programming with max/msp - Virtual Sound

IB1
424
Practice
defined to be the “note-on” command. When you click close to the top of a
kslider key, generating a high enough velocity value (let’s say above 90), you
should hear the sound of a piano. This sound is not coming from Max/MSP, but
instead, it is generated by a virtual instrument that is part of the operating system
of your computer, which, by default, plays MIDI notes using the sound of a
piano. If you try playing more notes, you will realize that noteout plays a sound
for every new note that it receives, without interrupting or stopping the notes
previously played. There is a slight problem: using noteout we told the virtual
instrument when to begin playing a note, but we didn’t tell it when to stop!
To interrupt a note and solve this problem, we will need to send another MIDI
command: a matching MIDI note with a velocity equal to 0, which is called the
“note-off” command. (A kind of “remove finger from key” command.)
One way to properly “extinguish” a MIDI note generated by kslider is to
change the way that the object manages MIDI notes. In edit mode, call up
the Inspector for the upper kslider, select the Value tab, and change the
Display Mode parameter value from “Monophonic” to “Polyphonic”. Then
return to performance mode. The first time that you click on a kslider key,
the note will sound at the velocity chosen, and the second time that you click
on the same key, the note will be triggered again, but this time with a velocity
of 0, which will make the sound stop: try this. Besides adding the handy notestopping
feature, this also now enables you to activate more than one note at
the same time: the performance capability has become polyphonic.
Now turn your attention to the lower half of the patch in IB_01_MIDI_note.
maxpat.
Fig. IB.2 The lower part of the patch in IB_01_MIDI_note.maxpat
We have connected the kslider object (in monophonic mode) to the
makenote object, which generates a MIDI note-on/note-off command pair.
Every time this object receives a note-on, it generates a note-off after a
configurable length of time has elapsed. The object has three inlets, one for
MIDI note number, one for velocity, and one for the duration in milliseconds
(which is, of course, the amount of time to pass before the note-off command
is sent). It has two outlets, one for MIDI note number and the other for velocity.
from “Electronic Music and Sound Design” Vol. 1 by Alessandro Cipriani and Maurizio Giri
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Paragraph IB.1 - Introduction to MIDI