Roland’s GR-55 guitar synth is one powerful accessory for guitarists – maybe a little too powerful. With its various modeling, effects, and synthesis powers hidden in layers of menus, navigating all those sonic capabilities can be a chore. Enter one user from the GR-55′s dedicated community of guitar synthesists. Marc Benigni used TouchOSC control software for the iPad and set up a template that makes all of that functionality touchable, direct, and accessible.

But wait — there’s more! There’s also a dedicated, free and open source editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. (There’s even a fresh Lion build for Mac users.) So, score one for the Roland user community stepping in and doing more than the actual manufacturer (and I haven’t yet seen any maker do a Linux version, or, for that matter, release their editor as open source). Thanks to Marty Cutler for the tip!

“Yeah, sure,” you say, “it’s open source software. Probably looks totally ugly and primitive.”

Nope. Looks damned slick, actually:

And all this means you’ve got a powerful editor without the need for an iPad.
http://grfloorboard.sourceforge.net/
Project information

If you’ve got an iPad…

Marc writes and describes that project:

I recently developed a TouchOSC layout that serves as a patch editor for Roland’s GR-55. The GR-55 is an impressive guitar synth and guitar preamp, but it’s UI leaves *much* to be desired, and Roland has stated that they will not be releasing a PC-based editor for it. With this layout, an OSC interface, and of course a copy of TouchOSC, the user can easily and intuitively edit patches, or modify GR-55 settings in real-time during performance.

Details concerning development can be found in this thread on the VGuitar forums, with photos of the interface on more recent pages:
http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3205.msg30263#msg30263

The mind still boggles at all those controls, but now it looks far more usable. You can bet that iPad apps may soon be a trend for manufacturers, too, though sometimes – freed from any commercial aspirations – what the users come up with works pretty well on its own. I’m eager to try some layouts out for both iOS and Android touch devices; just because it’s fun as a developer, I’m toying a bit with the latter.

Of course, this tool is a great head start on iOS:
http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

Connecting something to something else – it’s a basic principle of musical composition, of improvisation, of conversation. It’s therefore an essential feature of software, code, and digital music interfaces.

But sometimes, it’s awfully nice to turn a knob and plug in actual, physical cord.

Our friends Ben Hovey and Chris Stack are here with more freebies and giveaways for the analog circuitry-containing portions of your studio. This isn’t just for the deep-pocketed, either – they share free listening, ideas that can be applied even to free software patches, and techniques that work even if all you’ve got is a Moogerfooger.

First up, Ben Hovey shares a funky, free EP he made while beta testing the spectacular, capable Moog MIDI MuRF effect pedal. With MIDI-manipulated modulations, the MuRF is a bit like having a little analog effect computer. And since you can use anything as a source, it can make its textures from synthetic sounds or – as Ben does here – “on the trumpet, farfisa, wurli, breaks, and even as an echo chamber (feedback from speakers->mic->murf->speaker->mic->murf…).”

If you could only have one piece of Moog gear, or even only one hardware effect, the MIDI MuRF might be it. And, just as importantly, Ben’s music is itself as perfectly-crafted as a polished piece of North Carolina pine, filled with funk. Give a listen and download:

THE MuRF EP by benhovey

It might be considered blasphemous – part of why I like the Moogerfoogers is the feel of the knobs and faders – but Ben has also built a remote controller with the popular touch control tool TouchOSC for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, in case you’ve been hiding in your analog modular cave – lucky you). This assumes an intervening computer, though; you need something like OSCulator to do the conversion. Going straight from mobile wirelessly to MIDI device is likely to be a topic of discussion here shortly, so that’s all I’ll say for now.

But the layouts look useful, and while I wouldn’t personally have any desire to duplicate the controls already on the Moogerfooger, having access to MIDI-accessible controls is indeed very nice.

