How to delete an instrument's notes using MIDI messages?

[jklerch]

Hello,

Recently, I found out how to use Hydrogen during live performances with a MIDI controller: http://hydrogen-music.org/documentation/manual/manual_en_chunked/ch16.html Almost all functions I need are found in hydrogen. This is awesome!

My workflow is the following: I have one pattern looping and record notes from MIDI input during the loop. These notes are then played back immediately when the loop starts over.

However, I did not find out how to delete the notes of an instrument using a MIDI controller. This would be important if I have some beat running right now, but I want to change say the pattern of the kick. I could easily just right click and say "delete notes". However, during a live performance, this is not really practical. It would be better if there would be the option to map this function to some button on my MIDI controller.

Is there a way to do that I maybe did not find yet? Otherwise, would it be possible to implement the possibility to map that?

[theGreatWhiteShark]

Hey @jklerch ,

However, I did not find out how to delete the notes of an instrument using a MIDI controller. This would be important if I have some beat running right now, but I want to change say the pattern of the kick. I could easily just right click and say "delete notes". However, during a live performance, this is not really practical. It would be better if there would be the option to map this function to some button on my MIDI controller.

Is there a way to do that I maybe did not find yet? Otherwise, would it be possible to implement the possibility to map that?

Nice suggestion! No, we do not have such a MIDI command yet. But it sounds like a very good idea to add one.

I would suggest to call it CLEAR_INSTRUMENT and make it work similar to SELECT_INSTRUMENT while always acting on the currently selected pattern.

In addition, I would also add a CLEAR_PATTERN to delete all notes of the currently selected pattern. It's cumbersome to clear every single instrument individually and as there is no way to add a pattern via MIDI one could quickly run out of patterns by just switching to a blank one.

What do you think?

[jklerch]

Allright.

The following things come to mind:

• CLEAR_PATTERN works as expected. However, it is not possible to me undoing this action using Ctrl+Z
• CLEAR_INSTRUMENT does not work as expected. I expect it to work in the following way: set SELECT_INSTRUMENT to the instrument I want to have deleted; execute DELETE_INSTRUMENT -> instrument notes get deleted. What actually happens is: when executing DELETE_INSTRUMENT, the last instrument (in my case, instrument 8) gets selected and deleted. No matter which instrument I chose before.

After selecting instrument 2 (SELECT_INSTRUMENT):

After executing DELETE_INSTRUMENT:

[theGreatWhiteShark]

CLEAR_INSTRUMENT does not work as expected. I expect it to work in the following way: set SELECT_INSTRUMENT to the instrument I want to have deleted; execute DELETE_INSTRUMENT -> instrument notes get deleted. What actually happens is: when executing DELETE_INSTRUMENT, the last instrument (in my case, instrument 8) gets selected and deleted. No matter which instrument I chose before.

Hmm... is there a use case for separating the steps of selecting an instrument and deleting all its notes? I drafted CLEAR_INSTRUMENT to work similar to SELECT_INSTRUMENT. It reads an instrument number from the MIDI input value, selects the corresponding instrument, and deletes its notes. Hence the similarity in naming.

But to answer my own question: when assigning the action to a knob with current value of 0, clearing instrument 10 would result in clearing all instruments in between. That's not convenient....

How would you use this feature?

[jklerch]

At first: My personal opinion might not be general and not be applicable to everyone's workflow. (I suppose you also assume that, but wanted to be clear here).

If you implemented it the way I understand from your message, then one would have to assign number_of_instruments x 2 many "buttons": number_of_instruments many to set a note and again, number_of_instruments many to delete a note, did I understand that correctly?

If this is the case: You would need many "buttons" on your controller, but you might not have that many ones... So to me it would just be more feasible to have one button for "delete instrument". This button would then delete the currently selected instrument. One could have another poti assigned for selecting an instrument using SELECT_INSTRUMENT.

This would be the way I would use the solution that was implemented by you. However, I do not know how that complies with all the other functionalities and if it makes things more chaotic. Also, I am new to Hydrogen MIDI stuff, so if there is another "Hydrogen way" to do things (and which is also for some reason "the best possible" way under the given configuration. I.e. better than my proposal in the above paragraph), then I would be ready to learn that as long as it is feasible with the controller I have available.

[theGreatWhiteShark]

At first: My personal opinion might not be general and not be applicable to everyone's workflow. (I suppose you also assume that, but wanted to be clear here).

Sure. But I never used Hydrogen live. Maybe I miss some entirely obvious points.

If you implemented it the way I understand from your message, then one would have to assign number_of_instruments x 2 many "buttons": number_of_instruments many to set a note and again, number_of_instruments many to delete a note, did I understand that correctly?

It was more an action to assign on a poti. But scratch that. In terms of MIDI it is not really helpful.

I would drop the CLEAR_INSTRUMENT MIDI action but keep the OSC counterpart (because there it is much more easy specify particular instrument). Instead, I would introduce CLEAR_SELECTED_INSTRUMENT which takes no input and can be assigned to a button.

https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/ak396wmsa47n5ykk/artifacts/Hydrogen-1.2.3-25-g402f09b3c-x86_64.AppImage

[theGreatWhiteShark]

Hey @jklerch ,

I merged the state described above and it will be included in the 1.2.4 release of Hydrogen. In addition, I split of the record/delete toggle into a separate issue (#1965). I think we are done here, aren't we?