MPE quantisation

[thetechnobear]

Am I correct in saying the slides are being quantised into new notes?

e.g. if you slide from C into C#, but not all the way, at some point it will snap to C#
this is what it feels like its doing…

the Soundplane also does this if you have Quantise ON, and in fairness this is usually how I use it.
it allows for sliding into new notes, and it sounding great

but it would be nice to have two quantisation settings (I think continuum has these?)

Quantise Initial touch - on/off
(current behaviour is ON)
do you quantise on you initial press - which can be difficult to judge until you hear first sound,

Quantise Slide - on/off
(current behaviour is ON)
when you slide, does it snap to the note.
OFF would no quantisation when you enter a new pad.

you could use combinations
ON/ON = current behaviour
ON/OFF = quite useful for an unquantised feel BUT you have confidence on initial touch.
OFF/ON = probably not that useful
OFF/OFF = for fully unquantised feeling!

it would also be useful to be able to set the pitch-bend range…
whilst 48 is the standard default for MPE, given the size of the pad, 12 and 24 would be useful - since these would allow for higher resolution slides
(though, in fairness, Ive not calculated to see if the sensors could make use of this )

[NothanUmber]

Think the approach of Linnstrument is to only start quantizing slides when the motion stops. This works quite well!
And for “full Continuum mode” being able to switch off initial touch quantization would also be good, right!

[Digby]

The Continuum’s implementation is awesome. You can change the speed at which it quantizes each note’s pitch. Anything from “immediately” to “slower than is practical” can be set.

Anyway… this can make a continuous playing surface more forgiving, and more versatile. I’d recommend this sort of pitch rounding system to Erae. It’s much better than all-or-nothing “pitch rounding” (that’s what Haken Audio calls it. I use the term interchangeably here with “pitch quantization”).

[thetechnobear]

@Digby

You can change the speed at which it quantizes each note’s pitch. Anything from “immediately” to “slower than is practical” can be set.

yeah I know, Ive tried on the Continuum before - it is also similar on the Soundplane.

really this similar to the glide time that’s already present on the Erae Touch, with the exception of how it deals with touch on / off… which are the points I highlighted as they are ‘missing’ on the Erae.

I really see this as a set of controls.
the main point being, if you use this glide/time and quantisation, it needs to be separate for ON/SLIDE/OFF. one control for all is not really enough.

I also do think as a minimum added feature , turning it all off is really valuable.

what could be interesting for a fully unquantised mode, would be to use the LEDs to indicate tuning,
e.g. perhaps the touch goes white for +/- 1 cent, then increasing red as its flat, and green as it goes sharp.

I did a visual display on the Soundplane , that showed the sharp/flat of a touch, and it worked really well well learning to play full unquantised. (iirc EagenMatrix has a similar feature)

[embodme]

Hi Guys,

It looks like what you are trying to do here can be achieved by playing with the SMOOTHING value and PITCHBEND Range within the LAB.
You can find this under the EXPRESSIVITY TUNE section and under GLISSANDO and/or VIBRATO.
Those two are both linked to the PitchBend value.

When the smoothing value is Low, you can play like the default Linnstrument setting, meaning your sliding finger will act like a Portamento.
What you seem to describe as Pitch Quantise here.

When the smoothing Value is in the middle or around 70% (mostly depending on your Pitchbend range with the Touch and with your VST) it will behave like a continuous Glissando

When Smoothing is at Max the filter on the pitchbend will add a timing delay to reach your target note. This can actually be quite fun to play with.

Finding the right value for a continuous Glissando is also dependant on your DAW and/or Plugin settings.
Let us know if this helps or if anything could be optimized here!

[thetechnobear]

kind of , and not really @embodme

currently the ET assumes we want all notes to (at some point) be quantised to a semitone value.
(i.e. when you stop moving, it will settle on a particular semitone)

coming from keyboards/piano this sounds very reasonable, but a lot of expressive players want to go beyond this, they want to ‘seize control’. rather than a controller/synth have a programmed slide rate, they want to play the slide, so sometimes it might be fast, sometimes it might be slow.
or they might want to play a bit of pitch variation… e.g. play C a few cents flat.
… then we have the microtonal interest. (but that could be another entire topic )

(for this reason, its perhaps not surprising that many expressive instruments are influenced heavily by string/not fretted instruments rather keyboards)

if we have a look at the Linnstrument manual (available online). we can see here, that it allows this quantisation to be controlled…

see how it allows for quantise to be OFF entirely.
(essentially the ET is fixed to QUAN-HOLD , with variable rate, which you call smoothing)

probably the Haken Continuum manual describes this all the best. (it calls it pitch rounding)
as it allows each element to be controlled more precisely (as I detailed in my thread above)

as you can see below (click on to enlarge) , the main important parts are how and if to quantise (or round as they call it) on initial touch, during a slide and on release.

again Continuum manual is available online if you wish to read it

(the ET here, is basically normal-rounding mode, and round-rate = 1 to 127 = smoothing)

Important note:
depending on the accuracy of the surface sensors there may always be some amount of smoothing/quantisation effect. similarly depending on bend range, midi will also impose some quantisation.

