Hi all,
As a producer I’m often relying on complex modulation in my synth patches, whether via DAW specific tools in Ableton / Bitwig or via plugin-specific modulators (e.g. Phaseplant). Most of time I’ll have synth parameters modulated from a mix of:
- randomness that smoothly evolves over time
- per note randomness (i.e. for each note a new random value)
- deterministic modulation (e.g. basic LFO)
- sometimes: deterministic step-sequenced modulation (mostly in Bitwig with the “Steps” modulator.
One thing that I find really missing is the possibility to “bounce” modulation-values into MIDI clips. By this, I mean converting what’s happening inside the synth into automation-like values editable in the DAW. In many drum synths that come with a sequencer, it’s possible to extract MIDI clips. Those usually contain note and velocity values, which is a good start, but can’t we have more ? I’m writing a synth that will come with random modulators, and I really want to add that kind of functionality to it. The most obvious workaround seems to be MIDI CC, which could be bounced into the exported clips. I could also write things such that modulation is sent to MIDI CC outputs that can be recorded by the DAW if a track is armed and listens to the plugin MIDI output during playback. After recording, copy-pasting the clip into the plugin track, there would be an option to switch off the original modulators replacing them by the MIDI CC inputs. However I can foresee some MIDI-related problems but I’m not sure I’m right for all of them:
- Acceptable problem: numerical precision. The “bounced” modulation are effectively converted to 8-bit (because MIDI is only 128 per CC), which could be noticeable and “feel” different than the original modulators ?
- Bigger problem: timing issues and/or sample-inaccuracy. Suppose I have modulation that’s step-sequenced and sample-accurate inside my plugin (like per-note randomness or beat-synced randomness). Will it feel different if converted to MIDI CC because the DAW smoothens the values or something like that ? Or will there be a problem because JUCE doesn’t allow sample-accurate control from MIDI and will only update CC values per-block ?
Thanks in advance!