Finally, Chris Stack, formerly of Moog Music but now doing all of this independently, continues his fantastic Experimental Synth series. I’ll say what I’ve said before, which is that you can borrow these ideas even if you aren’t lucky enough to have this (very fine) gear; if you have a computer and no pocket change at all, you can still do it in Pd. And if you can beg, borrow, or bribe your way onto the gear, now you’ll have lots of great stuff to try when you get there.

At top, the latest video and my current favorite, which shows all that’s happening in the wonderful world of modulars, specifically the imaginative Make Noise modules.

This video shows a Make Noise René sequencer modulating a Moog Voyager, Little Phatty and Slim Phatty. René is a Cartesian sequencer and brings a totally new method of control to the Moog synths. No MIDI cables were harmed during the making of this video.

But wait — there’s more. Continuing the MuRF theme, here’s a means of syncing that box via a gate output for some rhythmic fun:

Have a Moog MuRF, Bass MuRF or MIDI MuRF? Here’s a way to sync it to the beat using the Gate output from a Moog Voyager (w/ VX-351). This method should work with other Gate-producing gear as well.

Tuning has been a big interest area for many of us of late; here’s a lovely demo of alternate scales with the Little Phatty, something I hope to try on more synths in general.

An exploration of non-Western tunings with the Moog Little Phatty. In this example, the Arabic scale, Maqaam Husayni is given a workout.

And finally, a reminder that harmonizers don’t have to be used exclusively on vocals:

I can’t simply rip off every single video Chris does, so be sure to check out:
www.experimentalsynth.com

And analog, digital, or … steam … keep the interesting music stuff coming.

Interactive touch layouts for sequencers are something of a no-brainer – imagine if an analog pattern machine and the deck of the Starship Enterprise had a love child. But platforms come and go. And just because the iPad is the shiny, new thing – and remains the most affordable solution at the moment – doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn from ideas beyond just the platform with an Apple logo. Almost a year ago, we saw some compelling sequencer ideas for the Lemur. Sadly, that hardware was discontinued in the fall. But the users keep using it.

Matthias Wille’s Sequencomat has gotten far more powerful since we last looked at it. Far from catching up, indeed, he argues iPad apps are falling further behind – and he makes a good case for that. So hardware and software designers, take note.

It does sync, in both directions. It sends just about everything. It can randomize steps. You need the software on the host computer, not just the controller, but put it all together and there’s some serious power here. Matthias gives us the overview:

• detailed stepvalues for octave, note, velocity, length, CC, delay, steppropability (V2 had only trackvalues for those functions)
• switchable randomfunction on each stepvalue for velocity, length, cc … very nice to variate some aspects of a pattern single and multiple track editing
• 3 clocktype: Master, slave, rewire (and – I still wonder! – my own clock is more stable than most professional DAWs) for sure independent midichannel, timing and tracklength on each track (polyryhthmic patterns!)
• 100 patterns to save and load in realtime

See the excellent overview video at top – or marvel as it works with an analog setup, below.

I asked Matthias to explain more about why he thought this was better than other solutions out there. He took a break from adding new functionality – freely-definable scales, note and octave randomization – to answer at some length.

I could edit this, but I think you’d lose some of the personality of this conversation, so here it unedited.

Lets start with some common differences:
- sequencomat is a plain midisequencer. it can only send midi… while most (all?) Ipad seq have a sample browser. That makes them more “standalone”, and thats the main concept of an app. But to me it makes no sense, cause I have my drumracks inside my DAW (Ableton), so to change the sounds I am triggering I just change the note….
- some Ipad seq also have FX section. again this makes no sense to me, cause I can control that in my DAW by Midicontrolchange (CC) or with another page on my Lemur, which gives me more flexibility.

