ForumsHardware ← Feature request: Note zones

In creating a Soundplane template for use with my drum machine, I couldn't find a way to declare a note zone as anything other than a note row, which seems to increment the midi note played as one moves up the x axis. What I want is to be able to declare that zone as belonging to a certain note and have everywhere in the zone play that same note when hit. This is useful for drum machines as they generally are programmed midiwise with single notes representing different percussion sounds. I was able to get what I wanted by making a JSON template with 150 individual note rows, but surely there's a better way? Does something like this already exist?

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying, I got swamped with the Aalto release...

I want to add the feature of assignable scales per zone, scales as in patterns of notes like chromatic, pentatonic, minor, etc, etc. So "all the same note" could be one of these patterns and I will certainly add that. Would that work?

I plan to give more attention to the Soundplane client while I am building the next batch of instruments this Spring. If you have any other ideas, let me know.

Hey Randy,

I didn't see your reply for a while either...
Your idea of a one note scale should work perfectly.
Are the note patterns going to be user-creatable or will we pick from a list of scales? It would be cool to be able to assign different mathematical relationships to the pitches for microtonal work or alternate tunings.

So, the Soundplane deals with notes as opposed to scales. Notes you can think of as whole numbers like MIDI. 60 for C, 62 for D, etc. Synths like Aalto, Kaivo and so on can map this data to scales, which might be equal-tempered, a gamelan tuning, or whatever. You can add your own scales here by making a Scala .scl file.

The Soundplane doesn't have a concept of tuning, it just sends notes. These notes can be in patterns besides chromatic, like penatonic, dorian, etc. I think this setup gives the needed flexibility while giving easy performance controls on the Soundplane.