Pause Sound Off/On

[PianoVideosJustForU]

I think their should be a option where people can can turn the sound off when they pause.

[aria1121]

When do we finally learn to search before we ask?
Here are some quotes of Nicholas about this subject.

I've added it to my to-do list to correct at some point. (No ETA just yet, but because it's an annoyance/problem, I'll be prioritizing it pretty high.)

Having it play again based on length gets a little tricky because of things like pitch-bend, after-touch, and just the general attack envelope (good MIDI synths will make the first part of a note sound qualitatively different than the middle sustaining portion of a note. The "sharp" part at the beginning is called the "attack" in sound-font parlance.)

So, while throwing a quick "All Notes Off" message on-pause wouldn't be too tricky, if you were in the middle of a very long bass note (like you find in a lot of chiptunes and videogame music) they simply wouldn't turn back on once you resumed the song.

That said, there are actual "volume" controls built into MIDI (either CC messages or SysEx... I can't remember at the moment) that I've never tried out. I don't know how widely supported they are (seems like the volume knob on your actual keyboard would override it), but if they worked reasonably reliably across most hardware, I could just set volume to 0 and then bring it back up on resume and everything would work fine.

(Of course, volume to 0 breaks the "let me play notes while the game is paused" thing that everybody had been asking for, for a while.)

It is possible to create a script in AHK to make a keycombo to stop the humming. It goes like so:
1. The NoteOn message is sent. You hear the note being played.
2. You pause the song with [Spacebar]. The note is still being played because the (soft)synth hasn't heared any NoteOff message from Synthesia (note isn't released)
This is where AHK comes in.
3. AHK-script gets activated when [Spacebar] is released and will skip the song forward and skip back at current position so the outgoing notes are reset (or deactivated as far as I know)
4. Profit: No more humming

I am currenly making this script.

[aria1121]

I actually "finished" the script that night but couldn't upload it because our modem's firmwire got crashed for some random reason. The original script didn't work, so I had to simplify to what it has got now. Anywhere, here is the script:

Code: Select all

; Synthesia Silent Pause
; Will stop the humming of the note once paused by the [Space] key
; (C) Copyright 2012 aria1121 CC 3.0 BY NC ND

Loop
{
	KeyWait, Space, D
	SendInput {Left}
	Send {Right}
}

Instructions:
1. Download and install AutoHotkey (here)
2. Open Notepad or any other text-editor
3. Copy the code and paste it in Notepad
4. Save it with the name Silence.ahk (don't forget to save it as All Files *.*, not as Textdocument *.txt)
5. Open the file

Pros: Stops humming
Cons: When you unpause the song, the previously-active notes are still "killed" and you have to wait until the next note play. Try it out yourself.

If you have a fast computer it shouldn't be a problem to keep it on but it could affect typing. To close it, right-click the green "H" in your taskbar, then click "Exit"
I'm sorry if you have a Mac, because this only works on Windows.

[PianoVideosJustForU]

OK Thanks!

[Lemo]

Not sure what you guys doing here
But Autohotkey speaking, you still can simplify a lot more
(Also with control+q to quit here)

Code: Select all

Space::
SendInput {Left}
Send {Right}

^q::
ExitApp