Pedal Board from Aeolus discussion

[stojos]

@wyleu

How is the menu driven for your control environment? How much of this functionality do you think could be performed by the zynthian? Would this be beneficial?

Are you left or right footed? Can your modules work on either side…?
Do you find bending down to operate it a pain…?

How complicated would your chord structures need to be…?

Right device is purely midi player that sends midi commands to zynthian so that any zynthian out of box can be used. When zynthian is installed on the board then midi out coming from midi player is connected to midi in of zynthian inside the case . That is the reason why you don’t see it on photo above. However the whole pedal can be without zynthian in which case a standalone zynthian can be connected using standard midi cable. Finally totaly different synths can be convected using midi through from zynthian or if zynthian is not installed at all from midi out. The goal is to fully decouple midi player functionalities from zynthian.

This is fully modular and can be installed on any side. Case is designed in openscad that can be easily customised.

All configurations can be done using touch screen or foot switches so you don’t need to bend. I have used always big enough fonts so that even my 50 years old eyes can see what is on the screen without bending. Esp32 s3 chip has also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so midi player configuration can be further enhanced to be done through these interfaces.

Chord setting is done simple by selecting root note and one of seven harmonies. This will set major, minor and diminished chords to each pedal for that harmony. If pedal does not have chord in the harmony single note is set. There is advanced chord settings where you can further customised each chord assigned to pedal. In this case you can select more chord variations such as 7, 9 11 suspended dominant augmented etc.

At the moment it is designed with up to 10 notes in chord simple because there are only 10 fingers to play with. This limitation can be easily changed. I still have not developed screen for setting the inverted chords etc but I am planning that too.

There are three set of harmonies that can be played. Chord sets only share channel. This can be easily changed too if needed. Single mode playing can have a different channel.

I am almost done with chord configuration and testing. The only outstanding bit is saving and loading configuration snapshots to esp32 flash.

I will record a quick video for chord configuration share soon.

[stojos]

I forgot to say that this is based on available to buy pedal hardware doepher fatar pd/3. This can be extended from 13 to 25 notes. Also people are doing mods to enable touch sensitive velocity. I have not done any of these mods on mine but if done simple code change would be required to read additional pedals or to read two switches on each and times to set velocity. My velocity is constant for all notes.