Re: [linux-audio-dev] News about sequencers (not my own though!)

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] News about sequencers (not my own though!)
From: Fredrik (aeonek_AT_home.se)
Date: ti tammi  18 2000 - 13:24:12 EST


> Actually, just representing something as simple as MIDI data is
> too many dimensions for a flat screen: start time, duration, pitch,
> velocity, release velocity, channel, patch, etc, etc, etc. For PEGS,
> I actually came up with a way to display all of these at once in
> a novel but easy to get used to manner. Other than start-time being
> the X axis, any other parameter can be set to render using any of
> the following means: First, the obvious ones: y-axis, color, and
> pen shape (ie: a plus sign instead of a circular dot). Then, a
> clever thing I call "spikes", which are rays drawn from the
> event's central dot. The angle of the ray tells which parameter it
> represents, and the length tells the value. For instance, try the
> following:
>
> |
> | |
> *------ *---
>
> If duration was the East spike and amplitude was the North spike,
> the second note would be twice as loud but half as long as the
> first. This gives you eight additional easily recognisable
> dimensions (eight from the compass rose) which can be displayed on
> a flat screen.

This looks a lot like the Logic drum editor, except that it doesn't have the East spike. It's a drum editor, so it doesn't need one, since drums are always "one-shot" events.

Looking at Logic's piano roll, there's another way of representing event properties. The events look like this:

 _______________________
| _________ |
|_______________________|

The line inside the block represents note-on velocity. If this line goes all the way to the right, the note has a velocity value of 127 (100%). If it's invisible, it's zero. Also, the same property is also represented by color. So Logic is capable of representing 4 properties with every event. (Start time, duration, pitch, velocity). Your idea of North spikes is a nice idea, and it can be extended, by adding more spikes.

 |
 | |
 | |
 *-----------*
 | |
 |

Here we have pitch, start time, duration, note-on velocity and note-off velocity. There is also two new values that could be used for things like envelopes. My example above would have a medium attack time, and a short release time. All this is without using colors, or logic-style "velocity-lines" descibed above.

Contiguous events like modulation and aftertouch are a bit harder. Especially event-specific ones like polyphonic aftertouch.

    /Fredrik


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