Expanded Sound Control
- Aaron Lockwood
- Mar 31, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 2, 2021
In this update to GRID BLASTER, I have updated and added more features that expand upon the sound control menu introduced in the last update. This menu still holds the mute and volume controls (moved to the bottom three rows) and additionally a Key Changer and Octave switcher.
This update came with a lot of reworking to the layer interactions since it was very basic in its original implementation. When using an additional layer, besides the first layer, all the indexes on the grid only played their midi to frequency equivalent, using the index as the midi value. Now this has changed to have every row one note in a key that the user can change along with what octave that the scale is in. To accomplish this it meant adding more values and methods to the Board class which included the key, octave, getNote(), getKey(), getOctave, changeKey(), changeOctave(), and tones[]. The most intensive methods where getNote() and changeKey() since getNote had to combine all these new values and output a correct frequency and changeKey() had to process the indexes inputed and change to the corresponding key which is hard when not all the values are in a single row or column.
With these added features GRID BLASTER has a much wider range of tones and applications to make harmonies and melody lines that aren't bound by one octave or key. Currently these modes only support major keys and the volume slider still only works in mono adjustment but for the next iteration I plan on making options for other scales and to convert the double barred volume controller to adjust panning with independent rows. Beyond solidifying this menu for the layer controls, I am planning on making the layers smarter so that it can recognize held out notes with indexes next to each with some kind of tracking of the last index, to start developing different presets for sound design, and to make a master volume control that the user can use to fade in and out different layers at the same time.
Attached is the new update and a demo of this update is up on the site labeled Expanded_Sound_Control.wav.
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