STARTHIEF

My Aquila Thunderbrown strings arrived Monday, and I put them on, following Aquila’s YouTube tutorial. But I didn’t stretch them enough first, and they wound too many times around the posts, particularly the D, which is a bad idea. So I went to unwind the D and the tuner stuck. It just wouldn’t loosen any further.

Checking in with more experienced folks on the Talkbass forum, I was able to get the string off by stretching it over the post (these are very stretchy strings), but the tuner is still both jammed, and wobbling loosely in the headstock. To make matters worse, the screw that holds the gear and spool on — necessary to remove if I’m going to tighten it, check for damage, or replace the tuner — is stripped. It’s in a recessed part of the gear where my trusty Vampliers can’t get a bite. So I guess the next step is to try using a rubberband to get a better grip, and if that doesn’t work, carefully drill the screw out.

I have replacement tuners on order. Thankfully these are cheap and simple, at $15 for a set of four, rather than the $20 for a single Hipshot Custom Ultralight tuner that is all Kala sells. I don’t know if my own mistake (too many windings) is what botched the tuner, or if it exacerbated a defect or improper installation, or maybe the previous owner did something to it too. But hopefully this is all the expense that will need to go into fixing it; taking it to a luthier would be costly and I’d feel pretty dumb doing so, and few luthiers have probably worked on a U-bass much anyway.

The strings themselves seem nice though. They have a bit of texture to them and aren’t slick, but they don’t have the kind of sticky feel that the older Thunderblack strings had. I never had a serious problem with that, but then, it’s winter, the humidity is low and my skin is really dry. I didn’t really notice a big difference in tone. I was going to compare the sustain, but the tuner fiasco was a mighty distraction. A more thorough review with actual playing will have to wait until things are fixed and it’s got four strings properly wound, but my general feeling is: if the feel of Thunderblack strings bugs you, these may help a lot. If it doesn’t, it’s a minor upgrade, and you can wait until your old strings really need replacing.

---

As for the Mikro: the more I play it, the more I like it! I’m going to just stick with the current strings until they’re worn out, and probably keep roundwounds on it forever. I found some resonator effects where the zingy sound of running fingers over the strings creates some sonic magic, and I really like how easily I can slap and tap with it. I was doing some two-handed tapping with it last night and it was a joy — the technique looked difficult to me until I actually tried it — and found a use for ambient slapping.

My main crime right now in terms of technique is in how I let the pressure off the frets while the note is decaying, causing a rattle. Staying put until the note is done ringing out, or muting it first would help; it’s also likely that lifting the finger off faster, cleaner, all the way will prevent a rattle.

I’ve got about 50 minutes recorded toward the next album. It snuck up on me — one day I feel like it’s barely started and going slowly, the next I think I’m “halfway done” but really could master and release it right now, except that I want to try another couple of tracks first.

---

I found that the set of bass strings I bought a few years ago, intending to put on the Ursa short-scale fretless but never getting around to it, are exactly one of the ones that many players like very much on the Ibanez Mikro: D’Addario Chromes. There are a lot of different string characteristics, varying in tension, materials, and winding. The big divide is generally round vs. flat, with rounds generally being brighter and more “zingy” but rougher to the touch and noisier with movement, and flats being warmer and mellower and smooth. But there are some exceptions and alternatives — tapewound, groundwound, half-round, coated, and then different core profiles and a few other things that matter. Chromes are flatwound but people describe them as having “a round wound sound” as well as “deep and punchy,” although some have called them “twangy.”

I’m trying to decide whether to put the Chromes on the old bass and maybe rescue it — because with the current variables I don’t like it very much in feel or in tone — or just go ahead and put them on the Mikro. I suppose I won’t damage them in some way trying them on the older bass first, though.

