Is it possible to have Articulations which increase a given value over the duration of the articulation?

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

After taking a look, I couldn't find anything in the documentation or in the forum. Essentially, I'm wondering if it's possible to create articulations which present a gradual increase over their duration or after finding a related event. That would be interesting for implementing things like hairpin dynamics for orchestral libraries or even things like pitch bends and the like. While those could be probably done in the controller pane, there are several issues with it which make it less desirable than using the articulation maps.

[msmcleod]

Articulations aren't really designed for sending continuous events - this is more in the domain of envelopes. Not saying it can't be done... but it'd be tricky given the current implementation. 

It does seem useful in some circumstances though, so we'll give it some consideration.

 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

9 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Articulations aren't really designed for sending continuous events - this is more in the domain of envelopes. 

Envelopes seem to be low resolution , when you record them in with a controller many of the nodes created vanish losing some of the fine control

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

Envelopes are only slightly less annoying to edit and write than controller lane events, which are even lower resolution. Plus it's really difficult to create ramps, shapes and the like then edit those later without destroying some other part of it.

[Xoo]

8 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

Envelopes seem to be low resolution , when you record them in with a controller many of the nodes created vanish losing some of the fine control

I think there's now a setting to control the decimation - I forget where it is in the UI though (or ini file).

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

3 minutes ago, Xoo said:

I think there's now a setting to control the decimation - I forget where it is in the UI though (or ini file).

Interesting

Maybe @msmcleod can enlighten us ?

[Xoo]

My memory may be going of course!

[Lord Tim]

AutomationDecimationMsec in the Prefs / ini file is what you're remembering

 

[Variorum]

I'm not sure the INI setting will affect the CC record resolution...
I did a quick test on my M-Audio Axiom and EX5. I recorded the modulation wheel on each keyboard (going up and down at different speeds) and found that the maximum consistently recorded events were 18 per Quarter Note on the Axiom and 52 per Quarter Note on the EX5.

I'm sure there is a default max resolution for recording CC's, and that may be modifiable by @Lord Tim's INI setting, but it looks like the actual max resolution is determined by how fast your keyboard or controller processes and sends the CC data.

When you're manually drawing in the CCs in the PRV, the resolution is set by the current Snap setting.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

2 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

AutomationDecimationMsec in the Prefs / ini file is what you're remembering

 

Cool - what value to increase from the default resolution? 

[Lord Tim]

I have a memory if it originally being 50ms which was far too large and definitely caught me out when I was doing automation - I couldn't work out why automating things like gate thresholds weren't catching things until this was brought in and I realised it was actually too slow to keep up. My memory is telling me this was taken down to 5ms or so? Someone please take me to school on this, though!

The trade-off is if you make it super small then you can overload the engine with too many events, which kicks up the CPU usage, so it's a balancing act.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

1 hour ago, Lord Tim said:

The trade-off is if you make it super small then you can overload the engine with too many events, which kicks up the CPU usage, so it's a balancing act.

Cool thanks, I have plenty of horses to spare so I'll give it a try

 

[Promidi]

14 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Envelopes are only slightly less annoying to edit and write than controller lane events, which are even lower resolution. Plus it's really difficult to create ramps, shapes and the like then edit those later without destroying some other part of it.

Even though CAL scripts have officially been depreciated, I have actually written a few that can create ramps and curves for CC values and wheel events.  Combined, these can also be used to create sinusoidal oscillations of controller and wheel events (for creating vibrato using pitch bend, for eg).

These can be further edited using the Transform tool.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

8 hours ago, Promidi said:

Even though CAL scripts have officially been depreciated, I have actually written a few that can create ramps and curves for CC values and wheel events.  Combined, these can also be used to create sinusoidal oscillations of controller and wheel events (for creating vibrato using pitch bend, for eg).

These can be further edited using the Transform tool.

Most of these tools often come out of the idea you're editing pre-recorded MIDI events, but do very little when you're writing those by hand.

[Promidi]

19 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Most of these tools often come out of the idea you're editing pre-recorded MIDI events, but do very little when you're writing those by hand.

Some of the the CAL scripts I have written can generate the required MIDI events directly.  Some if them can edit ones I have entered by hand. They do speed up MIDI editing a lot.