These both features are more a matter of taste, but it points out the difference of a controller integrated in a bigger system or a standalone you can use everywhere but are restricted if it comes to communication.
Now a list of functions most (all?) Ipad seq miss and even most classical hardware midi stepsequencers have not:

- independent steprange (1-16 steps each track) and timing.
technical this means that each track got its own clock section. Musically it means you can do polyrhythmic patterns…ever overlapping and changing. On typical 4 on the floor music this is meaningless…but if you want to go more experimental…. (Moltons (?) Ipad app (that one that syncs) got something simular, based on quater sections, but only for timing, not for steprange)

- independent midichannel on each track with possibility to change during play and saved within the patterns.
technical it was hard to get rid of the midihung that can appear if you change the channel while a note is played….the “note off” (damn midiprotocol) will be send on the new channel…so I had to cut these notes first. but only these notes, not all on this channel! musically it gives you much freedom, cause while in one pattern track 1 can be an epiano in the next pattern it can be a drumrack. (well, with that freedom some confusion can come in)

- stepvalues for velocity are quite a standard…. but I got also stepvalues for octave, note, length, CC, delay, steppropability.
With “octave” and “note” you can give every step another tone to trigger (most classic hardware seq have that), if you use a well organised drumrack, changing the octave will change the drumsound (different BDs all lay on pitch C) and with changing the note you can change the drumtype (e.g. snare on D).
“Length” is also a stepvalue on some hardware stepsequ, but mostly on a discrete scale (1/4 1/2 1), while I have continious scale. You can set the maximum on the maxpatch for better fine control ranging from 1-16 steps.
You can furthermore control 8 CC-values – each track has one attached, they are boundend in timing and steprange, but not in meaning. You can set the Midichannel and Controllernumber of those independent and – guess what – these are saved within the patterns…so again a lot of freedom in routing.

With “delay” you can delay each step in triggering and therefore create a groove. Swing would be to delay every second step. But you can go much more in detail… cause you can also control the amount of delay for each step. The predefined range is 0 – -50msec, but you can set it to whatever (-2000msec?) on the maxpatch for more experimental settings. The delay of a step is also reflected in the steplight, giving you a visual impression of the groove.
With Steppropability you can set some activated steps to only be triggered in lets say 30% and therefore create some variation of your pattern. Each step independent on each track, all saved within the patterns. The stepvalues reflect more “unlikeliness”, cause the higher they are the more unlikely it is that the tone will be playsed (if set at all in the stepmatrix – sure). The unlikeliness values are compared with a random value that is triggered on 16th, 8th, 4th, 1 bar, 2 bar or 4 bars. Setting this to higher values will cause the same variation several times before changing. To give you visual feedback of the actual propability status (on/off) there are little LEDs on each step: If they are off – no tone.

- stepvalues for velocity, length, CC, delay got a “range” control on the left side. So you can control the range (e.g. 40-66 instead of 0-127) while the relative difference of the stepvalues still work. So you can fade in velocity…. Of course, that range is also saved within the patterns, independent for each track.

- stepvalues for velocity, length and CC got a randomfunction you can switch on for each step independently (!!!!). so if you want the velocity on step5 of track2 to variate, just push the little switch under the stepvalues. Or the length of step9 on track3? Or both? Or all? Every time those marked stepvalues are triggered they generate a new value. But remember – the output will ever stay within the range. (which makes a random much more usefull than plain 0-127) With this function you can surf on the border between total control and random. Thats what I love as an artist….discovering this border of controlled random. And this stepwise random is really a bomb…it makes this static thing “alive”!

- single or multiple track editing. Normally you step through the tracks and choose a function. But what if you want to change the values of more than one track at once? No prob, switch to multiple track editing, choose more than one track (chosen tracks become red) and all values you enter will be routed to all tracks. (Funny, but this concept is not common sense…maybe because with mutliple track editing you can get no more feedback – what should be displayed if the values differ?) So you can change tempo or steprange of different tracks at once (nice breaks). Or fade in the velocity of a couple of tracks with the range object. Or the CCs (!). Or even the propability if you set the random value to “manual”, this will cause fading in the “density” of a pattern.

- all of this saved within 100 patterns handled in realtime. jumps are done immediately giving you a good feel for interacting. But you can also activate a “automatic pattern chain”, like play pattern 2, 3, 4. In random order or reverse? No prob. Jumping on 1/4 bar – 1/2 bar – 1 bar – 2 bar – 4bar….your choice. You can also “exclude” single tracks from pattern jumping if you want.

