It’s only been a day, but I’ve added one of the other planned features of Pianissimo’s note class, “modifiers”. In sequenced music, sustained notes tend to use techniques like vibrato (rapidly but subtly changing the note’s pitch) and portamento (smoothly transitioning from the note’s current key to another one) so melodies don’t sound boring and “flat”. One of my ambitious plans for this library/module is to use it to bring sequenced music to a pre-rendered platform (Roblox experiences only use boring, pre-rendered OGG files for music.), so I think I need to support these things.
As of now, vibrato can’t be used, but portamento is implemented; The following video uses portamento with an 8-bit looping sample (which wasn’t supported by my older piano script):
(Yes, that’s the 8-bit Mary singing sample that I mentioned before!)
The second part of the video demonstrates another sort of new feature, ADSR envelopes! By using tweens, notes’ volumes are smoothly adjusted, which will be very useful for looping samples, reusing samples for multiple instrument presets, and even for layered instruments!
If you’ve been following my #waywoc posts, you may have been keeping track of all of the features of both of my musical instrument scripts and might be thinking, “Mary, all of these things you’re programming are already done by musical keyboards; Are you trying to make one of those in Roblox?”.
Well, theoretical DevForum user, my answer to that oddly specific question is — maybe…? I know I have plans to eventually write the next class, “Instrument”, which would manage a pool of sounds, create notes, and simulate multi-layered instruments, and to also make a “Timeline” class to enable writing and playback of sequenced music (a’la module/tracker music) on Roblox…
So, while I could make a keyboard with layered presets and auto-harmonization (like my Yamaha PSR-E413), that’s not a guarantee. I know, it’ll be weird to have all of the components of a real musical keyboard (minus accompaniment/background beats and song recording), but let’s not forget that I want to release this as a resource one day; If someone wanted to make a keyboard that goes above and beyond the current pianos in Roblox experiences, they could do that!