---

Latest reads:

• I mentioned Dune. I’ve finished it, and my overall feeling remains: it’s a mixed bag. But I can see how this book, released when it was, was highly influential. I already coincidentally compared the Jedi to the Beni Gesserit but I think that’s more apt than I realized; this book went deep into space magic/mysticism, space feudalism, a space empire. It’s essentially fantasy wearing SF clothing, which is where Star Wars went. Trek instead combined Westerns, a space navy, and handwavy technobabble.
  Dune is also remarkably dark. Testing the pain tolerance of children under threat of death as part of their training, a culture of oppressed people who have to drink their own body fluids to survive, a whole empire dancing to the tune of a capitalist cartel, a massive conspiracy using eugenics and the manipulation of religion and culture to achieve its mysterious aims… but also the theme of the whole thing seems to be that every victory is a kind of defeat. Try as you might, you could win but you will also lose, and a hero is the most tragic and disastrous figure there is. Huh.
• Project Hail Mary. This was a ray of sunshine after Dune, even though it’s about a desperate attempt to save the human race. There should be more books where the protagonist is a cool science teacher who has to solve problems with science, rather than violence or treachery. This was the most science science fiction I have read in quite some time, and also wonderfully funny several times. Loved it!
• There is No Antimimetics Division. This is a novel of SCP Foundation fiction, and it is humorous, absurd, very clever and very dark and scary. It’s in the paranormal conspiracy genre, where an organization which exists to protect humanity from “anomalies” also must deal with deadly memes and antimemes — ideas that encourage their own spread and ideas that resist/prevent their own spread. Trying to contain cognitohazards when simply knowing that the hazard exists exposes you to it. Drugs that cause people to be unable to forget, or unable to remember. Enormous creatures of the deep and omnipresent parasites that most of us simply cannot become aware of — and the frightening, bewildering lives of the few who can see them.

Function generators/slew limiters can do many different things. When I think of typical modules in this department such as Maths, Function, Mini-Slew, Tilt, DUSG, Rampage and so on, the first application that comes to mind is envelopes. Send a trigger, get a rise and fall with variable speeds and shapes. Send a gate, get a rise, hold, and fall. Beyond that, making them loop so they’re an LFO is probably next. Then using it to smooth out other CV signals. Audio rate oscillation might be next, although few of these are designed to follow standard volt per octave pitch tracking and can maintain it over more than a short range. Somewhere below that is all the other stuff they can do — waveshaping, trigger delays, frequency division, crude audio filtering, and so on.

NSI Inertia is not typical. After a few hours of playing with it, I think envelopes are not its strongest role. The controls are a little weird for that and the shapes are always exponential unless you do some self-patching. On the other hand, you do get some atypical psuedo-ADSR shapes from it, and wobbles and spikes if you like, so it’s worth playing with even for that.

It’s stronger as an LFO or oscillator, where the shape and frequency are independent and you can play with other inputs to the trigger or main input to disrupt things. But it’s at its most unique when used as a lowpass filter, or perhaps somewhere in between a filter and oscillator. The “momentum” acts as resonance, the second-order output gives a -12dB/oct response, and the “skew” gives it a different cutoff frequency for rising and falling portions of the input waveform, which is almost like a blend control for filtering but goes beyond that. With more extreme skew it can act as a very different sort of frequency divider. And then there are applications like slewing incoming CV, where momentum can add spikes and wobbles, or FM pings accenting changes in level.

So yeah, it’s cool. 🙂

Also cool? The new bass!

It feels just right to me, has a great sound that works very well with various effects — this turned out to be a great match for me and I’m very glad I went for it. Playing with frets does take a little adjustment after the fretless U-bass and the older short-scale fretless (which I realize now is not a quality instrument in the least, but it might become a platform for experiments) but I think this will be easier to learn on too, and generally easier to integrate with the whole drone/ambient thing.

I do have some new Thunderbrown strings on the way for the U-bass though, since someone pointed to a US shop that has them for a reasonable enough price. It will be interesting to see how my approach to the U-bass changes after some time with the Mikro. I like that mellow, upright tone too and it’ll also have a place, but I think it’s going to be secondary.

We’ve been having Weather here — rain that became sleet, then ice, then a pretty solid amount of snow but nothing like the 16 inches that were possible in the forecast. Enough to work from home for three days, which I appreciate for reasons beyond not having to dig a car out until Sunday or deal with treacherous roads.

