When the gate output is ON, it outputs 5 Volts
When the gate output is OFF, it outputs 0 Volts
Depending how a gate output is mapped, it will switch ON and OFF when a corresponding even happens on the MIDI input.
There are three modes available
Gate Mode keeps the output switched ON as long as the corresponding condition is true and turns it off when
the condition is over. For example we can set a gate to be ON for as long as the MIDI clock is running.
Trigger Mode only sets the output ON when the corresponding condition first becomes true. The output then
turns off after a specific period of time (up to 125 milliseconds). The time period can be selected directly, or you
can use the default trigger period set up in the global settings for the patch.
Retrigger Mode is rather like Gate mode in that it keeps the output switched ON as long as the corresponding
condition is true and turns it off when the condition is over. However each time the condition is signalled,
CV.OCD makes sure that the output is turned off for a very short period before it going back on again. For
example, this allows for playing styles where you want to control the sustain of a note by holding down a key, but
also have an attack envelope which triggers each time a new key is pressed, even if you are playing “legato” (only
releasing a key after the next is pressed)
These three modes are summarised with the picture below, which shows how three incoming note events would trigger
the gate output in each case.
Select (gate) in the Trig setting for gate mode and (retrig) for retrigger mode. For Trigger mode you can select a specific
time in milliseconds or just select (trigger) to use the default trigger period defined in the global settings.
The Trigger period in global settings applies only to (trigger) mode. In retrig mode the “low” time is very short (~1ms) and
just enough to give a rising edge to trigger your synth gear.
MIDI Note based triggers
When playing pitched notes, gates would be mapped via the Note input, as described above. However, sometimes it is
useful to tie a gate output to a specific MIDI note directly. One obvious example is for triggering drum sounds.
Here is an example of mapping MIDI notes (60, 62, 64, 65 on channel 10) to gate outputs 5,6,7,8 respectively
In these cases, where we are not worried about creating a pitch-based CV but rather just listening for a specific MIDI note,
we can bypass the Note Inputs completely and simply tie the gate output to the MIDI note. We can do this like so…
