Re: Feedback and feature plea

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 01:13:45PM +0100, Ffanci Silvain wrote:
> Hey hey Alexandre,
> I'm back at music, using Midish with spectacular success! But with my
> command set and the setup I use I have to separately maintain ever more
> information in an extra file. So I wondered, if you could allow Midish to
> save more types of info in a project or allow an auxiliary file to be
> stored, that would hold that info.

Hey!

I see no problem in storing more information in the project file.

FYI, the program is designed with clear separation between the
sequencer (hard-coded in C) and the user-interface (shell-like
language).

> Specifically project specific device info is helpful, since devices can also
> be soft synths and direct MIDI-USB devices, that will only appear, when they
> are running. Also global variables. I use those for groups of tracks and
> basic info for my step sequencing commands.
> 
> There's one additional issue, that really does generate problems: the
> quantisation command. The problem is this:
> a couple of 8th notes of the same pitch, played on a monophonic synth/patch.
> If quantised with 8th denomination, the notes will blur into one, since
> note-on and note-off overlap or are so close together, that the synth won't
> separate them. This has happened on several hardware synths, both old and
> new. There hadn't been an occasion to try it with softsynths. If the notes
> are quantised with 16th, they may completely disappear, if the note was
> played too staccato.

I'm not sure to 100% understand, if notes start overlapping because
of the quantization, there's a bug to fix.

IIRC, quantization acts on *all* events, including note-on and
note-off events, in a way order is always preserved.  So notes that
don't overlap before quantization can't overlap after quatization. 
Note lengths may change and possibly be reduced to zero.

> Working from my own step-sequencing commands, would it be feasable, to build
> in two conditions when quantising: If the note length allows it move the
> note-off command one tick back, so the first 8th note of a bar, will not end
> at tick 12, but at tick 11, counted from one. Second if the note length
> allows it, make sure, that a note will at last at least one length of the
> given denomination.
> 
> This will not work on 96th notes, if someone wants them, but starting on
> 48th this mechanism could help. I've lost a few tracks due to the current
> behaviour, which is my fault, in not remembering, that this will happen.
> Still it's something, that can happen easily. :)

Just to be sure I understand the problem, could you create a file
with a single track and few notes only, and tell me what command to
run to reproduce the problem.

> A last wish is purely for comfort and not important as such, but it would
> make life easier: allowing note names, where MIDI-note numbers are allowed.
> So something like A C E might work in place of 45 36 40. It would help in
> entering steps, as I do with the pstep/pstepv and ppen/ppenv commands.

you mean accept strings when we expect note numbers, seems
possible.

what are these pstep/pstepv funcions?  is this a patch to midish?

-- Alexandre