We’ve also been having a lot of avian visitors to the birdfeeder in the last couple of days — crowds of up to a couple of dozen house finches, chickadees, cardinals, juncos, a jay and perhaps some others. It’s quite a show and we both thought about setting up a webcam. Before that, it was mostly just a ninja squirrel and a cardinal who occasionally observed from a safe distance.

I am reading Dune for the first time — a book I’ve avoided until now because friends expressed dislike or indifference toward it. And wow, it’s a mixed bag. The first chapter was compelling and exciting… and then the second was melodrama that I actually laughed at. “I, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen!” twirling his mustache while reminding his son Sting Feyd and his favorite assassin what his name is and what his dastardly plot is and being fat-shamed. There’s an awkward level of third-person omniscience, where we’ll hear the inner monologues of multiple characters one after another. And I am not on board with the way some plot points are not just foreshadowed, but fore-reported. But there are definitely some cool ideas and spots of nifty language, and I’m enjoying it. When I’m not reading it I want to know what happens next and what was meant by a couple of mysterious things that were said, and honestly, Bene Gesserit powers are way cooler than the Force. Consent is really not much of a thing with them though, is it? Yikes.

---

On a recommendation, I’ve been going through the Hal Leonard Bass Method book. It can be a struggle to play what seems like really basic stuff when you are simultaneously:

• Reading sheet music, when you’re not used to bass clef. Sometimes with finger numbers, sometimes position advice, sometimes with chord names, and sometimes you are not playing the root of the chord so those chord names are misleading.
• Trying to intone the notes properly when playing fretless.
• Sticking to the rhythm, using a metronome.
• Alternating fingers on the plucking hand, and raking when moving from a higher string to a lower string.
• Playing stuff that musically makes little sense, so you have to concentrate on reading what’s written rather than playing what you think it should be.

I recognize that getting this right will make me a better bass player, but I’m still thinking that reading sheet music is too much of a tangent for the kind of playing I want to do.

This book teaches 1-2-4 fingering (index, middle, pinky on three frets at a time) rather than “OFPF” (one finger per fret) at first, and I’m finding that’s pretty comfortable even at U-bass scale lengths. My thinking now is that a fretted instrument will be easier to learn on, and I may go for an Ibanez Mikro bass, with its 28.6″ scale length. They’re pretty inexpensive (partially marketed to kids) and look sharp (the “walnut flat” style especially appeals to me, even though there’s also a metallic purple [edit: I’ve seen more pictures of the walnut and some of them are actually ugly instead of beautiful! it varies so much. Better not risk it if not buying from a shop in person]). But I won’t want to abandon fretless entirely, and the U-bass will still have a role. I’ll probably switch off to emphasize different sound and different skills to work on.

---

In other gear news… so much for freezing my Eurorack setup, probably! Someone is selling/trading their Inertia and Polygogo. I’m still curious about the Inertia and kind of missing Maths anyway, so I feel like it would serve me better than Loquelic is currently — nothing against Loquelic but I can get those sounds in other ways.

The Polygogo is something I’ve been curious about thanks to a much cut-down version in VCV Rack. It too has some lovely FM sounds combined with its polygonal synthesis, which has some already FM-ish and sync-ish but unique tones… it’s tasty. The seller is interested in trading for an Akemie’s Castle, which is the only way I could make room. I’m of two minds about this — I’ve been thinking of trading the Castle for about 3 years now but every time I patch it I fall in love with the sounds. That doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t functionally get very similar sounds with other stuff though — including the Polygogo. So after some hemming and hawing, I made an offer.

Turns out the Polygogo was already sold, so that’s fine. I’ll buy the Inertia, sell my Loquelic, and keep the Castle still and not regret anything.

For the first time last night, I played with custom scale programming on the Ensemble Oscillator. I should have been doing this all along. The freely tunable versions of it fit extremely well with my workflow and can make some really beautiful drones. Honestly, before this I was also thinking of EnOsc as kind of secondary, in a similar space to other oscillators. But now I’m going to take advantage of this for sure and it might become extremely key. Or at least, off-key…

Bass guitar (or ukulele) seems to be a “journey” in much the same way modular is. One of the things I have to keep repeatedly learning is that a bass is not a violin.

My aha-moment is as follows.

