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July 29, 2025 5:08 pm
Brand new here, hi! I've worked in MainStage for quite a while and am beginning to incorporate Unify more into live work. One tactic that I use quite a bit is to have a hardware button mapped to add an octave up on certain layers of a sound to add impact to certain parts of a song. In MainStage this is pretty simple using a midi chord effect - but I'm having trouble finding a simple way to do something similar in Unify. I would like to avoid adding a second layer of the same sound to save on CPU and sample memory.
The transpose function in Midi Filter would be great if there was a passthrough for the original note information also.
I suppose I could use MidiBox, just using a Midi File of a 2 simple notes in an octave and use "one-shot" mode, but that seems like a strange way to go about getting a simple effect.
I must be missing something, there must be a way to program a patch to play in 5ths or octaves or something like that?
July 29, 2025 6:52 pm
Very good question. There are three main ways to do this in Unify.
The simplest way is to duplicate the initial INST layer (click the "bullet" icon at the far right of the layer to bring up the layer menu, and choose "duplicate layer"), then transpose the 2nd layer an octave up (or down).
The second simplest way is to use a MIDI-effect plug-in to convert each incoming MIDI note-event into a pair of events, one octave apart. You're right that there isn't any MIDI-effect included with or built into Unify that does exactly this, but there are third-party plug-ins that do, and you can probably find free ones.
The third way is to put an instance of MIDI Filter (set to transpose up or down by 12 semitones) inside a ComboBox, and add a second MIDI connection direct from MIDI-In to MIDI-out, so both the original notes AND the transposed ones are output. I have attached a patch demonstrating this. (Download, unzip, and drag/drop the resulting .unify file into the Unify GUI to load it, then save to your own User Library if you wish.)
@wavesequencer it would be easy to add a checkbox to MIDI Filter to also allow unmodified MIDI events to pass through.
Wavesequencer reacted
August 1, 2025 3:01 am
I use Pizmidi midiTranspose instead of Midi Filter because it has an automatable parameter called "transpose". I assign that parameter to a macro control and automate that macro from my Daw to switch octaves during playback in some songs. It can transpose several octaves if need be. Of course it could be also controlled from a controller keyboard slider. I have it configured as described above using ComboBox.
getdunne reacted