So, the polybeats patches (including the several variations on patchstorage) have been some of my favorites so far, it’s a really creative approach to beat-making and it’s very easy to come up with some really interesting and unorthodox rhythms.
However, there are a couple of little tweaks that to me would greatly improve its functionality, maybe someone with PD knowledge could tackle this?
Suggestion 1: currently, the second press on the same note will cancel that note for the whole pattern, which makes it harder if you want to place the same note in multiple specific places. The workaround I’ve found is to copy each sound to several different keys, but it’s not very practical and greatly reduces the amount of sounds I can have on the patch.
A simpler way to solve this would be to set the cancel note action to a long press of the key, and let the normal press always add a new note.
Suggestion 2: this one may be a bit more tricky, but it would be very useful to have some sort of individual volume control for each note. High pitched sounds tend to be much louder than say a bass drum or snare and it would be great if we could set the velocity of each note before (or after) adding it - something like the Punchy Vel patch: http://patchstorage.com/punchy-vel/
Thanks for these suggestions! We are planning on a polybeats variation as Friday’s patch this week, and I’m working on the second item you mention. I’m thinking the two right knobs will control sample volume and decay (instead of speed and decay) but the difference with this one is they will be locked in when you start a key (instead of global as they are now). So as you key in a pattern you can tweak the individual sounds leading to more dynamic patterns…
I just tested and it’s great, the 32 steps are a welcome addition as well!
Now if you would just change the cancel behavior to a long press, Xmas would be perfect this year…!
Hey dudes…
I wanted to post this here, because it seemed relevant.
Polybeats is seriously my new favorite way to perform drum samples.
Buy I am really stumped without a midi clock start/stop message integrated into the patch.
Is there any chance that you have some insight on this?
Thanks so much
Are you talking about Polybeats sending MIDI start / stop or receiving them? Currently I think a start message will reset the MIDI quarter note clock so that it quarter notes should be in phase with whatever is sending the clock.
It doesn’t send start or stop messages, but this could be added. I think it would work like this: MIDI start goes out on first key press, then stop when the Aux button is pressed to cancel. Does that make sense?
I was traipsing around the web today on a similar topic and found this thread. It specifies the midi message numbers for start and stop, in the links there may be some info which helps you. Hope so, good luck!
Try this main.pd file. Replace the one in Pow Pow’s Polybeats patch with this one. It should send MIDI start when a seq starts up, and stop when the seq is stopped.main.pd (6.0 KB)
