How to set velocity ranges in Hydrogen?(SOLVED)

[i2productions]

Is it possible to set velocity ranges in Hydrogen? Specificly I would like to add multiple layers to an instrument to achieve the following effect. I have multiple samples of each drum in a kit. Played hard, medium, soft. I've done this in other samplers, and set the soft to 1-40, the medium to 41-80, and the hard hit from 81-127. Is this possible or do I really have to create a new instrument for each sound?

[deufrai]

Have a look at your instrument editor. You'll see a 'layers' button

Once clicked, you'll see your current instrument's 16 layers in the form of 16 horizontal lines.

Select a layer and then click 'load layer' and choose your sound file

Once loaded, you have the ability to set the velocity range of each layer by simply dragging each layer's boudaries left and right

Let me know if I'm not clear enough

[i2productions]

No, sorry the last part isn't very clear. I already have all the rest loaded in a project. What is the layer boundry, and where do i drag left and right?

EDIT:Nevermind I got it. It wasn't dragging at first for some reason. Thank you!

[deufrai]

A screen capture is worth a thousand words

http://www.wardsback.org/misc/hydrogen_velo.png

[i2productions]

It is solved, however, is there any way to know what the range is set at without testing 127 velocities to find out?

[deufrai]

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean

[i2productions]

By dragging it left and right, I'm setting up ranges, but how do I know what the range is. So for example, if I have 2 samples, and I drag them to be approximately half and half. How do I know wether the range I'm setting on Sample A is between 1-63, or whether it's 1-67, or whether sample B's range is between 64-127, or 68-127? Every other sampler I've ever used also tells you the physical velocity number you're setting and not just the graphical representation. If this was for a keyboard map, it really wouldn't matter. But when I program my sequencer, and I know I want a specific sample of that drum to play and I want that particular layer/sample to play at it's full volume it's important to know whether the sample's top range is 64, 65, etc. If not, I'll make it work, and thank you for all your help.

[deufrai]

You are right, it looks like it will be a wild guess game for you.
I don't see any way to get those specific values

I tried to save a resulting drumkit and have look at the generated file, but no luck so far...

[i2productions]

You've been amazingly helpful. Thanks again!

[deufrai]

I digged deeper

The file generated when you save your drumkit is in fact a tar.gz in which you'll find a 'drumkit.xml' file.

sadly, layer velocities are stored in decimal values from 0.0 to 1.0

[i2productions]

sadly, layer velocities are stored in decimal values from 0.0 to 1.0

Well, if that's not confusing converting 128 into a decimal!

[GraysonPeddie]

1/128*64=0.5

-or-

128*0.5=64

...assuming velocity is 1-based instead of 0. Just subtract 1 until you get 63 for 0.5.

Some applications are 1-based (1-128) and some applications are 0-based (0-127).

[i2productions]

I understand the math, but I'm not going through and doing it for a kit with close to 50 samples. I'll just play a guessing game when that particular function becomes neccesary. My point was why, with only 128 possible values would you build in a need for math into a program for something so simple, just to confuse the end user?

[deufrai]

+1

I don't know the history of the hudrogen project. Maybe this choice was made when the soft was not doing MIDI at all and a simple amplification ratio was good enough ...

[mauser]

I understand the math, but I'm not going through and doing it for a kit with close to 50 samples. I'll just play a guessing game when that particular function becomes neccesary. My point was why, with only 128 possible values would you build in a need for math into a program for something so simple, just to confuse the end user?

Sure, we've developing this program only to irritate and confuse people No, seriously.. there is not THE typical hydrogen user. If we would support 128 velocity steps, some people who use hydrogen as a sequencer with 64 layer drumkits would come and complain that they have some trouble to map their layers to the velocities I'm constantly surprised by the variety of use cases people find for hydrogen. And as everyone has other wishes, the most of todays features are compromises.. In your case i could think of a tooltip which shows the current velocity range of layer. It would be possible to implement a switchable frontend (decimal/midi values), but that would be some more work and we're always short of time. But patches are always welcome

And as it has been already pointed out, i guess that this feature was implemented very early in the development, and in that time, maybe not every use case was considered. I'm not even sure if hydrogen had midi-in in the early days (i'm participating in hydrogen since 2008, but the project is much older..).