-step and track mute – independent from patterns for breaks…

-a X/Y pad for controlling a CC on each axis and /or triggering notes (vertical velocity, horizontal speed (syncable!)) all with nice ranges attached to the borders to control the min and max output.

-and finally 3 clock options: master, slave, rewire.
I had rewire only first on V1 but never was satisfied with the results. Especially Abletons Midiclock (using it as master or as rewiremaster) was f***ing bad. As long as you do not reach 50% CPU power it is ok, but after that it turns unstable…sure, these are only Milliseconds…but damn, they call it “Live” !! Some of my users told me, that Cubase is much better. But I decided to build my own clock. I did not rely on max standard clock, I build it from scratch…with very nice results. Now all users confirm, that my clock as master is the most stable one. (I still find it confusing….me building a better clock than Ableton?… the background might be, that ableton drops the clock first before they drop audio, while on my maxpatch the clock has the highest priority)

So – cocky or not – if it comes to plain stepsequencing, SequencomatV3 eats them all

In a future update I will rework the pitch section: Octaves and Notes will be defined by the user. that means scales instead of 12tones each Octave. not only major or minor…nooooo…. free defineable scales – you just enter your keynote and the halftone steps. And for sure – then the random-stepvalue-switches makes also sense and will be there (I cutted it on octave and not only because it sounds so inharmonic on 12 tones)

Okay, that’s all well and good and fantastic – but the Lemur is now discontinued. So I was curious what Matthias’ plans were – would he consider a future beyond the Lemur?

Yes, sure. But not the Ipad.
I thought about going on it…. my core engine is done in max, so why not make a touchOSC surface? Because TouchOSC (as great as it is) is generations behind the Lemur. Not only physics…hey, I do not use physics in my sequencer… but many control objects are missing (range!), leds are not handled in vectors (as far as I get it), there is no light interaction independent from on/off state, no moveable containers (well, I think in the last version they added this, not sure) and so on…. so it will not be simpley changing some paths in the maxpatch – if so I would have been already there, kickin some ass – it will be completely reconstruct everything.
And I do not want to do that if I then have to sell it for 10$. This pricetag of apps makes the Ipad unattrative to me. Not because I am a greedy guy, but because it isn´t worth it. Most users need support for their midisetup. Even this support will be more effortfull than 10$. And furthermore there is still that bidirectional communication issue. The Ipads WiFi can handle over 1500 values each pattern in realtime? Hahahaha…lol, never. It is not made for that.

So instead of competing with all these Apps, I think of giving my Sequencomat a control surface directly in Max and wait for more and more touchscreens coming to couple with any PC or Mac. Just as a 2nd monitor. As my sequencomat never was ment as a standalone, this fits much better. But we will see…this will not happen within the next half year. See, I am so happy that I have my dreamsequencer here… after the next update I will chill and make some music again. Because this is something I missed all the last 1 1/2 years… having time and energy for making music again and not only coding…. (and this is also a reason, why the music in my demovideos is a bit uninspired or boring…)

I’m way over my word quota, so I’m going to leave it at that. But while sometimes I actually prefer a simpler touch device, even I think the guy has some good points here. Keep in mind that we’re talking the combination of the touch layout, the touch hardware, and then the software on the host. The iPad could certainly accomplish a lot of this (though not over an Ethernet cable), and we should assume the iPad is, in the long view, just the leading edge of a large wave of tablets.

So – discuss.

http://www.tonvibration.de/SequencomatV3.html

TouchOSC has become something of a standard on iOS for touch control, thanks to desktop editor apps for custom layouts and high-contrast, Lemur-style controls. Last Thursday was all about wired MIDI on iPad, so it seems only fair to show what people are doing with wireless and OSC. I’ve got a few good selections from my recent inbox.

