BSP feature request: polyphonic sequencing

[koochey]

Hey - why not upgrade the sequencer to a polyphonic

since you can play chords with the pads why not be able to record them...
then with the knobs transpose the chords - of course in the selected scale
would bring us a powerful polyphonic sequencer

i would buy even a second one
cheers
Den

[Old_School]

I know it would be possible with an adjustment to the MCC. As for example in Ableton I can bring up the Chord plugin and make single notes into chords (Cthulhu plugin does the same), so with the MCC as a go between I'm sure it's easily done. As for right into the firmware itself I dunno if such is possible.

[Valentin Arturia]

Hi koochey,
Dealing with polyphonic or monophonic sequences is really not the same thing. It's not as simple as just "recording the chords you play". How do you change your chords notes if you've made a mistake ? We also touch the limits of MIDI Din band width and many other points that make this just impossible. And the BSP wasn't designed for.

[koochey]

Hey Valentin,
don't get me wrong - i love the concept and i understand it as well...
just playing a lot around these days with BSP and reached some points where i thought - hey that would be cool too !

so in this case i would say wrong chord = step new

but if the MIDI data is limited seems i am sucked with Ableton for polyphonic sequencing :/

best
Den

[mmaisterrena]

Come on Valentin you have superb Engineers in Arturia, dont mention is imposible, offcourse there would have to be some trade offs, posibly lowerning the max number o steps or disabling some feature while on poliphonic mode, but it would be great to at lest have 1 poliphonic sequence in there (at least 3 notes at a time). Just think out of the box (Cliche acnkowleged) and youŽll find a way to make it work with the current hardware. Think how microsoft was able to make Xbox One backward compatible with xbox 360 a feature that many thougt was imposible on that hardware, but their engineering team was able to make it work against all odds.

BTW If you play the wrong chord, just try again. One of the tradeoffs the user would have to accept when working on "poly mode".

[megamarkd]

You can make duophonic sequences by programming the same sequence into both monophonic sequencers.  At the moment the copying of sequences from seq1 to 2 is broken, but it's not hard to play/program a sequence twice.

Come on Valentin you have superb Engineers in Arturia, dont mention is imposible, offcourse there would have to be some trade offs, posibly lowerning the max number o steps or disabling some feature while on poliphonic mode, but it would be great to at lest have 1 poliphonic sequence in there (at least 3 notes at a time). Just think out of the box (Cliche acnkowleged) and youŽll find a way to make it work with the current hardware. Think how microsoft was able to make Xbox One backward compatible with xbox 360 a feature that many thougt was imposible on that hardware, but their engineering team was able to make it work against all odds.

BTW If you play the wrong chord, just try again. One of the tradeoffs the user would have to accept when working on "poly mode".

The key words in Valentin's post were "midi-din bandwidth".  It's not a case of just fiddling the functionality.  Midi is a 7bit protocol, an extremely hobbled bandwidth these days although in the early 80's it was fine.  It's not just a case of "limit this function and you have the processing power free to do that".

[Zymos]

People routinely send chords over several channels of MIDI simulatenously, plus a ton of controller data. Two more polyphonic tracks wouldn't even come close to maxing out MIDI bandwidth.

     I'm not saying it's possible for Arturia to change the BSP to do that, I think processing power is probably a more significant limitation, and there might well be other reasons too.
     
     Also, don't forget, the BSP already has a polyphonic track. You don't need to use it for drums- be creative, and it can send chords to synths....

[megamarkd]

Dur, I didn't think too hard on that.....

But supposing we did get two polyphonic midi tracks, what would happen with the cv outs?  Which note would be sent to them?

[Zymos]

Good point, but I doubt we'll ever have to worry about that.... ;-)

[megamarkd]

Your idea about using the drum seq as a polyphonic note seq is interesting.  I've run drum machines into synths heaps of times but not this one for some reason.  Well actually that reason is because it's usually a mess, but BSP has the pads assigned to midi notes in chromatic order, which will make it a little more musically usable.
Another reason I stopped running synths on ch10 is the note on/off time is nearly always fixed.  But I wonder how long the longest gate time is with the drum seq on the BSP and if the gate time on the drum seq does affect the midi gate time as well as the gate-outs?  No tied notes means crazy fast short still, but maybe make a guitar sound on a synth and play punk music?

[Filterseducer]

would be better to iron all the existing issues, bugs and limitations in mono. then start thinking about a poly mode.

[jocksbeat]

hello, I just joined this forum today 
I made a simple test recording when I got my Beatstep pro, using all three sequencers on the same midi channel. It played one synth sound polyphonically on a Nord Stage. I had to set the 16 drumpads to a keyboard scale. I exported the midi patterns while muting some tracks. you can hear it on my soundcloud page (my nickname is jocks13 there)
   

[Hanksy]

Make some shift funktion to make the top/gray part(pc part) a polyphonic sequencer part! 

[megamarkd]

Make some shift funktion to make the top/gray part(pc part) a polyphonic sequencer part! 

It won't happen; they have announced the Keystep.

[mobjois]

If anything, the KeyStep proves that polyphonic sequencing is manageable.

I can tell you from having read the MIDI spec, made MIDI hardware, and from having hit MIDI bandwidth limitations that allowing for 3-note polyphony on one or both melodic sequencer channels should be a non-issue, depending on certain hardware (rather than firmware) limitations of the device.

However, interface-wise, it can get weird. Right now, the BSP has all these knobs that can change the pitch assigned to a given step. What do you do when chords are stored in a step? You could shift the entire chord, you could ignore the buttons altogetherin that mode, or you could also get crazy and just shift the low note and erase the others. There isn't one particularly "satisfying" user experience. Off the top of my head, I'd probably do something like this:

In chord mode, touch a step's knob, and the notes that are on for that step will be glowing on the pad grid, with the octave up / down pads blinking to indicate the presence of notes up or down from the current octave. In step length and velocity edit modes, the knobs would affect all notes, and in note edit mode, the knobs would transpose the whole chord.

I'm curious about the KeyStep, but I'd be very pleased if I could also get chords out of the BSP. I'm of course only speaking for myself, but it would push me to buying the KeyStep (I love that it's so compact but has MIDI connectors).