Remember The "only 2 Keyboard Buttons At Once" Limitation?

[whynodd]

I thought that I should share my findings. @mod: move the post if its not worth for the general section

Ok, today I finally tried Milkytracker, made some sounds and instruments, a few patterns and so on. Yeah, great fun. Why didn't I try it earlier? I thought using a tracker is harder.

And then, I found a nice option in Milky: Jam Channels. With it I can play chords on pandoras keyboard. It seems that "2 Keyboard Buttons at once" is a minimum, not a maximum. For example, q+w+e+r+t+y+u+i plays cdefgahc AT ONCE, each button is recognized. Sure, not a nice sounding chord but that does not work on my desktop pc! z+c+e fails for example (only 2 of them are registered at the same time, also with some other rare combinations).

Tip: Lowering the audio latency to 23ms (1kb buffer), a little bit overclocking and WIFI off helps eliminating stutters while playing and composing and feels more realtime.

Maybe I'll post a snippet of my first crappy chiptune tomorrow.

 

[urjaman]

It seems that "2 Keyboard Buttons at once" is a minimum, not a maximum.

I thought that this was known. The maximum combination on an 8x8 matrix (the pandora doesnt use all of that IIRC) has 14 keys, as per TPS65950 TRM page 589 / 10.5.4 Multikey Limitations:

The keypad controller can detect and decode multikey combinations, but the following rules must be
followed:
1. Any 2-key combination is valid and can be decoded.
2. Combinations using more than two keys are valid only if the rows and columns used do not cross over
on another key to detect. This is the result of equipotent propagation on a row/column.

And then there's a nice picture that I wont try to copy here that illustrates this a bit more.
EDIT: BTW, You can test what keys are registered together with op_test_inputs...

 

[whynodd]

As promised, my very first chiptune. Made, converted and uploaded with the Pandora and Milky.
Comments are welcome .

Song
I think the mixdown has too much bass.

 

[Esn]

That's pretty neat. I think some of the lower-register sounds & percussion are a little grating, myself, compared to the beautiful ones in the higher register.

So can you basically record what you play on the Pandora's keyboard, and layer several recorded tracks on top of each other? I've been looking for something that would allow me to do that on the go. Tried those roll-up pianos, but they can only record one track (no layering). It would sure be neat if it were possible to do it on the Pandora... maybe even with a rubber USB keyboard.

P.S. Have you tried the two other trackers on the Pandora, Schism Tracker and Seq24?

 

[whynodd]

That's pretty neat. I think some of the lower-register sounds & percussion are a little grating, myself, compared to the beautiful ones in the higher register.

So can you basically record what you play on the Pandora's keyboard, and layer several recorded tracks on top of each other? I've been looking for something that would allow me to do that on the go. Tried those roll-up pianos, but they can only record one track (no layering). It would sure be neat if it were possible to do it on the Pandora... maybe even with a rubber USB keyboard.

P.S. Have you tried the two other trackers on the Pandora, Schism Tracker and Seq24?

Playing and recording in Milky, yes. But its a bit difficult. There is a slight delay of approx 20ms so notes sometimes are recognized at wrong rows in the table. And while recording, you can not play chords, only single notes. I enter my notes manually, channel by channel. For a chord, you need several channels. That's how mod-music works.
Just playing along a jamtrack in milky without recording works very good.
Depends on the music creation software if it is able to record "everything" you play on the input hardware. There is other more or less complex software out there for this recording purpose but not yet for pandora.

Did not try other programs, milky seems fine and has a good UI.

 

[Chaser]

Thus the first Pandora made tune was released to the public, as Gruso didnt count his driving some bleeps as worthy of a download!

Nice work so far!