Percussion Pan Scan

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

Pan Scan is a simple way to move the Percussion Pan Position back and forth automatically, without specifically setting it on each beat via a Changes script. Note that MIDI handles all Percussion Instruments as a single MIDI voice (Voice 10), so all share the same Pan Position.

If Percussion Pan Beat is active, the Scan value is added to the effective Pan Position on each beat. (The visible Pan Position value doesn't change.) Positive Scan values move the position to the right, and negative values move it to the left.

For example, if you set Scan to +1, and the initial Pan Position is at 0 (Center), then after 63 beats the position will be +63 (full Right).

At that point, assuming Percussion Pan Wrap is off, the effective Scan value reverses direction, causing the pan position to "reflect" off the right end and start toward the left side at the same rate. When it hits the left end it reflects again and heads back to the right.

If Percussion Pan Beat is not active, the same general action takes place on each Trace Update interval, except that only 1/32 of the full Scan step is added each time. This is a crude allowance for the fact that trace updates are typically every 10 msec while Tempo beats are much more infrequent.

Note that with Percussion Pan Beat off, the effective pan position continues to move during the beat. This might make a difference if different Percussion Instruments have different Lag values so they sound at different times during the beat interval.

You can set Scan to values in the +/-127 range, even though the Pan Position range is only half that. This allows for a "ping-pong" effect. For example, if Pan Position is -64 and Scan is +127, then the effective position will jump back and forth between Left and Right on successive steps.

Caution: Alternating full Left and Right positions can be extremely disturbing, especially for headphone listening.

MIDI Changes Script:

PSP=n sets Percussion Pan Scan to the value of n, which may be any signed 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. The values will be limited to the range of +/-127.

For example, PSP=1 sets Percussion Pan Scan to 1.

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