Feature Idea: Play/Pause/Resume

[TheBatmosphere]

Not sure how this could be implemented in WVR, but the SparkFun Tsunami has a handy play/pause/resume feature I use all the time for long speech samples. One trigger starts a sample from the beginning, another pauses playback, and a third resumes it. That lets me perform phrases to the situation without needing to assign each one to a unique note.

In my configuration, the pause button stops playback of all samples, even ones not triggered by the play button. (Like WVR, Tsunami is polyphonic.)

Perhaps this could be implemented on WVR with pin assignments or even a MIDI control change. If CC value is 1–63, retriggering notes would start their samples from the beginning. If it’s 64–128, playback would resume from the current position.

Come to think of it, maybe this would work better as a new playback mode: play/resume, where Note Off pauses the note and subsequent Note On messages resume playback from the current position.

[marchingband]

Interesting ... yes maybe note-off:pause as a new option, then midi and pin events alike would trigger the same behaviour. Looking at wav_player.c I think the logic could be very simple.

Note-off pauses, note-on resumes.

[TheBatmosphere]

Cool! I wonder if it would need a reset command too, for when you want to retrigger the sample from the beginning. Maybe CC120 (sound off) would handle that.

https://github.com/marchingband/wvr/issues/32#issue-1059310153

[TheBatmosphere]

Another thought: Instead of using a CC to reset the playback start position, maybe we could designate another key/pin to be a global reset. For example, C3 could start and stop the sample and C8 could reset the start point. Or...when trigger mode is set to Play/Pause, hitting another key in the same exclusive group would reset the start point.

[marchingband]

It seems to me the easiest way would be simply a second note that has the same sample, but with the normal note-off configuration ... would that solve it?

[TheBatmosphere]

Well (if I understand correctly), having a second copy set to Restart mode would allow the performer to start the sample from the beginning. But what I was thinking about was how to deal with leftover audio in the original note. You’d have to play it all the way to the end to use that key again.

I’m imagining a museum installation or audio tour where sometimes you’d want to pause and resume a long speech and sometimes you’d want to restart. But maybe the CC would be a better way to handle that case. It is awkward that the Stop command on the Tsunami stops all audio. Edit: Actually, the Play, Pause, Resume, and Stop commands in Tsunami can be set to affect specific note ranges. In my setup, I have a physical Stop button I set to stop all sounds — long one-shots as well as loops. I just realized I should connect a second button for just the loops.

[marchingband]

The museum installation case is clear and compelling. I think the closest thing in the midi spec is as you mentioned CC120 to reset all samples, start/stop as a note-off mode. Does that cover it?

[TheBatmosphere]

Thanks for letting me think out loud. :-D I think CC120 could do it. For installations, perhaps a pin could be configured as All Notes Off as well.

[marchingband]

It's very helpful thank you! I tend to focus on my own use cases :) Yes pin function option for CC120 as well. I imagine the pins would be the easiest way to trigger sounds in an installation situation.
I believe that the combination of

retrigger: note-off
note-off: pause/resume

would allow an installation to have press a single start/pause button to start/pause, and another button to reset, which seems complete.
Having said that I also see the logic with the tsunami decision to have start, pause, and reset all on separate buttons, and therefor both pause and reset acting on all playing samples.
Perhaps having BOTH options would be best? It isn't a lot of work to build out features like these.

[TheBatmosphere]

I updated my comment above after rechecking my Tsunami configuration. Triggers in Tsunami operate on ranges of notes. I had my Stop trigger set to stop all notes, but what I should do is wire up a second button to control a subset. The new modes make sense, though I wonder if you could consolidate them to retrigger: pause/resume.

Update: Here are two ideas.(I'd have to throw them in a logic table to check all the combinations. Or maybe certain retrigger modes would disable certain note-off modes.)

1. New Retrigger Mode

retrigger mode

• retrigger (duplicate current sound — i.e., trigger a new polyphonic note)
• restart (replace current sound)
• resume [NEW — resumes playback at current sample]
• ignore
• note-off (stop current sound)

note-off

• ignore
• halt

2. New Note-Off Mode

retrigger mode

• retrigger (duplicate current sound)
• restart (replace current sound)
• ignore
• note-off (stop current sound)

note-off

• ignore
• pause [NEW]
• end [same as original Halt, but rephrased to show it resets the sound]

[TheBatmosphere]

Conceptually, the new retrigger mode makes the most sense to me. In both cases, the player could use a note in the exclusion group to reset the playback position to zero.

[marchingband]

done in 3.9.0