DJing with Traktor

Above, the latest version of Traktor Pro templates, for iPhone or iPad, from Milos:

http://androidosc.blogspot.com/

It’s got some extensive functionality, and since Milos used Pure Data (Pd) to translate to MIDI, you can use it with both the Mac and Windows versions of Traktor. Milos doesn’t yet have an iPad, so he’s collecting money to invest in one.

Arovia has their own Traktor layout, aptly titled “nano” as it’s fit into a small area.

From over the summer, here’s a different approach to using Traktor with touch, turning instead to one big wheel.

Ableton Live

Malaventura has assembled a “kitchen sink” approach to working with Ableton Live, with a do-everything Live template.

A touchOSC layout for iPad that contains a step sequencer monosynth & drum machine, a ambient generator, a psychedelic fx unit & operator synth controller. All designed for works in iPad with touchOSC, OSCulator and Ableton Live in your computer. The layout and all the files necessary are zipped in this link:
http://www.archive.org/details/MalaventuraTouchoscSuite

It’s a really involved set of layouts; it’s not quite as sophisticated as something dedicated like Touchable, but then again, since you can run both, you may just give it a try and use it for certain editing workflows.

The one caveat – and this is a catch on a lot of these patches – is that you need Osculator in order to use it. More on that gripe in a moment.

As seen on Synthtopia

Working with Hardware

Last week, I showed my preferred means of editing MIDI devices – using, you know, MIDI cables. But I can see the appeal of wireless control, too, in certain situations. Using The Missing Link wireless hardware adapter (see our detailed look at two wireless solutions last month), you can work with conventional hardware.

Via Matrixsynth, there’s a nice template for the Waldorf Pulse.

Palm Sounds points to a Yamaha DX7 editor, complete with SysEx. (Isn’t there supposed to be an actual link there somewhere, though?)

Some Friendly Criticism of the State of OSC Touch

I do see opportunity for progress in all of this, however. Constructive criticism, for all of us:

• The lack of native OSC means way, way too many kludges. Osculator is a cool little app, but you shouldn’t need it to do OSC; the whole point of OSC is that it’s a simple, universal networking protocol. We either need native support in apps like Ableton Live, or we need to use something else – period. Having to use go-between apps makes it a step backward in these applications from MIDI.
• Why not edit on the device, or even generate layouts automatically? Part of the beauty of touch layouts is on-the-fly controls. There’s plenty to explore here, from layouts that generate automatically after an exchange of information over OSC to on-device editing. One of my criticisms of the original Lemur was having to use a dedicated editing app, and that was more than five years ago.
• Why not use the browser? Wouldn’t it be great for editing and control to move seamlessly between desktop browser and mobile, or between mobile platforms?

I’m burying this in this article just because I’d rather spend time working on those things than complaining them, but it’s worth saying, partly because I’m sure others are thinking the same way. (And developers thinking that way have the chops to do something about it.)

Also, in answer to everyone griping about a good Android solution, I’m personally waiting for a usable Android tablet and not just handhelds. That means I’m seriously bummed that the Motorola Xoom may cost US$800. Sorry, at that point, I spend money on synths instead.

Knobs rock.

All of that said, I do think there are some great solutions here, and they work right now. Looking forward, we can build the next generation even better.

In the meantime, go grab TouchOSC. It’s fantastic software, and supporting it means an increased likelihood of developer hexler getting to continue to iterate on his own great work. (He’s a really nice guy, to boot, as well as a talented developer; I know he isn’t exactly getting rich on this thing, but sales really do support developers working on apps they care about.)

http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

What layouts are you using? Got any you want to share? And what do you want to see in touch controllers?

Ever wish your music software could do something your way, something it can’t do now? Wish you could just get in there and change it yourself?

That’s some of the ambition of Renoise 2.6, the multi-platform music creation tool. By opening up the entire music tracker to scripting, users can create custom functionality and control surface. But scripting – while it sounds like the domain of hard-core geeks – doesn’t have to be daunting. That’s important, as presumably you want to spend some time making music. Scripting should save you time and let you express ideas more directly, not act as an impediment. So, the design of the Duplex feature in Renoise does work to make this customization accessible.

