'musical' delay - is there such a thing?

[ibm235]

Thanks in advance for the exciting suggestions; all delays are worth a closer look in their own right - but we haven't really hit the bull's eye yet. This may also be due to the fact that my search was not yet expressed specifically enough. I'll try to express that more precisely with my music-theoretical, dangerous half-knowledge:

With tone system I mean a harmonious ordering principle of the tone supply and the relationship of individual tones to one another - in modern times, for example, the twelve-step chromatic scale per octave has prevailed. Depending on which root note you choose and whether it should fulfill a major or minor context, certain intervals are more involved in the formation of chords, and there are also different chord sequences for tonic / subdominant / dominant seventh etc. All of this follows a strictly mathematical principle that can of course also be laboriously implemented by hand in your own work - for an algorithm that means rather an underchallenge, i.e. a conceivable performance of a program (I think ...). The globe knows a few other tone systems, of course: African - Arabic - Indian - Chinese - Gregorian - after Werckmeister - Just Intonation - to name just a selection; not including the varieties in jazz. As already mentioned above, I can adapt this sound supply to 7 different sound systems with the Akai MPC 4000 (from 2002).



So my desired delay should be adjustable to a desired tone system and a defined keynote - and then generate mathematically harmoniously pitched repeats from the input. Gladly of course in the best quality & preferably with all the possibilities of a Soundtoys Echoboy - so preferably an additional feature for the Echoboy (just as an illusion).

[ibm235]

A'right now!?

[Kinh]

wha-tha-hell yo people on about?

[mcbpete]

You could maybe use something like Superchord (or another sympathetic resonance VST) after a simple delay on a send channel so just the delay becomes 'pitched' -

[imrae]

We know what musical scales are. We just don't understand how you expect a delay effect to manipulate the pitch in a musically aware way. How will it deal with polyphonic input? How will it deal with noisy input?

I think it will be much more productive to achieve your goals with MIDI manipulation than with audio manipulation; then the exact pitch information is available and overlapping/polyphonic content is less of an issue. In a modular environment like Reaktor you could create something that delays an incoming MIDI note, adds an offset and runs it through a quantizer. This could also be achieved in a hardware modular environment using control voltages, but long DC-coupled delay effects are not common.

[ibm235]

I agree with you that reading the note height information via midi and manipulating it mathematically would be the most elegant way. - hmm; but the demand for such a 'harmonic' influence is probably too little for the developers - it's better to glitch everything, granularly alienate and really bit crush nowadays. And to be honest, I lack the 'sportsmanship' to implement that rather bad than right through fiddly detours. Maybe there will still be some exotic niche product ...

[lobanov]

I think it will be much more productive to achieve your goals with MIDI manipulation than with audio manipulation; then the exact pitch information is available and overlapping/polyphonic content is less of an issue. In a modular environment like Reaktor you could create something that delays an incoming MIDI note, adds an offset and runs it through a quantizer. This could also be achieved in a hardware modular environment using control voltages, but long DC-coupled delay effects are not common.

This. Implementing sort of a pitched delay with MIDI is enormously simpler than working with audio. If somebody really need a repeating sound that becomes quieter and then silent it's just a succession of MIDI messages with diminishing velocities. Changing pitches is just changing other messages (key of Note On, Pitch Bend and may be something else).

@ibm235
The delay isn't a musical instrument, it's just an effect. This is an effect that takes an input sound and repeats it. It's an essence. All what you suggest could be too complicated to implement and... I think, useless. You want to transform a relatively simple techinique to something complicated, to a "musical combine" which makes everything and even 'compose' music. Why? There are simpler and straighter ways to achieve what you want.

Any delay just repeats pitches you feed in it. You can feed in it any pitches you want. Why do you need different tonal systems? Why not to do it by MIDI?

"Glitching everything" (that is glitching delayed audio) is more appropriate and fruitful as you cannot achive this in a different way.

Sorry if my words sound rude, I've not intended that. May be I don't understand you. A delayed signal becomes quieter, it's an essential quality of any delay effect. How is it important for your idea? How to deal with it?

P. S. There is a relatively old free plugin Pitched Delay (not fully accomplished IMO). It's not so advanced as you want but...

[Ah_Dziz]

You'll be wanting a midi delay with shifting into a midi scale quantizer into a midi arp. This would be hell to implement in DSP. But with a nice kontakt instrument and some midi stuff that your daw probably already has you can do it. I could show you how to set it up in cubase. Would take a couple minutes.

[Ah_Dziz]

I just read the post above mine. And the one above that. That's the way to go. It will be much cleaner working in midi.you can also throw some microtuning stuff into the mix if you want. A million times simpler and implementable in every damn host out there. Could the op give a real-world example of this thing working? Like, I would play a Cm chord into the thingy and then "................" Happens. Most of what he is talking about can be done with a complex arp and any source vst that supports microtuning. I

If he wants to implement this with audio then he's gonna need good harmonizing plugins and crazy routing. Also it will only work on a mono source in realtime (with very few exceptions)

Edit: it seems like there may be a language barrier here too.

[Weasel-Boy]

U-he’s Colour Copy delay can send MIDI note input as a delay time modulation source. So if the the initial delay is set short, with a fair amount of feedback, it’ll do a Karplus-Strong type tuned ringing that can track notes. May not be what the OP is looking for (being monophonic and not auto-tracking an audio input) but I thought it worth mentions here.

[ibm235]

Oh my God; I just came across a tool through a forist: not an exotic one, but the top dog EVENTIDE seems to have exactly what I want with OCTAXOX. So far I could only see a part of the different scales in a YT video; Unfortunately, the manual does not list them either. All other functionalities are obviously ingeniously implemented in a user-friendly way.

[Ploki]

double. +1 for colourcopy

[zerocrossing]

Not really a delay, but something like MGranularMB will give you pitch and time quantized “delay-like” effects.

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MGranularMB

[vurt]

U-he’s Colour Copy delay can send MIDI note input as a delay time modulation source. So if the the initial delay is set short, with a fair amount of feedback, it’ll do a Karplus-Strong type tuned ringing that can track notes. May not be what the OP is looking for (being monophonic and not auto-tracking an audio input) but I thought it worth mentions here.

i don't think he's after karplus strong though.

[fairlyclose]

you could build something using Zynaptiq's Pitchmap or similar if you want to be able to process audio with midi control