squarp-pyramid-instruments

Definition File Format:

NAME:<Name of the Instrument>
OUT:<Midi Output: A|B|USB>
CHANNEL:<MIDI Channel 1…16>
<0…127>:<CC-Target Name>
<N0…119>: <Note Name>

Only the first 8 characters are displayed for Instrument names and CC targets, for note names only 4 characters are availble

Pararameter Naming Conventions

The character set is rather limited, there are no lowercase characters, only a few special characters overall (11), some of which are mapped to another character, and a few symbols. See the section below for details on supported character set.

Having to work with an 8 character limit for parameter names when even a simple synth comes with 40 controllable parameters, is a challenge.

This is an approach to naming conventions that work across the synths of different manufacturers and make effective use of the 8 characters and the available symbols.

There's no "correct" or perfect way for doing this, and consistency beats personal preference. I'll develop these naming conventions incrementally for the devices I own, since that's my use case. Until then, this documentation will change quite a bit

Since there are only uppercase characters, Camel case is not possible to separate between words without an extra character. Also many of the symbols I would have used as visual representations of building blocks of (virtual) analog synthesizers are not available here.

Here's a first draft for encoding parameter names (for all cases where encoding is necessary, i.e. if there are not enough characters available):

• Oscillator: 'O', 'O1'
• Suboscillator: 'SO'
• Noise: 'NZ'
• Filter: "F" or 'F1', or "LP"/'LPF' and 'HP'/'HPF'
• Resonance: Q
• Level: 'Lv' or 'Lvl'
• Envelope: the ramp symbol '=', '=1'
• LFO: up arrow '>', '>1'
• Depth (=Intensity): 'DPT', even better is it to use right arrow (!) for source/target
• Mode: 'MD'
• Type: 'TY'
• Interval: 'IVL' (to avoid confusion with "Intensity")
• Rate: 'Frq', 'Spd' or 'Rt' (inconsistent for now)
• Detune: 'DET'
• Octave: 'OCT'
• Effects: the 'fx symbol', '}' or '}1'
• Arp: ;: note symbol

All letters are uppercase in the definitions, so that it is simple to spot where readability is not good. Lowercase letters obscure that at times.

Some Examples:

• Cutoff: when there is only one filter, and parameter name is less than 9 characters, no encoding is necessary
• OSC1 LVL: Oscillator 1 level
• SUB2 LVL: Suboscillator 2 level
• O2-DET
• >1!O2PI: LFO1 to Oscillator 2 Pitch
• =1!O2PI: Env1 to Oscillator 2 Pitch

Suported Character Set

I tested the subset of ASCII characters 32-127 that is available on my US keyboard. (you can load chartest.txt to see for yourself).

• simple characters (work as expected):
  • A-Z (or a-z): upperchase characters
  • 0-9: Digits
  • .#-:_ and space: work as expected
• usable but misrepresented characters
  • *: quotes
  • +: ?
  • {: %
  • ': [
  • ?: /
  • [: minus sign (duplication)
  • @: dot (duplication)
• (potentially) helpful symbols
  • $: magnifying lens symbol
  • }: 'FX' (you get two characters as one)
  • =: ramp up
  • ;: note symbol
  • ] or \: arrow left
  • !: arrow right
  • <: arrow down
  • >: arrow up
  • backtick: F (kind of)
  • ~: dot (superscript)
  • ,: b or flat symbol
  • /: an alien looking to the left
• unusable characters:
  • %^&(": yield no result at all (not even a space)