Hey all! I reached out recently to Morningstar about adding a feature to allow for random message values, but they said they were unsure how much the community would be interested in it. They said if the community showed interest, they’d look into implementing it. Being an effects pedal fanatic, I know the community loves effects pedals because they’re in search of the “perfect tone”, but also because they love weird sounds. So if you’re interested, post below!
Background: I make effects pedals for myself using Teensy microcontrollers for the sole reason that I have trouble getting the functionality I want from the pedals I own. However, it takes a long time to design effects in C++ (not to mention building the pedal), and it’d be incredibly useful if I could get the same functionality via a midi controller like the Morningstar MC series.
The feature: Randomization is key to weird sounds, and it’d be rad as hell to be able to do any of the following:
1. Send a message with a random value within a range.
- Ex: Have a footswitch send a message to a delay pedal that assigns a random delay time within a range.
2. Send a message with a random value from an array of values.
- Ex: Have a footswitch send a message to multiple pedals that randomly picks 0 (off) or 127 (on) for each message, resulting in a random combination of pedals each press.
3. Generate messages at random intervals within a range.
- Ex: Have the controller jump to a random tremolo speed at random intervals
4. Generate a random curve for connecting values.
- Ex: Automatically step through values in a predefined sequence on a pitch shifter and transition randomly between them, so it might jump to the next pitch immediately, or glide linearly, or a bezier curve, effectively creating a very versatile random arpeggiator. (I made a pedal of this idea. Very cool for computery bleeps and blips!)
These features would be awesome together to allow for crazy combinations. If you were to set up a delay pedal to switch to random delay times at random intervals, you have an instant Radiohead effect. The sky is the limit!
Thoughts?