Edit: Lol, never mind, House de Kris already provided the answer. He nailed it.
There is no "gate" MIDI message, just Note On and Note Off. The "gate" for MIDI is just the time between Note On and Note Off, which is typically controlled by your finger on the keyboard.
A Gate CV for modular is required because it needs a seperate CV for the pitch, and one for note on and note off. There can be a 3rd CV for velocity. The MIDI to CV converters take the MIDI Note On message, and convert that to a CV Gate (just a high and low voltage) and the MIDI note value and convert it to a "pitch" Control Voltage.
But this is mostly academic, as the modular MIDI to CV converters take care of all of this stuff. Once they transmit gate CV, you can monkey with it all you want, including shortening the gate length I suppose.
So, NDLR MIDI notes are gated, but they are legato. That is, the notes turn off only when its time to play a new note. You can get a variable gate like effect using Rhythm patterns, but like you said, ideally the motifs would have a continuously variable gate on a knob.
There is no "gate" MIDI message, just Note On and Note Off. The "gate" for MIDI is just the time between Note On and Note Off, which is typically controlled by your finger on the keyboard.
A Gate CV for modular is required because it needs a seperate CV for the pitch, and one for note on and note off. There can be a 3rd CV for velocity. The MIDI to CV converters take the MIDI Note On message, and convert that to a CV Gate (just a high and low voltage) and the MIDI note value and convert it to a "pitch" Control Voltage.
But this is mostly academic, as the modular MIDI to CV converters take care of all of this stuff. Once they transmit gate CV, you can monkey with it all you want, including shortening the gate length I suppose.
So, NDLR MIDI notes are gated, but they are legato. That is, the notes turn off only when its time to play a new note. You can get a variable gate like effect using Rhythm patterns, but like you said, ideally the motifs would have a continuously variable gate on a knob.