[MatCha]

Hey

( I’ve received my EraeTouch yesterday )

One of the first things I’ve been trying to do is recreate a kind of LInstrument layout using continuous pitch control (as it is by default on Sensel Morph or Sound Plane)
Apparently… it’s not possible for the moment with the EraeTouch KeyGrid using currently available Glissando settings
x cannot just control picthBend without quantisation ??
or I am missing something…

Is there a description somewhere of what Glissando & Vibrato do exactly, and how they work ?
(The online doc is very basic.)

[MatCha]

Looks like its possible to do what we’re looking for (continuous pitch control without quantisation) by disabling Glissando, and enabling Vibrato with Smoothing set to maximum value (high).
Intensity controls pitch bend range, but it’s not easy nor intuitive to set it correctly as there is no value displayed here… only a slider going from “Low” to “High”…
This way I managed to make a keyGrid with a continuous pitch bend on X axis. Notes are quantised only on note ON.

[thetechnobear]

cool @MatCha ,
indeed, that seems to give us quantised note-on, then unquantised slides, which is great.

however, there is another ‘oddity’ (in addition to difficulty setting intensity correctly)
whilst the ON is quantised, the slide is relative to the starting position.
at this point we are playing by ear so the origin offset is not really a huge problem.

so… if you play the initial pad off-centre, then when you slide to your target note - for this to be the correct you have to slide to that same off-centre position.

as for intensity, it appears intensity = MAX , is 12 semitones pitch-bend range.
this is actually very useful, given a lot of the time 12 is plenty on the Erae Touch.
and you want to use the smallest pitchbend range possible, since means maximum pitchbend accuracy.

some good news, from this - it shows an unquantised mode would be very usable. the slides do sound incredibly smooth… and it feels in control, and not too ‘jittery’

I also looked at the midi data and noted a few things.
resolution is pretty high and data is fairly stable. id say we are getting close to a cent (semi/100)
however (and I suspect because we are using it 'out of context) , you can definitely see smoothing is happening… ( or the sensor is skipping values) as we are getting jumps when you slide fast.

pressure is slightly affecting values… this may unavoidable.

optimisation - if you hold still,
you’ll see the same pitchbend value being sent, this should be optimised out… you only need to send PB if its changes (this will help reduce data quantity on midi stream esp important on DIN) , same is happening on CC74, and channel pressure …
(in my quick test, this simple optimisation could reduce the data stream massively !)

---

anyway, a great observation @MatCha
I don’t think it’s a ‘solution’ , but certainly a useful workaround for now.
also it does appear to show that the Erae Touch is capable of being played unquantised.

[sujoybose77]

I completely agree with all the observations @thetechnobear has.
For example, I want to play SWAM violin like a violin. Period. Fast and slow glides with no quantization and no time-delay, portamento etc etc.
Good that @Matcha found a ‘kind of’ workaround. But still, it is not as smooth an experience as Linnstrument. Finding the perfect combination of “Intensity” and “Smoothing” under vibrato setting is a really painful process to avoid quantization.

[blipson]

@sujoybose77

it is not as smooth an experience as Linnstrument.

SWAM is an absolute dream with the LinnStrument: it’s my favorite use for it. You’d think 200 pads to be overkill, but not true because the CC faders config with SWAM makes for such a great performance instrument, so it’s a luxury to have all those pads for faders and notes.

[sujoybose77]

I agree. I have 200 pads Linnstrument. Though it needs a bit harder touch than playing the SWAM instrument on the iPad glass surface (using Geoshred or Velocity Keyboard app). But still much smoother experience.

[NothanUmber]

Thanks for the new firmware - many nice additions!

Regarding quantization - am with the posters above, more options to control initial and target quantization would be great!
Another thing that would be helpful: Currently if I put my finger down in one control (e.g. grid) and then slide with my finger to another control (e.g. another grid) then the quantization still rounds to the settings of the initial control.
This behavior is helpful in many cases, but sometimes one wants to have a portamento towards the target pitch in the new control as an option. This would allow some cool layouts!

Another thing: Vibrato seems to be always relative, right? It would be good to be able to have absolute pitch depending on where one starts to press a cell - to have the opportunity to start notes at arbitrary pitches (e.g. to intonate pure intervals, play microtonal things etc.)
Probably it would be more intuitive to have such an absolute pitch / adjustable on-touch quantization mode separate from vibrato(?)