On a violin, because the space between semitones on the fingerboard is relatively small, standard technique is to keep the hand in first position as much as possible and shift up the neck only when necessary. It’s easy enough for four fingers to cover a 6 semitone range. And I got used to thinking of low position and minimal shifting as the standard way string instruments are played.

On a bass, the strings are tuned in fourths rather than fifths, so you need to cover 4 frets rather than 6. But on a 34″ scale bass, it’s still a 5.1 inch reach between frets 1 and 4, from the index finger to the pinky, and just touching that spot at a weird angle isn’t good enough. This baffled me for a while — even on my 30″ short-scale bass, it’s still a 4.5 inch stretch (and no fudging it because it’s fretless), and that’s just not practical.

The main way this is resolved is with technique. Bass players don’t typically stick to the lowest few frets. Fret spacing gets closer toward the bridge, so the reach isn’t as far. Also by changing positions to match the key, they can maintain consistent fret patterns regardless of the root. Also, though it’s not universal (and not taught in the book I’ve been going through), many players use fingers 1/2/4 for 3 frets rather than 4 on the lower frets.

I realize also that this is also one reason why 5-string basses typically have a low B rather than a high C: not necessarily so you can play a 30.87 Hz B0 which probably doesn’t come up all that often, but so you can play up the neck a bit and still have a good range.

Short-scale and smaller basses also make that reach easier of course, and I plan to stick with them. The 21″ scale length of a U-bass is quite comfortable. I may give my 30″ fretless a bit more of a try now, farther up the neck anyway — but more likely I’ll sell or donate it. I could see a 5-string 30″ fretted bass working out, but I’m leaning more toward staying in the bass uke range or the Wing style 18″ scale stuff.

---

With all this bass talk, I want to say that yes, I am still very much doing things with synths. I’ve got 3 tracks recorded now toward the next project. (Admittedly, there’s a fourth that’s ambient U-bass; I’ll probably use a snippet of it as a transitional segment.) I’m also starting to have inklings about where it’s going, though in a difficult to articulate way… again, if I could express myself as well in words as in sound, I’d be a writer instead of a musician.

I have a couple of things recorded now for whatever the next album is going to be. As has happened before — especially with the last one, I’m really not sure where it’s going. I’m also not yet hearing something that really stands out and tells me “yes, I want more of this,” and these tracks might get culled once I do find that groove, or just collect more stuff. It happens. But clarity would be nice to have!

---

Even more so though: I don’t quite know where I’m going with bass, what my actual goal is, how I see myself playing it.

A lot of this is just me wanting to play something else, learn something new and be a bit casual-but-serious about it, if that makes sense. It may also awaken my interest in playing other instruments as well. Come for the bass, stay for the mandolin? I’ll consider that an optional side quest for now, or an expansion pack 🙂

I have a deep love for synth music. I like the bass and fretless in particular, but honestly, my appreciation for genres where bass guitar or upright bass are prominent is much more casual. I don’t dream of being the next Jaco or Flea or Bootsy, nor do I particularly want to play flashy stuff like Michael Manring or Charles Berthoud.

I picked the instrument not for its typical genre or role, but its characteristics — where it stands in terms of music theory, timbre and possibilities, and relative ease of playing. (The smaller scale length and lower string tension of U-bass in particular is a big part of that.) I feel like I can integrate it into ambient/drone music more naturally and comfortably than I could guitar, mandolin, percussion, etc. It’ll require some creative leaps as well as learning technique, and I’m kind of excited about that.

Ambient or drone bass guitar is not wholly unheard of, it’s just unusual compared to “regular” guitar. Groups like Sunn O))) and GY!BE certainly do involve bass. I’m aiming at a less rock side than that, and certainly more of a solo project. But it’s perhaps a thousand mile journey rather than a million.

In terms of technique, I doubt I will need to play fast, but I will need to play clean. My intonation needs to be good, even high up the neck, and my right-hand control will need to be on point. I want to be able to play cleanly without having multiple strings ringing out when I don’t want them to, so finding my way around the fretboard without open strings may be important. Slapping is probably not going to be needed, tapping or at least hammer-on may be. Finding effects that compliment the bass will be important, but that leans heavily on my synthesis experience anyway.

