duration-lottery

duration-lottery draws how long each note lasts. You choose when notes start; the lottery decides when they end.

Durations stop being something you perform and become something dealt, the way a Feldman page fixes them on paper regardless of the pianist’s instinct, or a Xenakis screen draws them from a law. Each note-on is emitted together with a note-off already scheduled at the drawn length: exponential around mean by default (most notes short, the occasional one that stays), or flat across the range with spread="uniform"; either way the draw is clamped into min..max.

Your own release is ignored: letting go of the key does nothing, the drawn duration ends the note. Because every note-on leaves with its note-off scheduled in the same breath, note-ons and note-offs always balance and nothing can hang; retriggering a held key stacks another drawn note on it. The lottery is seeded: the same seed and the same playing deal the same lengths, forever; see Seeds.

Parameters

mean= takes a duration string like "250ms" or "1.5s", or beats= against the tempo, never both; see Time and tempo. min= and max= are plain duration strings only. The mean must sit within min..max.

Parameter	Type	Default	Range
seed	integer	required	any unsigned 64-bit value
mean	duration string	"500ms"	positive, at least min, at most max
beats	number	none (instead of mean)	finite, greater than 0
min	duration string	"30ms"	positive
max	duration string	"4s"	positive, at least min
spread	string	"exp"	"exp", "uniform"

Example

miditool.kdl

input "Roland"
output virtual="miditool Out"

duration-lottery seed=31 mean="400ms" min="50ms" max="2s"

Play an even line and it comes back with its lengths dealt: mostly clipped, now and then a note that refuses to leave.

Try this

Flatten the draw and stretch it. With spread="uniform" every length between one and six seconds is equally likely (the mean is not used by the uniform draw, but it still has to sit inside the range):

duration-lottery seed=2 spread="uniform" mean="3.5s" min="1s" max="6s"

Touch the keyboard staccato and it answers in slow overlapping tones. Tighten min="2ms" max="60ms" mean="20ms" instead and everything you hold is snatched away.