How to 'key-scale-rate' and 'key-scale-level' for single cycle sample based instruments?

I want to make my instruments made from looped single-cycle-waveform samples sound a bit better and more pro…reading through the adlibtracker manual i found out that to set up a little bit more pro-sounding instrument I should use ‘key scale rate’ (attack and decay becomes shorter as pitch inscreases) and ‘key scale level’ (volume decreases as pitch increases). How would I achieve this in renoise?

KEY SCALE
When set, makes the sound shorter at higher frequencies. With normal musical instruments, the attack and decay rate becomes faster as the pitch increases. The key scale rate controls simulation of this effect.

KEY SCALE LEVEL
When set, makes the sound softer at higher frequencies. With musical instruments, volume decreases as pitch increases. Level key scaling values are used to simulate this effect. If any (not zero), the diminishing factor can be 1.5 dB/octave, 3.0 dB/octave, or 6.0 dB/octave.

2 Likes

I don’t believe natural instruments would have attack and delay vary by pitch, but that’s what happens if attack and delay are baked in to a single non-single-cycle sample. Generally when I think of pro I’d be thinking of an instrument with lots of samples or a synth that wouldn’t have that effect.

Seems like the easiest thing to do is set up a track with the instrument playing C-4 for a duration, render that, and use the resulting sample in a new instrument.

Im not a chief vibration specialist of frequencies and amplitudes in real world/non simulated instruments but I do believe that if you twang a ruler on a table with a large part of the ruler sticking out it will vibrate more slowly and have a low pitch. If you twang a ruler on the table with only a small part sticking out it will vibrate more quickly and have a higher pitch.
The low twang will be louder and last longer, the high twang will be softer and last a shorter amount of time (if you twang with the same force). Also, on guitar, if you twang the low E2 open string, surely this note will be louder and last longer than if you twang the highest note on a nice electric guitar (unplugged without amlpification), E6 at fret 24? I think this applies to pianos and xylophones too. Some would say that these simulated instruments arent simulated at all, but physical electro magnetic instruments known as “speakers”, although they may be used to transmit sounds other than human speech of course.

I wouldnt have the attack and decay baked into the actual sample itself. The single cycle samples, as they have come to be known as, in spite of the fact that they may indeed consist of two or more periods of a wave, are too short for that. Nay, I would use the the ‘sampler-modulation’ AHDSR and I would use it in combination with the ‘sampler-modulation’ key tracking ‘module’ and volume velocity tracking ‘module’, but it is this which confuses and perplexes me as I just have a min and max in the key tracking, a clamp, a scale a min, a max in the volume velocity tracking…

How would I set it up with similarities to the adlibtracker2, that is to say, a realistic approach, something that makes sense when keeping in mind that the aim is to simulate a physical instrument, such as a shoebox with a hole cut out of it and rubber bands stetched over it?

The Key Tracker Device in the Modulation Set may offer what you are looking for. Maybe use an Envelope in the Volume section as well. You’ll have to experiment with the settings adn order of the devices, but you should be able to get something like what you are after.

I’ve just recently been playing around in the Modulation section with single cycle wave forms. Lot’s of neat possibilities. Its just a matter of getting the settings right.

(Ill see if I can get a simple example thrown together that sounds like what you are looking for)

Here I just went ahead and made it rather than having to explain it through text. If you reverse engineer it you’ll understand how it’s set up. It’s not that complicated.

Settings for attack and decay were arbitrary so you can adjust them to your liking in the macros. The volume ctrl has no way of aproximately scaling to 1.5 dB/octave, 3.0 dB/octave, or 6.0 dB/octave that I know of, so I just set it as close as I could which ended up being around 1.3db per octave.

Single Cycle Key Tracked Inst.xrni (9.0 KB)

1 Like

Thanks for going to all the trouble of putting that together, I really appreaciate it.
Ive saved it to my ‘forum examples’ folder to reverse engineer it fully later tonight hopefully.
It looks very complicated but from what I can tell:

‘key tracker’ controls ‘range selector input’
range selector is a ‘hydra’ relabelled which controls attack, decay, volume and reset.

I dont understand the next part yet (the two ‘instrument parameters’ modules), I will have to read more on doofers and macros in the manual…

after that there is ‘volume scale’ which looks like it was a custom LFO relabelled and this controls the input of another ‘hydra’ called ‘volume range’ which controls a ‘gainer’ called ‘volume ctrl’.

Thanks again for taking the time to teach me how to do this, much appreciated.
I’ll understand it fully later. Right now Im still a little baffled by it.
Its crazy what renoise can do…thats impressive stuff

No problem, didn’t take me too long anyway about 10 mins or so.

Yeah ‘key tracker’ is set to C0 - B9, the full range of notes on Renoise’s keyboard.

The ‘range selector’ hydra is acting as a multiplier, it takes the the input single from the key tracker and then splits it into three separate signals which are routed to control the desired parameters: attack, decay, and volume.

The ‘instrument parameters’ macro controls the attack and decay of the sample.
Normally an instrument macro control can only be placed in the fx section in the pattern editor window, this would work fine when building the instrument but for the sake of organization I found it better to place it in the effect section of the sampler tab. To do that you have to place the macro control inside a doofer, I don’t know why probably some coding issue, then you can copy and paste it into the sampler effects section. So the doofer doesn’t actually so anything special at all it’s just a container for the macro controls. I simply named them both ‘instr parameters’ just to keep them related.

You seem to get the volume ‘scale’ ‘rang’ & ‘ctrl’ so no need to explain that.

I use hydras a lot to control range selection of fx. Changing the min and max setting allows you to scale the range of the result. So in this instance for the attack and decay I flipped the settings so that low = high (Min 100% means C0 = 100%, and Max 0% means B9 = 0%.) and for the volume, high = low.

Also just so you know I accidentally left a third control on the ‘inst parameters’ macro titled ‘volume’. Originally I had this mapped to the volume input in the samplers modulation tab but decided against using it because it doesn’t give an accurate display of how the volume is being changed per octave (it simple gives a reading of between 0 and 1 and not dbs) and opted to use a gainer re-titled ‘volume ctrl’ instead. So you can disregard that setting or just remove it from the macro altogether because it doesn’t do anything.