The Duration Trick is something I was egotistical enough to believe I discovered, but after a recent conversation with William Fields (a musical hero of mine) I have learned that I’m in no way the first to come across it. Both Fields and the Max/MSP Shop Boys have been using something like this for a while, I’m told. Learning about this case of convergent evolution spurred me to bump up this already-planned post in the queue.

Simply put, the Duration Trick is when a synthesizer patch with discrete note on/off events is given advance notice of the duration of each note. Thus, if the sequencer is modeled as sending messages to a synthesizer:

Every “note on” message is accompanied with an anticipated duration.

It’s possible for such a patch to exactly anticipate the ending of the note, so note offs don’t even need to be transmitted, although I like to give the option to cut off the note prematurely. Additionally, duration can function as a velocity-like parameter that impacts other synthesis parameters such as amplitude or brightness, so short and long notes differ in more ways than just timing.

Imagine a monophonic subtractive synthesis patch with a lowpass filter that gradually opens for each note on. Traditionally, the lowpass filter’s trajectory is independent of the note duration, and may run its course or be cut short:

With duration information, it’s possible to guarantee that the lowpass filter reaches a precise goal at the end of each note:

I find the second example slightly more exciting in this simple demonstration. For a more complex example, jump about an hour into a video session I uploaded in May. The Duration Trick may sound like a small change at first, but it had a pretty radical impact on my music and sound design when I started using it. It shines especially for transitional sweeps that need to arrive right on time. Arguably, anyone who drags a reverse cymbal sample leading up to a drop is in a sense using the Duration Trick.

Note off events in MIDI can arrive at any time, so the Duration Trick isn’t achievable with standard traditional synthesizer hardware in the absence of some CC-based hack. (This is one of many reasons that pigeonholing everything into MIDI events has had long-term negative effects on music tech, but I digress.) The Duration Trick is therefore easiest to implement in one of the “nerd” music software environments like Csound, SuperCollider, etc., particularly anything that permits scripting. The trick is possible in a real-time context, but the sequencer must of course be able to look ahead far enough to know the durations at all, so it’s more semi-real-time than fully real-time. Durations are always available for music sequenced offline, and are generally available in algorithmic composition as well.

Musicians who play or sing melodies generally don’t think in individual note ons and offs, but rather phrases and gestures if not something higher-level. Even the most reactive and on-the-fly improvisations often require calculating at a few notes ahead, and this will impact subtleties of playing style. The Duration Trick alone doesn’t capture the complexities of musicians playing acoustic instruments, but it still appears to be a valuable stepping stone to breathing some more life into a synth patch.