Percussion Lag

Controls: Sgram/PT Dialog >> Pitch-to-MIDI >> Percussion Setup
Changes: gv=n

Percussion Lag adds a small delay before each percussion sound is played by the MIDI Percussion Setup. If all Percussion Instruments (A-F) have Lag set to zero, every sound will be "on the beat". Lag allows sounds to be slightly desynchronized, more like a real human musician and less "machine"-like. (Use of Velocity Pattern characters to produce slightly random strike forces will also help this.)

You can even take into consideration that a single human percussionist may have a longer reach to hit certain instruments in a drum kit, by increasing the lag for those instruments to sound.

For even more realism, you can vary the Percussion Lag during the performance using a Changes script. See the Random Percussion topic under Changes Script Tips and Tricks.

The delay time is the Lag value multiplied by the Trace Update interval, which is typically 10 msec. A Lag of 1 would thus give a delay of 10 msec, which is just noticeable. The maximum Lag value of 15 would give a delay of 150 msec, which would be very noticeable.

In general, the total delay should be kept under the Tempo msec value to avoid interference between beats.

Percussion Lag can only delay sounds. However, you can use it to get sounds that are ahead of the beat. Consider that in most cases, there is no absolute reference to determine what is "on the beat" and what is early or late... everything is relative. So, you simply add a fixed Lag to all the other Percussion Instruments (as well as the Note Lag for each active Voice Setup), and define that time as "the beat". Any instrument that has less Lag will be ahead; any with more will be behind.

MIDI Changes Script:

gv=n sets the Percussion Lag for instrument v (which must be A to F, case-insensitive) to the value n, which may be any unsigned integer or valid expression, including current MIDI control values, random values, current computer keyboard states or mouse position, input or buffered notes, oscillators, and User Variables. Values will be limited to 0-15.

For example, gB=4 sets the B instrument Lag to a value of 4, which would give a 40 msec lag with the default 10 msec Trace Update interval.

For a realistic performance, you may want to have small variations about a central value, using either random values or slow oscillators, or some combination.

You can use G instead of A-F to set all Percussion Lag values at once.

See also Percussion Setup Dialog Pitch-to-MIDI dialog, Pitch Track Toolbox - Overview, Spectrogram / Pitch Track Controls, Spectrogram / Pitch Track (Sgram/PT)