Hydra Meta-Instrument

Ideas & suggestions
1

A meta-instrument I’ve been thinking for some time.
Basically all the standard layering stuff most samplers have, but in form of a meta instrument.

General controls:

Crossfade Slider
(Used to fade between linked instruments.)

Controls for linked instruments:

Note range
Velocity range
Velocity multiplier
Cossfade position
(If set to minimum value the instrument is played when crossfade slider is in 0% and if set to maximum it’s played when slider is in 100% and so on.)
Crossfade Q value
(Minimum Q value - instrument is played only when crossfade slider is exactly in crossfade position of the instrument, Maximum Q value - instrument is played always, no matter where the slider is, and of course everything between)

Other features:
If MIDI-Control Device is linked to Hydra Instrument all midi data is passed to instruments linked to Hydra. If this doesn’t satisfy user they can always use invidual MIDI-Control Devices for all the linked instruments.

Issues:
Needs a way to affect the velocity levels of instruments when they share the same velocity range. Maybe some sort of velocity curve?

Example situation:

Four instruments linked to Hydra Instrument.

Instruments 1 and 2 have velocity range of 0-63 and 3 and 4 have range of 65-127.

Velocity multiplier for instruments 1 and 2 is set to 200%.

Instruments 2 and 3 are set to one end of the crossfade slider using crossfade position and crossfade q value.

Instruments 1 and 4 are set to middle of crossfade slider and have so big q value that they are not affected by the slider.

You press D#4 with velocity of 20, Instrument 1 is played with actual velocity of 40.
You move the crossfade slider and smoothly the Instrument 2 fades to accompany Instrument 1.
You press C-4 with velocity of 70, Instruments 3 and 4 are played with velocity of 70.
And so on.

2

Now that I think of it, maybe it should have more than one Crossfade slider.

If we have for example a brass instrument you could control with this thing - one crossfade slider to control expression and one to fade from non-legato to legato sounds.

3

It has been admitted a redesign of the whole xrni structure is on the cards (although nobody knows quite when) and although some of these ideas are interesting, and it would be good to see them incorporated into the instruments on the whole, not sure a meta device like this is the way to go (or would even work with the current way Instruments work in Renoise and would need such a big redesign anyway.)

In fact I think meta device is entirely the wrong word and you are really talking about redesigning the instruments. So far all meta devices go in the DSP chain and this wouldn’t, it would be an instrument, and thus you are basically talking about redesigning xrni (which we all look forwards to.)

4

Well, yes and no. I’m aware that many of the features are something that many people would like to see in the future XRNI format, but personally I’d like to see XRNI purely sample based and keeping the VSTi’s (and AU’s) as completely separate thing. That’s when devices like this come handy.

That’s why I said Meta INSTRUMENT :)