Note Retrigger combi

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raccoonboy
Posts: 471
Joined: 22 Oct 2015

29 Oct 2015

Hi everyone.

Been using reason for a few months, really enjoy it and prefer it over other DAWs, the interface is just so creative and it's rediculously powerful, totally underrated.

Anyway. I've been wondering for a while how to make my Korg MS-20 hardware retrigger notes, because if you play notes overlapping it will always be legato, which can be annoying as the notes can quickly fade out to nothing if you're not super agile.

I've looked online and there is no way to patch it. Doepfer do a MIDI to CV module which you can shorten overlapping notes, but it's £150 and I don't really need it for anything else. I also tried finding a max for live plugin to do the job, no luck.

But I've figured out how to do it in Reason which I'm pretty proud of considering I'm new to the software. It did take quite a while to get it to work though, a good couple of days. hahah.

It took a lot of tinkering about and thanks to 'oofam' from Reddit for the suggestion of using a one shot LFO in Malstrom. I would never have known as I've not used it yet, only Thor which I know my way round pretty well by now.

Anyway I've tested on my MS20 and it works great but will work on other synths as well, I've added the option to increase the gap between notes in case some synths don't register it but I'm sure they will. Not sure how many people will have an MS20 (or synths with similar legato only playing) as well as Reason 7.0 or above, but hey someone might find it useful.

There are two versions available. The "basic retrig" combi which is for one note at a time only and the 'retriggerer' combi which is the full version but you need the Rack Extension "Truth" by The Chronologists. In this version you can hold down one note and tap the second note on and off for example and it won't cut off the original note. This might be possible to do with Thor only, but I sure can't figure it out.

Both Combis use 'Last Note' Priority.

Note: If you are holding down 3 to 4 keys and placing them in weird orders then the priorities might change a little, but you'd only find the problem if you were looking for it. It is for mono playing after-all.

Hope someone can get some use out of this. Reason 7.0 and above is necessary as you need MIDI out.

Thanks to ReVolt CV processor. Wouldn't have been possible without this as I needed to study the voltages pretty hard.


Basic Retrig http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 4735049935
Retriggerer http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 4951008294

If you're really bored I've written a brief description below of how I achieved this.

-----------------------
Essentially the incoming MIDI is converted to CV and Gate, the Gate is modified and then it's compiled back together.

THE GATE
Thor and Malstrom in a combinator so that they both receive the same MIDI notes.
Malstrom (fast square wave) oneshot is inverted and merged with standard MIDI gate.
Truth Gate is set to RISING mode and Thor's LastKey is sent to it as well as an inverted version. This is so that if the note changes at all it will retrigger Malstrom oneshot, cutting short the gate.

THE NOTE
This was a pain. The arpegiator can't convert to CV properly as notes get permenantly held down. The MidiKey out of Thor is all wonky and out of tune. But I eventually figured a work-around.

Use the modulation settings:
Last Note - 100 - Seq Transpose
Last Gate - 100 - Seq Trig.

Then take the output from the Seq Note which will give you the correct MIDI notes.

Sequencer must be on 'Repeat', length of '1/16 steps' and sync OFF with the rate up to 250hz.

You can then use the Seq Gate out but I opted for a seperated Gate out through the CV as the sequencer gate voltage is lower and will affect the volume of some soft synths.

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