How to play the same note twice at the same time

[Bisc88]

Hello, OpenMPT community.

I am creating a suspense themed music, but I have a problem in the last pattern. I placed two F# in the same row, but when the playing line hits that row, it plays only one F#. How can I fix it?

[Saga Musix]

If you play the same sample with exactly the same settings twice (which you do), you will hear one sample playing at twice the volume. That's how any sampler works. If you want two distinctive notes to be heard, you will have to modify one of the two notes, e.g. by playing it with a delay, offset or portamento effect.

Either way, what you are doing here is not realistic at all - you cannot hit the same key twice on a piano at the same time. Maybe it would make sense to transpose one of the two notes by an octave up or down.

[Bisc88]

Hmm... thats true, it really plays the note twice but I can't differentiate them because there is no difference. I tried to use the delay, offset, portamento and to change the octave, but they break the suspense. Is there any effect that slightly changes the frequency of the note? E.g to play a note between F and F#.

It is possible in real life if two pianos play the same key at the same time like in an orchestra .

[LPChip]

Add EF1 to one of the notes. It is a pitch shift up, but F1 is fine. It should make it sound like a chorus effect applied to it. But don't go overboard or it will sound out of tune.

I don't know what kind of sample it is, but I suspect it is a drum sequence. If so, consider replacing one of the notes with a completely different sample.

Also, remember you can use the Oxx to set an offset. You could set the offset for the entire duration from when the sample starts all the way to that last row before the next note starts, and have notes played at every row. If done correctly, the section with offsets won't make any difference. Now transpse the keys of all notes by an octave and voila, impact!

Hmm, looking at the screenshot, they're not drumsamples. I think in your case, I would transpse the right F#2's 3 semi notes up.

[Saga Musix]

What you are looking for is typically called "round-robin samping" or similar. Round-robin sampling means that more than one sample of a specific note has been sampled, each of them sounding slightly differently (just like hitting the same piano key twice in real life sounds slightly different). The piano samples from Windows' MIDI library that you use do not use round-robin samples, so you will either have to find a soundfont or plugin which uses round-robin sampling, or maybe just combine several different piano soundfonts to produce different sounds.

[Bisc88]

the EF1 effect works (I used the portamento effect before but I didn't know it has fine adjustments). But I found an even better solution! I added a +- 10 cutoff variation at instrument's panel. Now every note is different because they are random. This not only solved the problem but also made the suspense more deep.

I uploaded the result in the attachments.