Tricky Bassnote Trigger

[CologneKeys]

Hello,
Is it somehow possible to trigger a bass note e.g. 2 octaves below a played chord solely by the lowest note of a chord?
Kind regards
Christoph

[dsteinschneider]

I’ve seen the opposite where a VST can play chords based on off a single root note. I’ll ask over on the Bome forum if this has been done. Pretty sure this will require a VST.

[cpaolo]

There is a lil thread about a similar topic:

Suggestions: MIDI Poly-to-Mono Filter

Specifically I would love to have a poly-to-mono MIDI filter, with options for first/last/top/bottom note. This would be ideal when setting up multi-part playing on one keyboard such as a bass synth working in conjunction with a pad or similar - one hand for both Could be a MIDI Filter type or part of the routing. It would also be awesome if there was a way to extend the MIDI Filters.

[dsteinschneider]

Here is answer from Bome forum:

Yes, it is possible, however may be a bit difficult if the notes of a chord are not played at the exact same time. The rules would have to determine the lowest note played (within a given time) and then subtract 24 from that note. When the not goes off, it will also need to do the same thing to prevent hung notes. Also, there would need to be some logic to determine what should happen should 2 octaves lower be less than note 0. Do we play just 1 octave lower instead or do we just not play anything?

To determine the lowest note played we would have to have a mechanism to track up to n notes where n is the maximum number of notes to evaluate at a given time. The more notes to evaluate, the more time it will take. Usually if everything can be done within 10ms, the latency for note evaluation before play should not be noticeable to the performer.

[The_Elf]

As above - it’s the timing that is the problem. If, at any moment in time, only one note is playing, is that highest, or lowest?

I get around this by carefully designating key splits, even splitting between the octave in my left hand part, for instance. By changing states (I like to have states change automatically from the time line running alongside a backing track) I’m able to keep the split relevant to the moment.

[TorstenH]

Should be possible to make a small JSFX/ReaScript that handles this, I’m not sure about latency in these, but I’d expect it to be very low.

[CologneKeys]

I’m convinced - timing is the issue … the other way round is not the same but much simpler - playing bass notes which trigger chords …
Thanks to you all

[Jaspeter]

I have been accomplishing this on my standalone keyboard by assigning an arpeggiator to the channel I want the bass to play and having it trigger only on the lowest note (or any note you choose - I have one song where the accompanying chord sounds better in the third inversion so the second note is more useful for the bass arpeggiator). Just set the arpeggio to cycle on a single tied note as long as you can so it doesn’t repeat. You can set the bass channel independently to be two octaves down.

I don’t have any experience with VSTs (which is why I’ve been perusing this forum), but if my old keyboard can do it, I’m sure you can do it with plugins.

[CologneKeys]

Hi Jaspeter,
thanks for your helpful advice and welcome ‘on board’

[Chrisc_o]

Piz MIDI has a plugin called midChordSplit. It splits each note of a chord to its own MIDI channel. This could be exploited to generate the extra bass note with some creative MIDI filtering. There was another plugin I used to separate trids for horn parts that I could send each note to their own instrument. Can’t remember what it was called…

[TorstenH]

The midi filter “voice allocator” does the same thing. But you wouldn’t know what channel has the lowest note.