Track 16.

* Changing the Track Status field for any track appears to interrupt all currently playing notes on all 4 Tracks with the setup I have. I am pondering workarounds for that. The Karma technique doesn't suffer from this

* Whilst the M3 doesn't seem to recognize Track Status as a known automation message, it does seem to partially understand it. If you look at the message I left at the top of Track 1 in the event editor it is displayed as 'Unavailable', however you can still edit the parameter value without resorting to using BIN EDIT. It even limits you to entering valid values between 0 and 4 (IIRC) which is appropriate for that parameter (Off=0, INT=1, BTH=2, EXT=3, EX2=4).

This mechanism of using RPPR to trigger sysex/automation is something M3 owners should definitely add to their mental notebook. It's a solution just waiting for problems to solve, especially these kinds of performance gestures.

Daz.

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Sat May 02, 2009 12:45 am

Daz wrote:Changing the Track Status field for any track appears to interrupt all currently playing notes on all 4 Tracks with the setup I have. I am pondering workarounds for that. The Karma technique doesn't suffer from this.

First result from my pondering :

Instead of changing Track Status, how about switching a track's Program to a "Null Program" (a Program whose oscillator/multisamples are all turned off). I tried it briefly and it doesn't interfere with the notes currently playing.

In my quick test I simply disabled all tracks apart from the first two, which I assigned to channel 1 and assigned 2 very different Programs to. I then created two RPPR patterns (sysex), one that switched the Program on Track 1 to a "Null Program" and another that switched the Program on Track 1 back to the Program originally assigned to the track.

The question is ... does my "Null Program" actually chew up polyphony ?

jerrythek · Post by **jerrythek** » Sat May 02, 2009 1:36 am

What do you mean by "null"?

I am going to guess that it will affect polyphony...

Another way I am experimenting with this is to make a Song with only 1 active track, and a variety of effects set up. By sending a Program Change along with a different Bus routing message (Sys. Ex.) to that Track I can change a sound and have it run through different effects to get really quick and smooth sound changes.

Add to that some tasteful use of Tone Adjust and i can get some varied and quick sound changes triggered from the pads (trigerring RPPR control messages) which I am finding a very fast way to change sounds with NO interruption.

I'm almost done and ready to share...

regards,

Jerry

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Sat May 02, 2009 2:21 am

Sounds good Jerry I look forward to seeing that.

My "Null Program" was just one where you take an initialized Program and turn off the multisample on the OSC/Pitch page. It doesn't make any sound, but as the envelopes etc. are still running I would guess that it does use poly as you say.

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sun May 03, 2009 12:18 pm

Daz wrote:Sounds good Jerry I look forward to seeing that.

My "Null Program" was just one where you take an initialized Program and turn off the multisample on the OSC/Pitch page. It doesn't make any sound, but as the envelopes etc. are still running I would guess that it does use poly as you say.

but you could limit the amount of poly your null program uses up by setting it to monophonic mode.
assuming the voice mode for that program in the combi is set to PRG.

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Sun May 03, 2009 2:54 pm

X-Trade wrote:
Daz wrote:Sounds good Jerry I look forward to seeing that.

My "Null Program" was just one where you take an initialized Program and turn off the multisample on the OSC/Pitch page. It doesn't make any sound, but as the envelopes etc. are still running I would guess that it does use poly as you say.
but you could limit the amount of poly your null program uses up by setting it to monophonic mode.
assuming the voice mode for that program in the combi is set to PRG.

Good call, thanks

kanthos · Post by **kanthos** » Mon May 11, 2009 8:40 pm

Daz wrote:The sysex message required looks like this :

F0 42 30 75 41 04 00 23
00 03 00 00 00 00 01 F7

The last digit on the first row (23) is used to determine the track whose Status will be changed (23=track 1, 24=track2, 25=track3 etc.) and the second to last digit in the second row is the Status value (0=Off, 1=INT)

I'm interested in setting up something like this on the TR. For my purposes though, I want to try and achieve the most general case: change status on a number of tracks at once (or, if it works better for the situation, use the monophonic 'null' track trick you talk about).

