AW: Keyboard/Midi Frontend (RE: PolyModular Standards)

[Ingo Debus]

So what I've built seems to be quite different from that what's needed
for a polyphonic modular. Let's see if it can be used anyway.

First there is the output function thing:
Jorgen Bergfors wrote:
>Note CVs for 4 or 8 voices
>Gate for 4 or 8 voices
>Velocity CV for 4 or 8 voices

This sounds reasonable (I'd add polyphonic aftertouch CV for 4 or 8
voices). On my system there are outputs dedicated to VCOs and VCFs
instead. It's easy to strip off the code that adds all the controllers
for VCF CV generation. But it wouldn't be easy for me to test the
modified program then, since the CV outputs are hard-wired to the
VCO/VCF inputs. Maybe I could monitor the muxed CV (before the demuxers
and the S&Hs) with a scope. I'll have to look into that further.

>CVs for the following continous controllers:
>Pitchbend
>Volume
>Modulation wheel
>Channel aftertouch
>Chorus amount
>Reverb amount
>Breath controller

I'd prefer a number of CV outputs that could be assigned to any
controller.

>Digital signals for:
>Sustain pedal
>some other on/off controllers

Sustain is processed by the voice assignment logic: when the sustain
pedal is pressed, the gate outputs won't go low. When it is released,
all gates go low except those whose key are still pressed.
The "on/off" MIDI controllers too have a value range of 0...127. So the
analog outputs could be used as well.


The second issue is the user interface (UI) thing. While the perfect
synthesizer UI seems not to be invented yet, here we have only few
parameters that require direct access: number of voices stacked,
keyboard scanning modes and keyboard split point. Did I miss anything? I
don't think that things like MIDI receive channel or controller
assignment for VC output (see above) really need direct access. This
could be done with the hardware I have, just one or two of the 7-segment
digits had to be replaced with discrete LEDs.


Jürgen Haible wrote:
>Switches for *everything*. Want to turn 3 voices off because you're
>going to re-tune one voice ? Flick 3 switches.

What do you mean with "turn voices off"? Disable the gate output?

Ingo