Renoise 2.6 has just gone gold master, meaning you can add it to your stable music setup. New in this release:

• Lua scripting. Customize the app using an elegant, clean, friendly language.
• OSC, MIDI support. Integrated control with Duplex (MIDI/OSC), native Open Sound Control support.
• Extensive hardware support. Maybe you don’t want to write a line of code, ever. You can let someone else do it for you, and reap the rewards. Already, Renoise has native, fully-integrated support for the AlphaTrack, BCF-2000, BCR-2000, KONTROL49, FaderPort, microKONTROL, nanoKONTROL, Launchpad, Remote SL-MKII, Nocturn, Monome, Ohm64, iPad via TouchOSC… all thanks to community support for the new scripting engine.
• Sample autoseek. Absolutely essential to making audio behave in the way it does in linear arrangement tools, the sample will play back from the position in the timeline, rather than from the beginning each time you hit play. (Seems obvious, but it’s part of making Renoise bridge tracker-style apps and more conventional, linear ones.)
• Better performance, compatibility. Tweaked performance on Linux and Mac, expanded file format compatibility, plus 64-bit Linux, DSSI Linux support. Renoise is a reason to run Linux, and Linux a reason to run Renoise, if you hadn’t guessed that yet. No, seriously, you’ll enjoy it. (I always feel like it’s telling someone to go vegan. Linux can actually be fun. And you still get to eat bacon.)

The release date seems the perfect time to really explain what Duplex is about, and what it means to you. First, it’s best to see it in action in this Duplex video. What you see is fully integrated hardware and software, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily require specific hardware. (There’s no “Renoise” logo on the controller – and you could substitute something very different and get the same impact.)

More information on the Renoise forum from the video’s creator, Danoise: Duplex – Playing With Loops

Basically, I’m arranging a small song on-the-fly, using a Launchpad + monome. Since the song was basically written using the StepSequencer, the vertical resolution of each pattern is just 8 lines. I then use the new loop feature in the Matrix to “pair” patterns into longer sequences.

This is just one possible workflow among many, but it’s one that’s I’ve found to be immensely rewarding when you’re sketching a tune out.

Bjørn Nesby, Duplex’s lead developer, explains his creation to CDM:

Duplex is aimed at both people who are willing to create their own scripts, and those who just want a nice way to interact with their music using Renoise. Many of the scripts (called ‘applications’ in Duplex) are pretty generic in nature, and will simply take control of a specific part of Renoise, like the Mixer or Pattern Matrix. This is something everybody can use, so this is where I focused my efforts to begin with. More exotic applications are also planned, but we needed to get the fundamentals in place first.

A thing that was clear from the beginning was, that the whole setup and configuration process needed to be as simple as possible. I think we succeeded in that, as my personal copy of Renoise will automatically launch the applications I need when the program starts, on three separate controllers. And I’ve heard from many people that they love this aspect of Duplex, as it reduces a potentially tedious startup process to an absolute minimum. Of course you can have an initial device setup process that you need to go through (like selecting the input and output ports for your device, which might vary from system to system), but in most cases you’d only need to go through this once, after which the device is ready to use.

And I believe this is not just about ‘convenience’, because sometimes you need to be absolutely focused on the music and not the order of which you launch various programs – especially true when you bring your music to the stage.

However, I have to point out that the configuration process is not perfect yet. There’s still room for improvement when customizing application mappings – this is currently done by editing some of the accompanying configuration files by hand, and although that might sound scary, it’s actually a pretty straightforward thing to do (and if not, the Renoise forum is there to help people out). Also, finetuning a setup like this is hardly part of the music-making process itself, so I hope it’s something people can live with for a little while longer.