Figuring out workflow for recording will be another challenge. Not being a cephalopod, I don’t see how I can play bass and synths/mix faders simultaneously. I won’t want to knock the bass around while recording, with its piezo pickup that will transmit every motion noise. So I predict some multitracking in my future. There’s also looping as a possibility — I feel like I should be able to do that with software rather than relying on a looper pedal as such.

And of course, the kind of thing I decide to play will also determine questions such as fretted vs. fretless, Wing-like vs sticking to U-bass, or even something that could be played lap steel style or with other unusual techniques. If I want to use an e-bow, that also means steel strings.

Also, let it be known I’m deciding officially to pass on the Make Noise Strega (or any other small synths). I’m sure it’s a joy and it fits my style, but I can’t find a way to integrate it non-awkwardly without giving up other gear, and I don’t think the exchange would make sense. I still do want to set up a better stand for the Minibrute 2S just so it’s not so wobbly and awkward — but not to try to make room for more gear. Knowing that I may want other basses in the future will also make it easier to say “no more synths” definitively. 🙂

I’ve been reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Set beginning in 2024, after total economic and social collapse apparently brought on by climate change and hypercapitalism, it’s… not pleasant. I’m not sure I am getting much from the philosophical/psuedo-religious bits, but it does have the feature of the middle class being pinched in the middle — having relative privilege and comfort compared to the abject poor, and yet not prospering, not having stability and security.

That is an argument I see a lot from some leftists online: if you make (insert salary level here), or are living in (expensive city) then everything must be automatically easy for you, and therefore you’re part of the problem. I think it’s the same failure to understand and empathize with others’ circumstances that spawned the “avocado toast” meme, but it takes the form of resentment rather than disdain.

Yes, I have a decent salary, at this stage in my life. That was not always so, and I have a fraction of what Boomer financial advisors say I should have saved up for retirement. Prescription drug costs scare me, and sometimes I wonder how long it’ll take to die if I lose my job. Capitalism kills. I would happily pay more in income tax if it meant a stronger social safety net, partly because I’m not entirely self-absorbed and sociopathic, and partly because it’s very much in my own interests to do so. Universal health care and universal basic income are exactly what would make me more secure, not lower taxes. And taking better care of both the earth and the poor would have avoided the fate of society in Butler’s novel for sure.

Anyway, on to more pleasant subjects…

---

I wound up grabbing two Jean-Michel Jarre albums and the Yellowjackets one. Without the nostalgia lens the JMJ is… pretty good, just not mind-blowing. The YJ is honestly a bit disappointing; there are a couple of good tracks and more of a smooth jazz lean than I remembered.

Tomita is much less disappointing! He did have some cheesy and/or gimmicky moments but some of his albums are very satisfying overall.

I don’t think I’ll be able to find the “Robots” Kraftwerk compilation — it probably was never released on CD and not very widely even on cassette — but at some point I will track down the three classic albums I care about.

---

One of the key things that I practice on the U-bass is going to have to be intonation. I fired up a tuner plugin the other day and found that, when I thought I’d been nailing notes relatively well, I was off by more than I expected. Maybe the free-tuning stuff with synths has de-trained my ears, or maybe, a few cents off here and there is just natural. But I don’t want my pitch to be super sloppy — and maybe that second bass that I pick up eventually should be fretted.

I really like the look of an unlined fretless bass, like a classic upright double bass and the rest of the violin family. But in practical terms that’s much more difficult to get right, and I certainly don’t mind playing an easier instrument.

I’ve been looking at “Wing” style basses — much shorter, lyre-like instruments where the body is elongated and the neck is integrated with it. They use normal bass strings; many are half-scale and play one octave up, but some are sort of “baritone” and can use BEAD tuning or even standard bass tuning. Some instead have octave pedal electronics built-in.

Wing itself is a pretty spendy brand and have a long waiting list. There are a couple of brands that start even higher. But Italian brand Maurizio makes the Miezo, which is a bit more more “bass-shaped,” also look absolutely lovely, and are priced very reasonably given that they’re also all custom builds. [UPDATE: hours after I wrote that, they announced an upcoming price increase.] Polish brand MihaDo makes the (unfortunately named) FingyBass with several different options in stock in a variety of prices.

