Note Echo: Repeat the Notes, Not the Recording

Account for every attack

The original broken-triad phrase supplies eight notes, one per second, each 275 ms long. Note Echo sits before a sustaining Synth in the device lane. The starting setting adds two repeats per note, spaced at 1/8: 250 ms at 120 BPM. Eight originals plus sixteen repeats gives twenty-four scheduled events.

Listen for three attacks inside each one-second group, with progressively softer retriggers. Bypass removes the generated notes without muting Synth, returning to eight attacks. This is a useful check when a long instrument release makes several events sound like a continuous tail.

Why is the original gate now 250 rather than 275 ms? Each repeat initially inherits its source duration, but the next same-pitch onset cuts the earlier event short. The last repeat has no immediate same-pitch successor, so it keeps 275 ms. MIDI gate and audio release remain separate: Synth may still release briefly after an event is cut.

Feedback is a velocity ratio

At 50%, every repeat receives half the previous repeat's velocity. The engine retains fractional velocities rather than rounding after each multiplication. Repeats sets an upper count, but generation stops earlier if the next velocity would fall below 1. Feedback zero therefore gives only the original eight events, even though Repeats still reads 2.

Compare Feedback 50% with 80% while keeping timing fixed. The number of events remains twenty-four here; their dynamic shape changes. MIDI velocity is not a decibel fader. A different downstream instrument might respond with timbral changes as well as level, and an audio delay would instead repeat already-rendered sound. Back off when the repeats compete with the next deliberate note rather than supporting it.

Turn a repeat into an answering interval

Set Pitch to +7 st. The first group becomes MIDI 60, 67 and 74: the shift accumulates with each repeat, rather than moving every echo up the same single fifth. The originals keep their pitches. With these different pitches, the first group's gates can all retain their 275 ms lengths and overlap slightly. Lower Pitch or shorten the spacing experiment if the growing harmony distracts from the phrase.

Note Echo does not choose a musical scale. Positive or negative pitch steps can leave the key, and extreme results are clamped to MIDI's 0–127 pitch range. The authored example uses the parametric generator, not a captured preset pattern. Reset parameters returns both the effect and Synth to that starting point.

Keep the time boundary in the comparison

Sync selects beat divisions. Switch it off to expose Delay in milliseconds; 250 ms matches the initial spacing at this tempo. Try 125 ms to bunch the repeats closer together, then rewind. New events still retrigger the instrument even when their tails overlap. The before/after diagram and Note-event details show timing and velocities more clearly than listening to loudness alone.

Longer delays or more repeats can generate events beyond the eight-second clip. The transform does not trim every generated event back to that boundary, but the lesson's transport stops or loops there. Do not assume every listed late repeat will finish audibly. The starting twenty-four-event example fits inside the audition; it needs neither MIDI hardware nor an uploaded phrase.