From a developer point of view, the Duplex framework might be technically interesting as it attempts to follow the ‘write once, run everywhere’ model, as known from the mobile computing world, but instead applied to musical gear. For example, the Mixer application is able to run on all devices, from the Novation Nocturn to the monome128. Physically speaking, those are two very different devices, but everything in the Duplex API is abstracted to the point where a standard user-interface element like a slider can be a rotary dial (Nocturn), or an array of buttons (monome). In the application code, you simply create a slider, and base your logic around that. The framework will do all the dirty work of translating that into *actual* controls. This is possible because everything in Duplex is based around a descriptive XML file, the control-map. Unlike a traditional MIDI implementation chart, the control-map will not only describe the parameters and their ranges, but rather the complete physical layout of the device. Once a proper description has been made (and they are not hard to make, several of Duplex’ control-maps are user-contributed) you can launch an application on e.g. the monome that creates virtual sliders from individual buttons, because each button “knows” where it’s located in a X/Y coordinate space.

I’ve also tried to keep the syntax as familiar as possible. Many people who’ve done a bit of actionscript will probably recognize many of the concepts in this framework, hopefully making the whole experience a little less daunting for budding scripters.

One unique aspect of Duplex: the virtual control surface. When Duplex is installed, you can try out all the various supported devices, even if you don’t own them. Again, it’s the control-map structure that makes this possible, as you can define things like button size, color etc. Of course, this is not the same as the real thing (try hitting two buttons simultaneously using a mouse?), but it’s still interesting to play with, a huge advantage for developers as you can design a control-map that device owners can then try out and test, and makes for self-documenting applications, as you can assign tool-tips to the control surface that display exactly what each button does.

More information:
What’s New in Renoise 2.6 – Renoise Geek Edition.

Renoise Lua Scripting

2.6 Forum Discussion

And, of course, you can discuss Renoise and other trackers on our own Noisepages community. Specifically, we’re looking at how to use trackers in live performance.

Trackers for Live Performance @ Noisepages

Also, our friend Joe Gore details how the whole system works with iPad, including plug-in manipulation and automatic mapping of parameters for plug-in functions. I agree; it’s nicely done.

iPad + Logic + TouchOSC = HOLY CRAP! [sonicgore.com]

Readers do touch upon standardization or interoperability between apps. It’s a good point, and the short answer is, right now, today, OSC doesn’t provide any way to do that. Many of the necessary facilities are there, but there isn’t a way for developers like Apple to support something standardized. It is a real need. It might look nothing like MIDI or later ideas like Mackie Control, both de facto standards (and the latter controlled by just one vendor). But you’d need a way to describe messages that wasn’t recreated by hand each time you use a new app.

If you’ve wished you could use your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as a remote control for Logic, now’s your chance. And touch control continues to evolve as an additional option for manipulating music software, alongside good, old-fashioned knobs and faders.

Handheld wireless touch control is certainly coming into the mainstream. As we see new controller integration in tools ranging from Ardour to Renoise, Apple quietly added support for iOS touch control in an update to Logic.

One line in the release notes says it all:

Supports iOS control surface apps that utilize the OSC protocol.

Logic Pro 9.1.2: Release notes

– or, to put it another way, that’s all they say. Fortunately, Sam Greene has written up a great little tutorial / first impressions:
Control Logic using your iOS device – Officially.

Basically, select the awesome TouchOSC app and your device under Control Surfaces, and automagically unlock access to mixing controls and automation. It’s nothing revolutionary, but these devices make perfect remote controls. It’s also nice to see this kind of control as something that’s evolving independent from individual apps. That is, instead of having to buy an app for each software you own, just as with MIDI, there’s some interoperability.

It seems to me that the next logical step is to begin to introduce some standardization to the way in which DAWs and touch controllers interact. But before we get there, this kind of solution is a good place to start; I think without playing with this stuff, it’s hard to know what a “standard” of some kind (lowercase “s”) would look like.

Speaking of playing, let us know how this works for you.

Thanks, Sam, for working this out!

With the iPad available now and more touch-enabled devices likely coming soon, we finally have hardware that can be both display and controller, visual feedback and input device. While tactile control will maintain its place, these devices can augment performance controls, acting as compositional brains, and can serve as studio creation tools.