Maybe I should stick with the uke style basses, but I kind of like the hybridization these have gone through, the departure from a traditional bass role. It’s not like I had planned on playing bass in a band, at least not any conventional one. At any rate, I’m going to stick with my current bass until I’ve had at least six months of practice and experience with it.

It’s 2022 now. I don’t think many people are sad to see 2021 in the rear view mirror.

Honestly the thing that comes to mind when I think about 2021 is: at least I had music. That stopped it from being a crappy year. There were a few other things of course, and I’m generally grateful for the life I have (with some specific exceptions!) but work was one big stress-fest and of course, COVID. Here’s hoping this year will bring relief and respair.

Just got back from a session at an infrared sauna. My second one; the previous was in 2018 or so. I don’t believe the ridiculous “detox” claims — that’s what peeing is for, not sweating — but it does relax the muscles. Even though I don’t like heat, bright light, direct sunlight, put me in a dim room and bake for 40 minutes at 140 degrees F and I’ll come out happier.

I do have a couple of specific back pain areas that it only marginally helped, and I really wish the infrared robot massage bed place was still open because that was awesome. Following it up with the sauna would be great. Alas. But as it is, I let go of tension in places I didn’t know it was, and my back does feel better overall than it did this morning.

---

I started working on a track before the session, and got it to the point where I’m ready to play and record it. You can’t keep a prolific musician down I guess. I’m kind of tempted to try dubbing in a (very simple!) u-bass part… we’ll see how that goes after the initial recording. I don’t have enough hands to really do it all, but perhaps in the future I’ll set up something easier to control to feature the u-bass in one take.

---

Dear Universe,

I am not interested in the following things, no matter how much they are promoted, spammed, presented by algorithms, shoved into various internet feeds, featured prominently in the very operating system I use at home and at work, included as a specific button on my phone, or otherwise attempt to get my attention with them.

• Selling our house. Let me put it plainly: fuck off, we live here. And if we ever do decide to move for some reason, I’ll go to a realtor, not a spammer.
• Microsoft OneDrive. Give up, already. I have a third-party, secure cloud storage service that does not shove itself into my face in every Windows dialog at home and at work.
• Donating to your political campaign. If you’re somebody I’ve never heard of from a red state I’ve never been to and your entire campaign is “I’m not a Republican,” forget it. If you’re Nancy Pelosi or whoever keeps pretending to be her in text messages, use your own damn pocket money. If you’re an actual socialist running for a position where you actually have a fighting chance of making real change? Then I’ll consider it, but I’m not made of money.
• Joe Rogan.
• The Kardashians, the Jenners, and anyone else who is only famous for being famous. Caitlyn at least played professional tennis, but she is also basically a horrible person from what I have heard and in no way a good representative for trans people. P.S. eat the rich.
• Kanye West. Elon Musk. Anyone else who maybe did one or two cool things and a whole lot of dumb shit and has an ego the size of Jupiter and a bank account the size of one of its moons and thinks they’re an expert at everything.
• Radiohead. I. do. not. care. about. Radiohead. Contrary to some claims, they did not invent modular synthesizers, they were not responsible for the Eurorack explosion, and I don’t like the guy’s voice or any of their songs. No doubt I like some music you don’t like too, but I have never tried to claim that it is the inspiration for everything everyone else in the world does.
• Facebook/Meta. No, I’m not coming back. You make me want to quit Instagram too.
• Boxing/MMA. Why any algorithm thinks I am even remotely interested in it, I have no idea. I don’t like sports in general, but on the spectrum from “would watch this unusual sport with lukewarm interest for a few minutes” to “just ban it already”, boxing is right near the second one.
• Over-the-top drag queen makeup. I have nothing against drag queens in general, and I’m sure it’s an art, but it’s an art I just don’t like. It’s eyeshadow, not entirefacevortex. Here, I figure the algorithm decided that since I have supported some LGBTQIA+ representative types and nonbinary/genderfluid people in particular, I must like everything even remotely associated with it.
• Black mens’ hairstyle trends. Seriously, (A) I happen to be white and (B) I haven’t been able to grow hair on top of my head since I was about 22 and (C) am not a barber/stylist and don’t want to be. Why does this keep getting pushed at me?
• Architectural firms. Really Instagram, wtf is this?
• Cryptocurrency, NFTs, web3, and blockchain evangelizing. If you’re so smart, try solving an actual human need.
• Phone games that send notifications to nag you to play them. Instant uninstall right there.
• Samsung Bixby. I have only ever launched it accidentally.
• “Unsubscribe” links that go to a 404 page or other errors, or require signing in. Nope, “Report Spam.”

