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tidalcycles / Tidal

Pattern language
http://tidalcycles.org/
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Using continuous patterns with control busses needs segment to work properly #806

Open thgrund opened 3 years ago

thgrund commented 3 years ago

it looks like that using continuous pattern with control busses just applies one value, i.e.

d1 $ s "bev" # lpfbus 1 (sine * 7000) # legato 1

A workaround is to segment the continuous function like: 

d1 $ s "bev" # lpfbus 1 (segment 128 $ sine * 7000) # legato 1

But this does not look correct, because one advantage of control busses is that you don't have to segment your pattern with chop, split or segment, I guess.

polymorphicengine commented 3 years ago

You can do d1 $ s "bev # lpfrecv 1 # legato 1 d2 $ struct "t*128" $ lpfbus 1 (sine * 7000)

yaxu commented 3 years ago

You have to end up with a discrete pattern, to be able to events over a network.

We could look at setting a default control rate if a continuous pattern reaches a bus. 30 per cycle? We could do the same for 'normal' events, e.g. d1 $ speed (sine + 1) # sound "bd" could send 30 kicks per cycle..

telephon commented 3 years ago

but wouldn't it be better to use a function like segment that explicitly specifies this? A default rate sounds like something you'd want to adjust all the time anyway.

yaxu commented 3 years ago

Yes true, it doesn't really make sense to send a continuous signal to an event bus. A tradeoff between doing something approximating what a beginner expects but which might sow seeds of misunderstanding, and not doing anything.

telephon commented 3 years ago

Beginners may also get confused. I'd be surprised to get more than one beat from d1 $ speed (sine + 1) # sound "bd"

yaxu commented 3 years ago

Looking a bit closer, I see that e.g.

d1 $ sound "bd" # shapebus 2 sine

This does send the bus value at 20Hz, but always sends 0.5. If you send this:

d1 $ shapebus 2 sine

The sinewave will be sampled and sent at 20Hz.

So this always sends 0.5, because it's being combined with the 'sound' which is only taking one value:

d1 $ sound "bd" |> shapebus 2 sine

This sends the sine to the bus at 20Hz, but no sounds are triggered at all:

d1 $ sound "bd" >| shapebus 2 sine

So I was thinking this would both send the bd once per cycle and the shape bus at 20Hz:

d1 $ sound "bd" |>| shapebus 2 sine

However no, nothing gets sent then.. Combining discrete and continuous patterns together is not well defined, I guess.. This could probably be fixed.