[Draft discussion] Poly Chain / per-voice FX

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Is there another product that accomplishes this, any video demonstrating the possibilities of such a feature?

(I am having trouble visualizing your proposal, which is no wonder because I am not into MPE instruments / controllers.)

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Hey! Okay so, the whole shtick of MPE is that you do all your modulations on a per-voice basis. That is, if you play two notes at the same time, you can e.g. pitch-bend them independently, they have independent mod wheels etc - whatever you modulate with e.g. the expression modulator will be different for each voice/note you play at the same time. Bitwig does this very well with its built-in instruments. Issues arise when you want to modulate parameters in your FX chain with your MPE Expression modulator: your FX chain by default is only one, fed by a mix of all the voices‘ audio output. Thereby you can only modulate the FX over all your voices, not per-voice.

It is already possible to stack instrument devices and have them behave independently, this would mean the FX chain of an instrument device could also be instanced per-voice, so you could e.g. modulate two copies of the same reverb or delay or distortion etc. with two different fingers via aftertouch.

I see that it would be CPU-intensive but really cool - I know MPE is a slow-growing field but it’s very rewarding after a while.

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Thank you for the explanation.

All I can say is, if you want to convert this into a draft feature request, let’s do it. This topic is out of my own depth. :slight_smile:

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is there a way I can convert it?

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:white_check_mark: Done. (Basically, only moderators can.)

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I think MPE is just a subset of it, I’d put ‘per-voice FX chains’ first. Note-on/off events are implicitely per voice :slight_smile: I’ve already sent a feature request to Bitwig for this:

Polyphonic synth devices would benefit from another chain box that would take per-voice effect modules. Those devices would be applied to each voice before mixing them. This is useful for devices that support keytracking (resonator bank, filters) natively or would be modulated with a keytrack modulator.
When automating parameters of per-voice devices, all voices would share the same automation.

In any case, i’d love to see this as a votable feature request.

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Yes, correct - that does make more sense :slight_smile:

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Just for your information, I have recovered this request from #drafts:archive at @LXIF’s request.

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@LXIF are you fine with me editing the first post a bit to get this into shape for voting?

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I’ll take it upon myself to edit the post, because I understand what’s this about

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Done, but I would edit it to ‘Poly Chain / per-voice FX’

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Thank you! The section “What problem(s) would this feature resolve?” doesn’t describe the current problems. Instead expands on explaining the requested feature. That paragraph could be moved to the description, and in its place explain the current situation. What would you lie to do but you can’t?

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depends on what you consider a problem. can we stack device chains in polyphony at the moment? yes we can, but you can’t use polyphonic modulators, can’t set it up in such a way that would allow editing just top layer and the rest would follow automatically. in some sense you’d want to be able to dial in per-voice difference between instances via modulators, which is easy when you can use polyphonic modulators.

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When discussing feature requests, defining the problem is arguably more important than defining the solution. Agreeing on a problem is a step required to agree on a solution. And one problem may have multiple solutions. This is why this section is part of the template. That’s all. :slight_smile:

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@x.iso thanks. Well written
@icaria36 to me the problem description now makes sense. For me it is enabling polyphonic use of fx devices that have a notion of pitch, whether it is a resonator bank or a comb-filter. There are situations where you want one instance of the fx per voice, receiving the audio + the note information (and mpe events for that note).

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Ok, thank you. I have reviewed the description adding just small changes. One question, when the “Selector” is mentioned, it refers only to the Instrument Selector, right?

This looks ready to go.

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for the most part, yes, because in order to apply true polyphonic fx, you need to have separate monophonic instruments on each layer used as a ‘voice’

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