On a harpsichord, pressing the key triggers a hammer to strike a string. It doesn’t matter how hard you play the key, or how long you hold the note down, you will always get the same hammer strike from it. So all that matters, in terms of musical events, is which key you pushed down. In the MIDI standard this is a “Note On” message.

On an organ, pressing a key opens a valve, releasing a key closes it. Playing the key harder or softer doesn’t do anything. In the MIDI standard, it needs Note On and Note Off messages.

On a piano, the velocity at which you press the key determines how fast the hammer swings, and therefore how loud the note is. Also releasing the key will dampen the note, though it won’t ring out forever. So you’ve got Note On messages with velocity, and Note Off.

On a synth, you might also have pressure as well as velocity — while holding a note down, pressing harder might increase the volume or brightness. This comes in two formats:

• Channel pressure: the overall pressure across the keyboard, regardless of which notes are played. This was somewhat common on mid-range controllers, being relatively cheap to implement.
• Polyphonic aftertouch: the pressure of each individual key on the keyboard. So if you hold down C2 with a lot of pressure but lightly press E3, they two notes will have different pressure values. This used to be a high-end feature since it required many more sensors, but with modern tech you’ll find it on much cheaper controllers now, like the Launchpad X and Microfreak that I have.

Going newer and more expensive with specialized controllers, there’s also MPE (Midi Polyphonic Expression) — which can send not just pressure but position, tilt, or other messages per note. Each of these is sent on a separate channel. For instance, you can bend notes or have individual vibrato per note like on guitar strings.

Okay.

Some people demand MPE support on newer software synths. But a lot of them either don’t directly support pressure, or only channel pressure. Bitwig can assign channel pressure to a parameter of any synth even if it doesn’t directly support it (and its own native synths can support polyAT).

When you have a controller that sends polyAT and you want to use it as channel pressure, the correct thing to do is use the maximum pressure of all the keys. That is what the Microfreak does internally, if you assign pressure to the filter for example. There are many keys but only one filter, so it uses the strongest pressure to control that.

But in Bitwig, it converts polyAT to channel pressure by more nefarious means. If you’re holding down C2 with strong pressure and you lightly play E3, the “channel” pressure will suddenly drop very low. Worse, it may get stuck after you release E3. Or it may wobble back and forth rapidly between the different pressure values on the two keys. It’s also likely to get stuck on some non-zero value if you release a key — because polyAT messages are no longer sent at that point, although channel aftertouch = 0 would have been — which is a problem if you want to directly control note volume with pressure.

Enter this stupid workaround in VCV Rack:

1. Polyphonic aftertouch and gate data is separated into its individual notes.
2. The aftertouch and gate values are run through a VCA, so that when the gate is released, the pressure gets cut off.
3. The separate notes are merged back into a polyphonic data stream (it’s a shame poly cables, which are not a real thing in Eurorack, don’t look different in VCV Rack).
4. The Poly Min/Max module finds the highest of these resulting levels and outputs that as a monophonic value.
5. It’s slewed a bit to smooth out sudden jumps in pressure.
6. It’s reassigned to MIDI Mod Wheel messages, because while the VCV plugin can add messages to the MIDI data stream it can’t filter out the existing polyAT messages.
7. The actual synth I want to play is assigned next in the Bitwig channel, and it uses the mod wheel as if it were pressure. This hack is acceptable-ish because neither the Microfreak nor Launchpad X has a mod wheel.

This shouldn’t be necessary — Bitwig should be smart enough to do this on its own. But here we are.