Is it possible to send a number of sysex events through one keypress? I've never used the sequencer and for my usual performance purposes, don't need it unless it's going to buy me the power of having easy, smooth timbre changes in a song. If anyone, Daz in particular, knows whether sending a number of sysex events will work, please let me know; I'd rather not investigate a dead end if I don't have to.

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:37 pm

I am not sure if the TR sequencer supports the idea of recording/playing sysex messages. I would need to find out whether that is supported before I could answer this one.

If it did you would need to compose those messages on a computer or other piece of gear capable of creating sysex messages in the raw. On the M3 XP it was a breeze because it supports this feature.

Daz.

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Mon May 11, 2009 10:54 pm

By the looks of it the TR does not support System Exclusive data recording/playback in it's sequencer.

In the Operation Guide of the Triton Extreme (which I know supports sysex) I see the following list of items that can be handled in MIDI tracks :

Note On/Off, Program Change (including Bank
Select), Pitch Bend, After Touch (Poly After), Control
Change, Pattern No., System Exclusive

However in the equivalent section for the TR I see the following :

Note On/Off, Program Change (including Bank
Select), Pitch Bend, After Touch (Poly After), Control
Change, Pattern No.

So the idea of using RPPR patterns in SEQ mode to automate your TR using sysex isn't going to work.

Daz.

kanthos · Post by **kanthos** » Tue May 12, 2009 2:21 pm

Oh well, it was worth a try. Thanks for looking into that for me!

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Wed May 13, 2009 1:43 pm

Daz wrote:By the looks of it the TR does not support System Exclusive data recording/playback in it's sequencer.

In the Operation Guide of the Triton Extreme (which I know supports sysex) I see the following list of items that can be handled in MIDI tracks :

Note On/Off, Program Change (including Bank
Select), Pitch Bend, After Touch (Poly After), Control
Change, Pattern No., System Exclusive

However in the equivalent section for the TR I see the following :

Note On/Off, Program Change (including Bank
Select), Pitch Bend, After Touch (Poly After), Control
Change, Pattern No.

So the idea of using RPPR patterns in SEQ mode to automate your TR using sysex isn't going to work.

Daz.

If i can find the time, I'd be tempted to try this anyway. We were led to believe in all the marketing and such that the TR carries the same sequencer mode as the rest of the tritons. so is it possible that it may be a typo?
unfortunately I don't really know what I'm doing. I'll have to look up all this stuff as i've never dealt with the SYSEX before. how would you go about generating the messages to load into the sequencer?

jerrythek · Post by **jerrythek** » Sat May 16, 2009 5:54 am

We do not market that every feature function of the TR is the same as the other models that were available [at the time] of its release. Or then you would expect that it had the 2 tracks of audio recording that the TRITON Studio had, for example.

But the more advanced System Exclusive recording and editing that we have developed for the M3 is not available in the TR models.

Regards,

Jerry

jerrythek · Post by **jerrythek** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 1:06 am

I haven't forgotten about this, and I just finished the article and examples. Look for the next edition of our Proview Extra E-newsletter that'll have the article. It'll come with a linked .SNG file of the examples, and a bunch of cool tips and tricks.

Soon...

Regards,

Jerry

jerrythek wrote: Another way I am experimenting with this is to make a Song with only 1 active track, and a variety of effects set up. By sending a Program Change along with a different Bus routing message (Sys. Ex.) to that Track I can change a sound and have it run through different effects to get really quick and smooth sound changes.

Add to that some tasteful use of Tone Adjust and i can get some varied and quick sound changes triggered from the pads (trigerring RPPR control messages) which I am finding a very fast way to change sounds with NO interruption.

I'm almost done and ready to share...

regards,

Jerry

Rob Sherratt · Post by **Rob Sherratt** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 4:50 am

Hi Jerry,

We much appreciate your work on this - any way to make sound changes smooth will be much appreciated. One question - how are smooth sound and style changes achieved on the Pa2x - it seems to handle it very well? Is a similar technique possible on the M3 or would it require hardware changes?

Best regards,
Rob