Note lengths vs BPM

[whaleygeek]

Hi, been doing some work with CA. I was trying to code up something a bit more "melodic" or "harmonic" as opposed to something rhythmic like a drum beat or random sequence. I couldn't find any obvious way of setting note lengths, so for example a melodic pattern that consists of a number of quarter-notes followed by a half-note at the end, actually gets played as the last note as a quarter note with a quarter note rest.

This is not as noticeable with the pretty_bell as it has short sustain, but if one was to try a piano (is there a synth name for a piano, would like to use one please!), to get something melodic that is musically accurate, you'd need to be able to have some control over note lengths (or in MIDI terms, set the note-on and note-off time independently somehow).

[rbnpi]

You can do this using the play_pattern_timed command with the attack parameter set to the same value as the note duration. eg play_pattern_timed [60,64,67,72],[0.25],"attack",0.25
If you want staccato try play_pattern_timed [60,64,67,72],[0.25],"attack",0.01

[samaaron]

You can specify the duration of the pretty_bell on its own by passing the "release" argument to the note function:

note 60, "release", 1

This will ensure the note takes 1 second to fully decay.