Poly Aftertouch

[moonbooter]

There are more and more synths and keys with poly aftertouch on the market.

So I personally wish to edit poly aftertoch data in the pianoroll.

Thanks

 

[sjoens]

Is this not doable?

My old Ensoniq had this and my current one can receive it.  You can turn on Key Aftertouch  & Channel Pressure in Preferences, and PRV has ChanAft in Controller Pane, but I don't see Poly or Key Aftertouch per se.

[msmcleod]

There is no facility in the PRV to edit Poly Aftertouch.

The only way to edit Poly Aftertouch is via the Events List View.

I'm sure adding something to the PRV has been discussed in the past, but since the majority of keyboards don't even support channel aftertouch, let alone poly aftertouch, it was probably deemed too much effort vs the number of users who'd benefit.

[moonbooter]

On 12/31/2022 at 11:23 AM, msmcleod said:

I'm sure adding something to the PRV has been discussed in the past, but since the majority of keyboards don't even support channel aftertouch, let alone poly aftertouch, it was probably deemed too much effort vs the number of users who'd benefit.

More and more keybeds support poly-touch, for example all Hydrasynths, some Arturia, all new Waldorf, CME xkeys, all Keith McMillen, most Launchpads, all Roli, and so on. And this are the still available products. So i.m.h.o. it´s a more and more wanted feature.

[Promidi]

On 12/31/2022 at 8:53 PM, msmcleod said:

I'm sure adding something to the PRV has been discussed in the past, but since the majority of keyboards don't even support channel aftertouch, let alone poly aftertouch, it was probably deemed too much effort vs the number of users who'd benefit.

Yes, but some soft synths do respond to poly aftertouch..... 

[Promidi]

On 12/21/2022 at 3:44 AM, moonbooter said:

So I personally wish to edit poly aftertoch data in the pianoroll.

So do I. 

Currently I use CAL scripts to convert Channel aftertouch to Key aftertouch.

Edited February 14 by Promidi

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

This is not possible in CbB as it doesn't have MPE support.

[msmcleod]

50 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

This is not possible in CbB as it doesn't have MPE support.

Cakewalk does support MPE - for MPE support all you need is to be able to record/transmit on all channels.

MPE and poly aftertouch are different things.

Poly aftertouch is a specific 3-byte MIDI message containing the Poly Aftertouch command/channel, the key, and the aftertouch amount.  In this respect it is similar to a note on message - i.e. it is tied to the MIDI channel it receives/sends on.   

MPE is a method of splitting up the expression over several MIDI channels, where each MIDI channel is responsible for a key range.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

57 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

Cakewalk does support MPE - for MPE support all you need is to be able to record/transmit on all channels.

MPE and poly aftertouch are different things.

Poly aftertouch is a specific 3-byte MIDI message containing the Poly Aftertouch command/channel, the key, and the aftertouch amount.  In this respect it is similar to a note on message - i.e. it is tied to the MIDI channel it receives/sends on.   

MPE is a method of splitting up the expression over several MIDI channels, where each MIDI channel is responsible for a key range.

Considering all MPE controllers have pressure, having full MPE support would require supporting poly aftertouch. That means Cakewalk is not fully MPE compatible, as you cannot do anything with pressure messages sent by MPE controllers.

[msmcleod]

41 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Considering all MPE controllers have pressure, having full MPE support would require supporting poly aftertouch. That means Cakewalk is not fully MPE compatible, as you cannot do anything with pressure messages sent by MPE controllers.

Cakewalk does support poly aftertouch.  As said in an earlier post, it's in the event view.

[Promidi]

@msmcleodhave there ever been any discussion at your dev meetings to support Poly Aftertouch as a controller lane in the PRV?

[msmcleod]

7 hours ago, Promidi said:

@msmcleodhave there ever been any discussion at your dev meetings to support Poly Aftertouch as a controller lane in the PRV?

It's not as simple as making it a controller lane.

With CC's, ignoring the MIDI channel, once you've picked the CC number (which is the lane), a controller message has only one parameter which is the controller value.   Add the time of the event, and you have the 2 dimensional controller lane.

Again ignoring the MIDI channel, Poly Aftertouch messages have a note and a value.  Once you've added the time of the event you have 3 dimensions to cater for, so the the controller lane isn't really suitable.  A more sensible way would be to show it on the PRV itself, as the first part of the message is the note number.  However, showing the value in a sensible way is then the issue - you can't use "length" as this would be confused with duration, and you can't use "height" as this is already used to denote the note value.

Poly Aftertouch messages are almost identical to Note On messages, except instead of velocity you have the pressure value.  However, whereas with notes it's usually the note value / duration that are the most commonly edited parameters,  with Poly Aftertouch it's the value (i.e. the equivalent of velocity). 

So yes, there have been discussions in the past, but they've been dismissed so far for two reasons:

1.  We've yet to come up with a sensible way to display/edit Poly Aftertouch - and looking at other DAWs for inspiration doesn't help, because most don't support it in the PRV either... and the ones that do (that I've seen), IIRC are basically showing a cut-down event view.   

2. The work involved to overhaul the PRV to support this outweighs the number of users that would benefit from having it.

As far as point 1 is concerned, the only options so far were:

      Option 1: To show poly aftertouch in a lane, but have a note dropdown in the header.  This might suit editing to an extent, but really doesn't help with visualizing what poly aftertouch messages are present... you'd have to create 128 aftertouch lanes (one for each note) to see what is there, which again isn't really that helpful.

