Thomas Henry's MIDI-to-CV Connection

[Tom May]

"Dan Gendreau" <gendreau at rochester.rr.com> writes:

> IMHO most Midi->CV converters really skimp on mono-mode features.
> 
> Another usefull thing that really helps in mono-mode is if note stacking is
> implimented. I had to code this myself for my PAIA.

One situation where you don't want note stacking is when driving the
midi to cv converter from a guitar to midi converter.  Imagine playing
a sequence like this:

E ---------------------------------------------------
B ---------------------------------------------------
G ------2-1------------------------------------------
D ----0----------------------------------------------
A ---------------------------------------------------
E ---------------------------------------------------

With the the opening D string sustaining, the converter is likely to
make an awful glitch back to D between the two notes played on the G
string unless they are played extremely legato, which mostly isn't how
you want to play them, and even if you do want to play legato it's
pretty hard to pick it smoothly enough.  Unfortunately my midi to cv
converter has note stacking which screws me.

> IE: If you press several notes simultaneously and then release the last one,
> most MIDI->CV boxes forget all the previous held notes and just turn off the
> gate.
> 
> With note stacking, if you can hold C and tap E, you will get a legato trill
> between C and E because the unit remembers that you are still holding C.
> 
> Plus you can set up different priority algorithms for which note plays
> (highest note, lowest note, last note etc.) I find last note priority to be
> the most usefull/musical myself.

Or you could have an adaptive policy like the SY77 which switches
between high and low priority depending on which direction you're
playing.  It's more intuitive than it sounds.

I actually like my converter (a JKJ CV-5) well enough, but preferrably
I'd have a DIY or source code available solution simply because I
could make it work exactly like I need wrt keyboard control, LFOs, and
modulation.

fTom.