Basically a multiple note arpeggiator. It could be in the band section or on the main piano roll. When selected, it could either bring up another window like the mixer controls do with a sample measure or another mode like the chord and scale in the main window. Instead of actual notes, you could have scale degrees. That way it would be able to use the same mechanisms you have for the other chords. You could have it create rhythms that would build an additional library for other users to be able draw from.
Sample uses: Building guitar riffs, more sophisticated bass sequences, piano patterns, strumming patterns, and much more.
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Hi and thanks for the request!
Something like this is already happening under the hood without a UI. The problem is that creating patterns for Hookpad is more complex than just creating one pattern. Each pattern has to have 11 versions to account for all the different meters. Also for drums there are things like pickups and fills to be considered.
The problem with more sophisticated bass or guitar riffs is that currently we can only use notes for our patterns that are in a common triad chord as Hookpad has to figure out how to handle those notes for different chords/inversions/chord progressions. If you write something like C-D-E, I wouldn’t know how to translate this for a no-third chord or a second inversion.
Also most of our instruments have special settings for some of the patterns which adjust things like attack and release times, the use of staccato or legato samples, voicings and many more parameters.
In general I think the idea to have some kind of user-based pattern library is great but as Hookpad is set up right now, we would have to figure out much more than just creating a step sequencer to create a custom pattern and save it to the data base.
But if you have some patterns you urgently need, just send them over to me and I can see if I can create a couple of those for you.
Regards!
Dennis
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What would help me the best is to be able to assign arbitrary instrument sounds to the different harmony and bass instruments. I don’t use HookPad to do any rendering. I either import the output into a DAW or bring it into MuseScore.
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand this correctly. What do you mean by “assign arbitrary instrument sounds to the different harmony and bass instruments” ?
Instead of selecting the instrument group, then instrument, then select the pattern
You could change it to select role of instrument, pattern, and then instrument.
That would be the consistent with how instruments are chosen for the 4 melody voices
Say you wanted a bass pattern. Select bass, then say dotted pattern, and then have a list of all instruments that are within the range.Pianos, harp, accordian, organs, bass guitars, cello, contrabass, bassoon, tuba, maybe throw in a few borderline cases such as trombones.
It would also make for smaller drop down menus as well as there are a lot more patterns than there are instruments now that you are making the patterns more universal.
Just something to think about.
It may or may not be worth it while you are refining the patterns. For myself, I just work around it now. I just use the full chords and then generate my own patterns with Scaler2 in the DAW. It has a fairly ridiculous number of patterns to choose from.
Ah, thank you for the clarification! I don’t think it makes much difference though, as the pattern stays selected, when you select another instrument. I think it is less confusing to
- select a group of instruments
- select the instrument
- select what it plays than select
Otherwise we would have:
- select a group of instruments
- select a pattern
- select the instrument which plays the pattern
Sorry, but that doesn’t look right to me. But I agree that someday we have to find a better organization of our band browser as more and more instruments and patterns are coming in.
Right, but in the second way, the first step isn’t selecting a group of instruments. It is selecting an abstract role.
- What needs to be done
- How it should be done
- Who is going to do it.
Oh sorry, I misread. What is a role of an instrument?
You are already doing it partially.
You are selecting the role when you add an item into a band, you select either a lead, harmony, bass, or drum part. You have just decided what you want done.
Then you would only have to decide what type pattern you want for it from the available patterns for that type of role.
And then finally decide what instrument(s) will be used.
It would streamline the menus and expand the choices.
Say you want staccato 8ths. There is no reason you can only do that with violins or the electric piano like in the legacy instrument plan. Want flutes and oboes to do them? Guitar strums? Electric piano? How about all of them doing it together? You could add a harmonizer to it like the lead has and copy what another instrument is doing a fifth or an octave above. You can also use the same system with some of the percussion.
Ah, I see. Thank you for the example, that’s an interesting thought to start with the a pattern and then select one or more sounds to play this pattern.
I’ll keep it in mind if we ever redo our band browser. Perhaps we can then create two different views, one starting with an instrument and one starting with a pattern.
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It would also resolve the requests that you get for using drums as melody instruments.
Maybe one day when google decides to change their whole API on you. 