      Option 2: To show poly aftertouch in a lane, but filter the messages shown based on the note selection in the PRV.  This is slightly better, but if you had messages for a note that isn't in the PRV (say you deleted the note, but not the PAT messages), you'd have no way of showing them, and therefore editing them.

Neither of these options are very good.

If you've got an example of a DAW with a good method of showing/editing Poly Aftertouch in the PRV, please let us know.  

[Promidi]

@msmcleodYes, what you say makes a lot of sense. 

PAT message would be difficult to display in a controller lane owing to the possible note values.

Even with softsynths that can respond to PAT messages, a workaround could be to simply use multiple instances of a given synth if I don't want a parameter to effect all notes the same way (like the pitch bend of a Pedal Steel Guitar for instance).

Another possibility is to create CAT messages and use Articulation Maps to transform them, on the fly, to PAT messages.   At least doing it this way, direct editing of the CAT messages are at least possible.  (Just don’t transpose the note events)

Personally I think I will just use the “multiple instances of a given synth” method.

[msmcleod]

4 minutes ago, Promidi said:

Another possibility is to create CAT messages and use Articulation Maps to transform them, on the fly, to PAT messages.   At least doing it this way, direct editing of the CAT messages are at least possible.  (Just don’t transpose the note events)

I was actually going to suggest this.

So you'd need two sets of 128 articulations ( one for each note converting Chan Aft to Poly Aft, and one for each note to convert Poly Aft to Chan Aft).

For drawing in Poly Aftertouch, you'd :
1. Add the Chan Aft->Poly Aft articulation for the note you want to edit.
2. Add the Chan Aft controller lane and do your edits
3. Apply the articulation to convert it to Poly Aftertouch (which removes the Chan Aft->Poly Aft articulation)

For editing Poly Aftertouch:
1. Add the Poly Aft->Chan Aft articulation for the note you want to edit.
2. Apply the articulation to convert it to Chan Aftertouch, which removes the articulation
3. Add the Chan Aft->Poly Aft articulation for the note you want to edit (so it'll play as poly aftertouch to the synth)
4. Add the Chan Aft controller lane and do your edits
5. Apply the articulation to convert it to Poly Aftertouch, which removes the articulation

I'd be interested to hear people's experience using this method, as not only does it have all the overhead of converting to/from PAT/CAT, you're still stuck with only being able to edit one note at a time.

The reason I say I'd be interested, is if only being able to edit one note at a time isn't a big deal, maybe a note dropdown in a Poly Aft lane is a feasible solution.  Personally though, I feel if we're going to go to the effort of providing a solution, it should be one that is as elegant and usable as possible... which this isn't.

[Promidi]

I would actually be OK with being able to edit one note at a time for Key Aftertouch Events.  I think I would ever only be doing that anyway.

When adding a KeyAft Events in the PRV, in the “MIDI Event Type” dialog box, you could have KeyAft as “Type” and have, “Key”, “Value” and “Channel”

 

[Tony Decap]

I think that KeyAft events will become more important. For example, we build pipe organs and our new design is a smARTvalve which allows the pressure of each single pipe in the organ to be controlled individually. In midi V1, KeyAft is the only controller we can think of that can hold the information.

The above suggestion of Promidi seems the way to go. Once you show the KeyAft information in the PRV, the "Key" selection should automatically switch to the selected note.

As for the comment of msmcleod that the KeyAft information would become ghost information when the note's themself are deleted, I feel that KeyAft information is only available during a keypress from note/on till note/off, so it should be considered an integral part of that note and be deleted with it.

All considered, I think that it should be very easy to implement this option in CW, as it is no different compared to the controller part:

• Controllers (already in place and working flawlessly in CWs PRV): select the control number, the control value is showed in the pane and can be edited with all the different tools.
• KeyAft (not implemented in CWs PRV yet): select the key number, the KeyAft value is showed in the pane and can be edited with all the different tools.

I have no insight into the code of the CW program, but with me doing a lot of programming myself, it seems that it could be done in an hour, just duplicate the "Controller" item and add it to the list as "KeyAft", and re-associate the Controller-number to point to the Key number, and re-associate the Controller-Value to point to the KeyAft-Value.

As for me, I'm really in need to have easy access to the KeyAft so that I can manipulate it with ease, so adding this function would be greatly appreciated.

Edited February 14 by Tony Decap

[Promidi]

1 hour ago, Tony Decap said:

I have no insight into the code of the CW program, but with me doing a lot of programming myself, it seems that it could be done in an hour, just duplicate the "Controller" item and add it to the list as "KeyAft", and re-associate the Controller-number to point to the Key number, and re-associate the Controller-Value to point to the KeyAft-Value.

As for me, I'm really in need to have easy access to the KeyAft so that I can manipulate it with ease, so adding this function would be greatly appreciated.

Personally, since my last contribution to this thread, I have actually created a Studioware Panels (with the required CAL scripts embedded) that converts between CAT and PAT Aftertouch Events and back.

[Tony Decap]

I really hope that CW will add the KeyAft option so that you don't loose to much time with going back and forward, but in the meantime getting by with the solution from Promidi is better then nothing. But I guess that it took a lot of tweaking before the Studioware Panel hack worked as intended, very inventive!