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FamiTracker
I know we're out of season with requests, what with 4.0 being released, but I thought I'd try my luck anyway...
I'd really like to be able to play chords in midi when record mode is not set - at the moment if I want to get a feel of chord-structures I'm going to use, I have to open another program (FL) and pick a similar sounding vst, swap which program is using midi, bash out a few chords and swap back. It's a bit of a ball ache.
Is a polyphonic test-mode for midi viable in famitracker's future?
[quote=Patashu]File -> Configuration -> MIDI -> Auto arpeggiate chords[/quote]
That's a great little trick for a rough idea Patashu, thanks! I still do think it would be worth having polyphony though - I find playing a visual thing as much as anything. To see the chord structures with my hands personally helps me no end in music production. Plus, you can hear [i]exactly[/i] how it's going to sound if you're working across two or three pulse channels, and that's got to be worthwhile.
Problems inherent to MIDI polyphony are "which chip/expansion do you want to sound off first" (since emulation limits polyphony anyway) and Famitracker's MIDI latency.
I can see the use, but it's really not that hard to use a different program for brainstorming. Renoise seems like it'd be great for that.
If you mean polyphony on each internal channel then that's not possible without large rewrites, that would require too much work. Polyphony over the available channels would be easier, but perhaps not feasible since there are too few identical channels.
Another way (the fastest) would be to route MIDI in to MIDI out in some kind of preview mode, it won't sound the same but should work for previewing harmonies. If timbre is important then the only way is the auto-arpeggio option since that's also the only way to actually use the chords in the song.
What about an 'awful hack' where if you're playing multiple notes at once with Pulse 1 or Pulse 2 selected it enumerates over the notes you're playing per frame like this:
hold down 0 4 7
pulse 1 plays 0, pulse 2 plays 4
pulse 1 plays 4, pulse 2 plays 7
pulse 1 plays 7, pulse 2 plays 0
*repeat*
So for two notes at once they play all the time, for three notes at once each plays 2/3rds of the time and so on. And have a checkbox to turn the behaviour on/off, since sometimes you just want an arp.
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bite-sized songs inspired by rhythm game music, in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu
The MMC5 supports 4 pulse channels, and the VRC6 an extra 2. With the Namco 163 chip you have a great potentiality for polyphony so to be able to perform and practice what you're going to produce has got to be worthwhile in my opinion.
I'd be very happy if it was just available for the pulse channels if it was going to prove a problem elsewhere, anything else could be worked out from practising in those channels.
