[David Day]

1) and 2) seem solved – they appear in a group called “User Mics” in the mixer automatically when you add an extra instrument.  The pan controls are on these channels.

• The post has been modified 2 times, last modified 2 years, 7 months ago by David Day.

[David Day]

Sorry – I have clearly lost you in explaining.

Respectfully, MIDI mapping for drums may have little to do with pitch, which sounds like it’s your world, but with synths and sequencers in mine, MIDI is all about the notion of pitch.  At best, I conclude you have no need, but respectfully, others do – a bigger picture, and all that.

No, my ideal is not what prompted the question, all this 88 note kit works with C4 as 60.  The disparity between manufacturers is precisely the issue at hand.
Yamaha’s decisions of 40yrs ago are hardly the point.  SD3’s devs will not have looked at it that way.  It’s just a string in some table somewhere.  Editable, at that.

A thought process from first principles arrives at the same place – C3 is essentially an arbitrary designation based on a specific action, and it is not suited to other actions, or sensor arrangements.  Roland’s drum maps of R8 era were based on a folding of the range to create layers, which adds further complexity and transposition steps.

Aside, I am letting this rest here.  I will live with C3 in SD3.  No setting exists today, at the time of writing.

Happy drumming!

 

[David Day]

I can see why you would think this, but my comment was made in reference to “note pitch” in the first instance, rather than MIDI, which is derivative.

Since we cannot fight the physic/maths of it, for me it begins here.  The pitch system (and hence the note name) most certainly does start with choosing a point in the middle of the range, at an arbitrary frequency close to that of the humn voice.  It has settled at 440Hz, a well known reference for note A, over several hundred years of musical expression and its alternatives.  This is a working rule of thumb, not a law, and other choices will work just as well, provided everyone in the ensemble is agreed.

Then, when tuning stringed instruments, with intonation, you have to begin with this 440Hz, and extrapolate – dividing by 2 and multiplying by 2 to get the octaves, and applying simple fractional multiplications for in the intervals between them.  This process does not neatly work inside of 12 semitones, and gets even worse in octaves beyond that.  So, “equal temperament” fudges the maths slightly in the circle of fifths to allow octaves to stack nicely, whether cycling up or down, and no matter which octave you might start with.  There are all kinds of interesting consequences of equal temperament and string tunings.  If your electric guitar seems out of tune when played against your grand piano, you will be familiar with this problem.  It is not solveable, and compromises and agreements need to be made in-group.  I like to think it introduces variety and colour, for those with the appetite to explore the options, alt tunings, tuning just for the solo break, and so on.

Mathematically speaking, from 440Hz, you can always divide by 2 further without ever reaching 0Hz; and likewise, you can always double the frequency, so the upper range is also limitless.  The practical limitation is then the range of the human ear, and what is therefore discernible.  It gives you about 10 useable octaves with perfect hearing.  Unfortunately, for software developers, used to working with loops through zero based lists, it is not possible to begin at 0Hz at index 0, and multiply or divide, as you would always wind up with a steady state level (refer to complex numbers for an explanation of 0Hz).  It will always be a map to data which has its centre in the middle of the range.  There is no octave 0 from which to begin.

Into this “middle” defined context of pitch, we now wish to add MIDI.  MIDI offers a theoretical maximum of 128 keys per channel (it’s a zero-indexed list numbered 0 to 127 – or all the permutations of a 7bit binary number, 2 to the power 7 in maths).  It is perhaps easier to think of it as being 128 triggers per MIDI channel.  The middle of this range then is 63 or 64, depending upon your rounding.

Since MIDI began with synths, it is worth saying 128 is a range large enough to cover 88 standard piano keys and then some, offering the potential to transpose the action up and down an octave, and keep within the 128 trigger range, provided we begin in the middle.  But this block of 88 keys is not exactly central, so precisely which 88 note range in the 0-127 binary you choose, is somewhat arbitrary.  The very best you can hope for is a map, and over time perhaps convention.  There is no logical reason alone to map a specific note to any specific note name in any given octave, aside from working from trying to match the centre point of the action to the centre point of 0..127 range.

As a programmer, it is a simple matter to create a table of 128 MIDI triggers, and assign samples, or pitched sounds to them.  Working with trigger numbers, we would not care about note names.  As you, and Toontrack, say.

However if offering a “note mapping” as SD3 does, when it asserts “MIDI trigger 60” is actually a note called “C3”, it is in error.  Or more correctly, it isn’t only C3, it could be C4, of E4, or G4, indeed ANY valid note name in the cycle of 12, and at any conceivable octave – it depends entirely upon the context in which it is used, ie. how I intepret trigger 60 in the context of the MIDI universe I am using.  Hence, considering SD3 to be best in class, my expectation was there would be an option to tell SD3 what “MIDI trigger 60” means to me in musical terms.

Beginning around the middle, potentially 64 as the midpoint of 0..127 in MIDI.  If you map that to the middle octave of an 88 note action, it maps to E/F in the middle octave, making C either 60/59 respectively.  Since that is the 4th C note on an 88 note action counting from the left, 60 ends up designated as C4.  This designation though, is related to the action installed in the keyboard.  If it had been a 5 octave synth, counting from the left, it would be C3, the third C on the action.  It is hard to blame Roland or Yamaha for counting keys on synth actions.  In some sense it is reasonable.  It just doesn’t make universal sense.  It certainly should not pass as a law for all synths everywhere.

The answer, for me, is to stop considering MIDI signals as “notes” and simply refer to them as “MIDI triggers”, and naming them using precisely the same method – counting from C.  Using a zero based index, and beginning with “the lowest possible C in the 0..127 MIDI range”, our octaves increment positively, eliminating minus symbols from their designations.  That works out as follows:  “MIDI trigger 0” would be C0, so 12 = C1, 24 = C2, 36 = C3, 48 = C4, and C5 would be then be 60.  Working between multiple technologies, and code, and MIDI, this makes the most sense to me overall.

So, yes, it would be very useful if SD3 provided a “MIDI Trigger 60 =” [note/octave] option in its settings.  Save me a bunch of typing for one thing… 😉

• This post was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by David Day.
  Reason: Spelling, clarified meaning

[David Day]

Many thanks,

I was searching and found nothing, so that would explain it.

I appreciate it is cosmetic to many.  As a developer, I would have gone with C-0 as NN 0, and worked up, but that stems from a desire to begin with some notion of absolute 0 on the left, and simply count upwards to a maximum.   However, the pitch system we know and love starts in the middle, somewhere around the frequency of the human voice, and attempts to define middle C as a working midpoint, working outwards up and down.  It is all relative, and not absolute therefore.  Aside…

User head back on then, I would like a setting, so I am able to choose for myself, as I am somewhat fixed by the hardware about me.

C4 for 60 works for me.  YMMV.

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