Feature Request: Random Per Note options

[David]

Just dreaming out loud here…

I love this option for adding surprising variety via lots of different synth parameters, but I wish you could:
—Set a range of notes between the randomizing, so it's not every note, but set-able to, say, every other, or every 12th, or 18th, or 5th, or whatever note.

—And when it happens, a choice between the change being momentary and being held until the next event.

—and most interesting/unlikely of all, having a record buffer, so if some great randomized changes happen, you could somehow switch to playing back whatever that was, every time, so a MIDI recording wouldn't get randomized on every playback…

Thank you!

[MeldaProduction]

Well, that seems creepy complicated extreme madness not many would understand really . Personally I think the first would be easy enough to implement, but I dont' see the use for it. As for 2 & 3, I must say I don't even understand what you mean by all that.

[David]

1 is simply about allowing automated randomization to occur regularly but less often, so there are some other choices beside every time a note occurs or never. Every time can get annoying fast and allows for no degrees of unpredictability. It's all or nothing.

2 is about having a choice to return to a previously set value of the randomized parameter after a randomize event or not, i.e., a Latching option. This makes no sense if there's only the option for every-note randomizing. But if it's not every note, would offer the choice between staying on the new value or returning to a pre-set value when not randomizing.

3 would allow for capturing the parameter values as randomized either in the plugin or in the daw, so on playback they'd remain exactly as randomized in the initial MIDI-note recording, rather than being re-randomized with every new playback of the MIDI-note recording.

I guess you could accomplish a good bit of this by adding CC events to the Arp. Or some sort of probability to the Step Sequencer.

[David]

…complicated extreme madness not many would understand really…

Isn't that true for many existing features in all Melda plugins?

It sounds to me like the implicit Melda core design philosophy, which is exactly what draws me to your products!

[MeldaProduction]

1. I understand what it should do, I'm just finding it hard to imagine a scenario where it would actually become useful.

2. I just don't follow sorry. How can a user choose??? He's playing notes . He cannot really click a yes/no popup or what's the idea.

3. I have no idea how this could ever be implemented and the use is ... well...

As for Melda core design philosophy - there's some sort of maximum degree of extremness, that makes sense, to me . Quite long time ago I found out that the extreme ideas, which take long time for me to implement are then used by nobody except for the person, who came up with it . And to makes things worse the same person then starts complaining by some crazy madness some other person came up with . So at one point my patience ended . Now I consider (hopefully wisely to some extent), what makes sense and what doesn't. After all people have been complaining by too complex stuff for years, it's just not worth spending the limited time on this planet .

[David]

Thanks for the reply, and as I said, I'm just dreaming out loud:)

1. Any parameter changing with every single note-on event can very easily begin to feel like it's happening too often to sound natural and unobtrusive, or feels chaotic. So, it's not that often useful. And the obvious thing to wish for, it seems to me, is for the random change to NOT happen with every note or drum hit, etc., but less often, either a randomly-determined less often (probability) or a regularly-occurring less often, such as every 4th or 8th hit on a certain drum track, etc.

I can't see how this would not be a useful control to have. It's one I'd use all the time, since it would reduce the current limitations of a feature I already use a lot, making it not weirder, but more often useable.

A drum track seems the most obvious use-case: Cool to have the sound on one or more notes change randomly, but if it's changing every time the note occurs, not so cool…Every 4th or 16th note event, definitely! Do I want the note to occasionally give a random results, or occasionally switch to a different sound and stick with it until the next randomization. I'd find this a very useful option…

2. The user would chose just like with any other modulator. Where I now choose Random per Note, there would be a few further options to select, like Random every x notes, Latched or Not-latched.

3. No idea either, but the use is obvious the first time you play back a MIDI performance that had some sweet randomness, and find that it'll never again sound exactly that way! Could the randomness amount not somehow be converted to MIDI data that could then be recorded along with all the other MIDI data?

No matter, just having more set-up options would definitely make this a more useful feature for me, and I would think would cause more users to consider randomizing based on note events. And I'll be looking now for workarounds, thanks to enjoying Random per note as is with Melda tools, so thanks for inspiring me:)

[David]

…
As for Melda core design philosophy - there's some sort of maximum degree of extremness, that makes sense, to me . Quite long time ago I found out that the extreme ideas, which take long time for me to implement are then used by nobody except for the person, who came up with it . And to makes things worse the same person then starts complaining by some crazy madness some other person came up with . So at one point my patience ended . Now I consider (hopefully wisely to some extent), what makes sense and what doesn't. After all people have been complaining by too complex stuff for years, it's just not worth spending the limited time on this planet .

Oy! How badly we treat our creator/suppliers—sorry to hear this, but 5 minutes on KVR confirms it, for sure.

[MeldaProduction]

Hehe yeah

Ok, so I can probably add some Random per 4/16 notes source or something, still cannot imagine the usefulness, but I suck as sound designer, so..

[David]

Cool, thanks! At least you can be sure I'll be grateful, and excited to use:)