imitone community

HP

Member

Registered: 2015-09-18

True Continuous Portamento

I am using imitone especially to produce music outside of the standard 12-tone Equal Tempered scale. I am trying to play instruments that fit in with freestyle vocal loops that do not have a reference pitch or scale.

So, it would be great if imitone would have a note mode that did not trigger a new midi "note off-note on" message whenever in pitchbend/glide mode, but that would deliver true free portamento. Like this we could produce true continuous sliding between pitches without the instrument triggering a new midi note whenever we crossed its particular pitch, like it does now. That and, of course, that the ghosts notes that appear would not happen...

Also, pitchbend shoudl not reset to 0 when a midi note ends, because of longer release times on some instruments (that would be affected by the changing pitch then).

I know these issues have been discussed in some topics in this section but I just wanted to add mine here in one place, to show that there is interest in this functionality. This would be truly awesome.

Thank you and good luck!
(I'm currently using beta 0-7-0)

Evan

developer

From: Olympic Peninsula, WA

Registered: 2014-05-23

Website

Re: True Continuous Portamento

Hey, HP --

Sorry for the long-delayed reply.  By now 0.8.0 is out, but I realize it does not fully resolve this issue (though it helps a lot with ghost notes).  In this update, bend mode is meant to connect notes together using a legato function (hence avoiding breaks) but I think I implemented this incorrectly.

Most properly the way to do as you describe would be to expand the pitch-bend range, which is currently possible by holding the CONTROL key while cycling to pitch-bend mode.  This sets a bend range of 36 semitones...  But it's possible there's a bug here, as the pitch displays strangely when doing this.

Duly noted re: not resetting to zero on note cutoffs.

I'll look into improving the pitch bend function for the next build.  Because many synthesizers don't accept "reconfigure bend range" messages, the default will need to stay at two semitones, unfortunately, but the long-range function will still be there.  You'll also be gratified to know that I plan to support microtonal scales in the long run.

HP

Member

Registered: 2015-09-18

Re: True Continuous Portamento

Great, thanks for the update.
I've checked 0.8.0 and indeed the problem with the ghost notes seems to be much better.
Indeed I was hoping for true continuous portamento but not yet...:) But glad you are considering it for next update. Yes, when a new midi note beggins there is a resetting of the envelope as it is now. I will test it with using the CONTROL key and pitch-bend mode to see if it makes any difference.
Thanks.