We tend to assume that the relationship between the MIDI notes sent into a device and the sounds coming out to be relatively fixed. But in fact, depending on the instrument you’re working with, you can customize the behavior of the instrument to ignore note input completely (and always output the same note) or scale the responsiveness so, for example, a change of one semitone on your MIDI controller produces a microtonal change such as a quarter tone.
Anyhoo, this takes us back to our discussion of using Random to create alternating semitones for hi hat variations. The easiest way to tame the semitones so they produce a less obvious result is to switch over and use Sampler instead:
On the main Sample page of Sampler, you’ll see a control called Scale.
This determines how much the incoming MIDI pitch information is mapped to the sample’s playback pitch. As you dial it down towards zero, you’ll get less and less pitch responsiveness. Once zero is reached, you’ll get none at all. Negative values invert the relationship, so higher MIDI notes produces lower pitches.
