Fibonacci Note Echo

This Max For Live device implements a MIDI note echo effect where the echoes follow the pattern of the Fibonacci Sequence.

Break it Down

This device receives MIDI notes, and transmits one or more MIDI notes as a result. When it is sending more than the original note (i.e. "Iterations" set to a value greater than 1) the time delay between the notes uses Fibonacci number multiples of the "Time Base" value. In two dimensions, the Fibonacci sequence can be used to plot spiral shapes that resemble those found in nature. In one-dimensional sound space, the echoes are spaced further and further apart, perhaps in a way that is pleasing to our natural ears and brains.

The controls are on top, with a visualization below, showing relative time between echoes (horizontal position of circles, starting on the left), relative velocity (size of circle), and pitch (indicated by color).

Installation / Setup

If you just want to download and install the device, then go to the frozen/ directory and download the newest version there.

Changelog

• v6 - 2024-12-18 - Adds a scale awareness mode
• v5 - 2024-10-29 - Add non-blocking telemetry ping on load. Does not send any identifying information, only the plugin name, the local computer name, type of computer, and CPU type. I just want to see which plugins are used the most.
• v4 - 2024-07-28 - Rewrite in Typescript; Flash the bubbles!
• v3 - 2023-07-12 - Added note mode to time base.
• v2 - 2022-06-13 - Working version.
• v1 - 2022-06-12 - Initial frozen release. (REMOVED DUE TO BUG)

Controls

• Time Base - The fundamental unit of time to operate on. If you are trying to use this in existing music and you want it to fit rythmically, you can lock it to the song tempo with the note icon and then choose a note division as the time base. Otherwise you can choose the clock icon and set it in milliseconds.

• Time Scale - A quick way to scale the Time Base of the effect, the value of Time Scale will be used in place of starting with "1" in generating the sequence, so you can easily switch to double-time if you set this to 0.5.

• Iterations - The number of notes to emit. Each successive note will be delayed from the last note according to the Fibonacci Sequence.

• Note Incr - Controls how each successive note pitch differs from the last. For example, set to +12 to have each note in the echo sequence increase by an octave.

• Scale Aware - Toggle scale awareness with this button. If the global scale is also enabled, will restrict note output to notes in the given scale.

• Vel Decay - The factor by which the note velocity is multiplied in each iteration. Numbers less than one will result in velocity decreasing with each note echo. Values greater than one will result in increasing velocity values.

• Duration - The plugin is simple in its handling of MIDI note events, and only understands note-on events, so the Duration value controls the length of each note.

• Dur Decay - Similar to Velocity Decay, but for Duration. This value controls how the successive note durations are shortened (values < 1) or lengthened (values > 1).

Development

The source for the *.js files in this repo are the Typescript files located in the src/ directory.

This repo is set up to use a VSCode devcontainer (or docker compose) as the build environment, so that you don't have to manage a Node.js / Typescript toolkit on your dev machine.

With VSCode

Simply run code . in the repo to start VSCode. When prompted, select Remopen in Container. Any edits to the files in src/*.ts will generate corresponding files in dist/*.js.

If you want to run node or yarn commands, you can press Cmd-J to open a shell in the container. Since the repo directory is mounted read/write, any changes that are made will be reflected in the local filesystem, where you can them check them in.

For example, to add the @types/maxmsp package, I ran this command in the container's shell:

yarn add --dev @types/maxmsp

This installed the package in the running container and updated the package.json and yarn.lock files, which I then checked in.

With docker compose

If you just want to use docker compose just run:

docker compose up

This will build the base container and bring up the build container with your repo directory mounted read/write in the container. Any changes you make to src/*.ts files will be transpiled to dist/*.js files.

If you want to run some node or yarn commands, then you will need to get a shell in the container like this:

docker compose exec node bash

When done, type exit to return from the container.

TODO

• Use note-off events instead of a Duration dial.