density-governor

density-governor holds the note stream near a target density: you decide what to play, it decides how much of it survives.

This is Xenakis’s statistical composition run live: in Achorripsis the mean event density of each block was fixed first, and the notes fell wherever the law allowed. The governor measures the note-on rate over a sliding window and lets each incoming note pass with probability target / measured, capped at 1. At or below the target the dice are never rolled and nothing is touched: sparse playing is entirely yours, and only floods are thinned. That makes it the natural last stop after the effects that multiply notes, cluster-fist, poisson-cloud, echo, whose output can otherwise pile up.

A dropped note-on takes its note-off with it, and a passed note releases normally, so nothing hangs. The thinning is seeded: the same seed thins the same flood the same way, forever; see Seeds.

Parameters

window= takes a duration string like "250ms" or "1.5s", or beats= against the tempo, never both; see Time and tempo.

Parameter	Type	Default	Range
target	number	required	0.1..=100.0 notes per second
window	duration string	"2s"	positive, "250ms" or "1.5s" form
beats	number	none (instead of window)	finite, greater than 0
seed	integer	0	any unsigned 64-bit value

Example

miditool.kdl

input "Roland"
output virtual="miditool Out"

density-governor target=6 window="1s" seed=3

Play a slow melody and nothing changes; unleash a flurry and it is culled toward six notes a second, the shape of your gesture kept, its census taken.

Try this

Govern a generator. One finger makes a white-key fistful, a halo rings around it, and the governor keeps the whole storm breathable, the cowell scene from examples/clouds.kdl:

cluster-fist width=6 kind="white" anchor="bottom" rolloff=0.7
resonance-halo width=2 level=0.2 decay="2s"
density-governor target=6 window="1s" seed=3

Then squeeze hard: target=2 window="4s" reduces anything you do, however frantic, to a slow deliberate trickle.