On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 10:09:44AM -0600, Dale Bodily wrote:
> I've been looking at the instrument definitions and wondered what the > letters and numbers are in the division definitions. I'm assuming C, R > and L are Center, Right and Left. What is W? And what do the numbers > following the letters mean? Is there documentation that I've missed?
This is not documented as it could change at any time :-)
You're right about L,C,R. 'W' is 'Wide', it places the pipes in a repeating sequence of four (left to right): 1 - 3 - 2 - 4 - 1 - etc. so major thirds are together. I could add 'I' for 'Italian' which distributes pipes in a sequence of three, placing minor thirds together.
The number is a delay (in ms). The combination of the placement and delay parameters (together with some others in the rank definition) can be used to influence how much two stops will blend into one sound or be heard separately. I didn't do anything fancy with this in the current definition file, it's more or less random and could be improved.
> An unrelated question: Has anyone worked out a way to connect an organ > console's stop tabs to Aeolus so that they turn on/off the stops in > Aeolus? Any hints and suggestions are welcome.
Currenlty Aeolus has no midi commands to control the stops, but they could be added quite easily. I'm considering two schemes.
Both use two controller numbers. The first selects a 'group' (the same as a group of buttons in the GUI, normally a division), and a 'mode'. This mode can be 'on', 'off' or 'toggle'. The values in this message are stored so it doesn't have to be repeated for each stop.
The second controller message selects a stop within a group. Now there are two ways to do this:
1. Just use the index of the button. 2. Use a numbering scheme in which each value (0..127) corresponds
to a particular type of stop. For example, 45 could mean a 4' flute. So sending this number would switch the 4' flute in I, or the Flauto Dolce in II, or one of the two 4' flutes in III.
There are pros and cons for each. Personally I'd prefer the first. There are also many variations on the two messages scheme, but in general I don't think we can avoid needing at least two.
What do others think ?