on diatonic transposition

[malaspina]

hi,

it’s been a few days since a I got my Terra and I think it’s a very original and beautiful take on electronic music instruments design, the way it exposes synthesis parameters to musical gestures it’s something you don’t see everyday. But I really miss diatonic transposition (except for octave shifting, of course, that it’s a bit abrupt: I’d like the ability to make smoother upward and downward transitions).

Thinking about it I made an hypothesis that I’d like to share with you all forum partecipants and the distinguished Soma team members.
My understanding is that pitch shifter operates by algebraic sum of the transposition amount saved in the pitch shifter preset with the keyboard sensors pressed after engaging pitch shift. What I’d like to be able to do, instead of recalling said transposition amount, is recalling a preset’s keyboard sensor tuning (pag. 13 of ver. 1.4 manual) from a pitch shifter preset. In my mind it may work like this:
1) select a pitch shifter preset with Y + <-H
2) enter pitch shifter tuning mode by means of complex button combination S + Y + <-H + H->
3) press and hold the pitch shifter sensor combination to tune
4) load only keyboard sensor tuning from given preset by holding L + Y and choosing bank and preset
5) save tuning preset by Y + <-H.

To work this way the pitch shifter sensor combination should recall the address of a preset’s keyboard sensor tuning to apply to the keyboard sensors, instead of the transposition amount, actually working as a shortcut for point 4. and thus achieving diatonic transposition by consequently saving some diatonically transposed keyboard sensor tunings in presets.

What do you think about it?

It’s true, I can achieve the same result by just saving the same preset with different keyboard sensors tunings and then recall them by holding L and choosing preset but I find that from a performative point of view the tuning preset sensors placing on the instrument board it’s just right, whilst holding L and choosing preset somehow feels like breaking the flow. Also I’m aware of Omnichord mode’s existence, but I think an instrument like this is made for sitting and playing it on the lap with only wall plug cable and headphones, not for hooking it up to a sequencer and programming transpositions patterns.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.
Kindest regards,

Corrado

[SomaLabsKeymaster]

Dear Corrado, thank you very much for taking the time to describe your idea. I don’t know if it’s possible to implement, but I will send it to our programmers!

[Yrn]

That would be a really great addition! It would require a bit of programming to create a set of transpositions, but performance-wise it would be a gamechanger!

[malaspina]

hi SomaLabs,

this is very kind if you! Looking forward to your reply, if, of course, it’s not asking to much. I think this would be a really valuable function for Music composition, and I’m glad you find it at least reasonable enough to submit it to the development team.

Thank you!

[malaspina]

hi Yrn,

that’s exactly what I was thinking! Let’s cross our fingers! This idea occurred to me when I realised that the keyboard sensors tunings for the presets may well be held in array which indexes are likely integers, just like the transposition amounts saved in a pitch shifter preset, hence the hypothetical viability of an exchange between the two. But then again, this is just an abstract thinking exercise.

Thank you for your feedback!

Kindest regards,

C

 

[SomaLabsKeymaster]

We always appreciate feedback like this from people using our instruments. I got a reply from our development team:

“The pitch shifter can transpose the kbd on any interval, not only octave.

As for the rest, IMO playing completely different tunings that rapidly change each other is too complex a task.”

 

[malaspina]

hi SomaLabs,

sorry, I may have worded poorly, as I’m not English native speaker.

It’s not “playing completely different tunings that rapidly change each other”, it’s literally the opposite: having the exact same scale whilst pitch shifting.
E.g. to keep it simple, I have keyboard sensors 1-12 set to
C2-E2-F2-G2-C3-D3-E3-F3-G3-A3-B3-C4
and that’s in C major scale.

Now if I want to keep the C major scale I can only transpose by octaves, since if I chromatically transpose by +7 I get a G major scale, as a perfect fifth above B3 is F#4, and the same occurs with +5 which gives me Bb4 and Bb3 as a perfect fourth above F is Bb and I get an F major scale; these (and their negatives) are the nearest (that is to say with the least accidentals) transpositions on the circle of fifths.

What I meant is that if I’m to save a preset with keyboard sensor tunings set to
C2-E2-F2-G2-G3-A3-B3-C4-D4-E4-F4-G4
that it’s the same C major just a perfect fifth higher, by recalling it by means of the pitch shifter, I could smoothly (and by smoothly I mean keeping the upper part of the lower octave and the lower part of the upper octave) lift the melody (or the harmony) upward whilst keeping all the sensors in scale.
The aim to which it’s directed makes perfect musical sense: it’s diatonic transposition and it would made playing easier indeed.

Hope I made my points clearer to the developer that kindly replied, so that he/she may be willing to better consider my thoughts.

In any case, thank you very much for your attention. Much appreciated.

 

[hermansmasherParticipant]

This would make so much sense!

But I can imagine it could be difficult to implement because you can tune each pad unrelated to one another.

Let’s say you have:

C2-E2-F2-G2-C3-A#3-Bb3-C4-D#4-E4-F#4-G4

How would this get transposed?
You could only transpose if you implement a hidden scaling (note filter) to all pad notes.

This would need to be almost a different firmware, I guess, because it takes out a lot of what Terra actually is.
Having said that, I would love if the Soma Team rethinks the whole tuning approach a bit (as already said in many of my other forum). This could be one great feature! 1 Up from me 🙂

If not more control over the tuning …. give us more chaos then! .. I would love something like a tuning and/or patch randomizer \m/

[malaspina]

hi hermansmasher,

thank you for your insight!

I meant loading a keyboard sensor tuning from a preset by means of the pitch  shifter. So that any sensor could ideally be transposed by any different amount.

The key to my hypothesis was this — quoting myself, sorry about that 🙂

“This idea occurred to me when I realised that the keyboard sensors tunings for the presets may well be held in array which indexes are likely integers, just like the transposition amounts saved in a pitch shifter preset, hence the hypothetical viability of an exchange between the two”

That would imply kind of  “wasting” a preset just for saving a keyboard sensor tuning, but IMO that wouldn’t be a bad deal.

Also, in other words, it could be described as using a pitch shifter combination as a shortcut for the procedure “recalling a preset’s keyboard sensor tuning” described at pag. 13 of ver. 1.4 manual.

I  see this would be quite a departure from the actual working of the pitch shifter, but I thought it could be a better solution.

Anyway, thank you again for taking the time pay attention to this post.

Kind regards,

C

 

 

 

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