Yesterday, we got a glimpse of something called “MB Control,” a custom Ableton Live controller that got a number of people excited for its eminently-practical control layouts. It’s based on the popular, promising, and open source Live Control project, one we’re watching closely, but with its own twists. Today, I have more details on that project from co-creator Bjorn, who has long been a maker of wonderful tutorials and devices for Ableton at The Covert Operators and works here with Uruguay’s International Feel. The bad news is, for now, this isn’t something you’ll be able to get your hands on – it’s not for sale because it’s so particular to the needs of its creators. But the good news is, it demonstrates a number of useful techniques, and at least some devices are on their way. (It’s also further evidence that a runtime for Max for Live could set this community on fire, if Ableton and Cycling ’74 were to decide to go in that direction.)

The project is powered by TouchOSC, the iPad’s apparent killer-app OSC touch controller, and Max for Live.

Bjorn writes:

This project is a customized Ableton Live studio controller made with Max For Live devices for Mark from International Feel Recordings.

http://soundcloud.com/international-feel/

After trying various control solutions ranging from Lemur Clip Launchers to ST8′s LiveControl, there still was a need for a customizable studio controller solution. Most of the solutions currently available are focused on Live Performance. There’s isn’t really anything out there to jam an arrangement with that works in a practical musical sense for studio heads.

In Mark’s case, he was looking for a Clip Launcher that could display 1 Scene of 40 Tracks wide. A change like that isn’t so easily made to a python script.
He also wanted 3 types of sequencers. That would definitely get tricky with python scripts and 3rd party MIDI drivers. So the project ended up being a customized version of ST8′s LiveControl, but entirely built in Max For Live.

MB Control Features:

• A Drum Sequencer that can be dropped onto any MIDI Track in Live. Up to 8 instances are supported which can be selected and controlled from the iPad. It has all the features of a basic X0X sequencer (and more besides). You can change the Rate/Range/Direction/Length/Velocity/Pitch of any sequencer lane individually, you can control all the lanes at once and you can even control all the sequencers at once. There is a randomization feature that allows you to specify the density of a randomized pattern.
• A Melodic Sequencer. Its almost identical to the Drum Sequencer. It also supports up to 8 instances and it has a feature to lock the pitches of all the lanes to the transposition features of the Bouncer Sequencer. It also allows various melodic scales to be selected.
• A Bouncer Sequencer like people know from on the tenori-on. Its supports 2 times 8 notes with 16 steps. There are a few extra buttons to transpose the sequence to a different pitch. The Melodic Sequencers have a Transpose Lock buttons that allows them to follow the transposition of this sequencer.
• 48 Track Clip Launcher of 1 Scene deep. A very useful Clip Launcher if you have lots of tracks and want to control all clips on a scene individually. Has a feature that shows how many clips are in any given track. It also supports group tracks and allows folding/unfolding on the clip slot of the group track. A button underneath each Clip Slot allows control over Arm/Solo/Mute and Stop Clip.
• A Mixer with control over the Volume/Pan/Send A/Send B/Arm/Solo/Mute. The Mixer follows whatever Clip was triggered last. If you trigger a clip on track 9, the Mixer will display track 9 to 18 automatically.
• Device Controller. Its like Automap with 16 Sliders. You can select any device and control all of its parameters. Devices can also be hidden if required.
• 16 Macros Device. Its like Macros in a Rack but there are 16 of them. And they can be assigned to any device regardless of which track they’re in. This device is integrated in the Device Controller page as a simple switch and allows users to personally tailor their multi device control onto one screen, thus keeping it in line with the ‘arrangement jamming’ principle.
• XY Controller. 5 XY Pads to control multiple device parameters.
• Drum Pads. A MIDI Device that can be dropped on any MIDI Track you wish to play on.
• Keys. A Keyboard that can be dropped on any MIDI Track you wish to play on, with velocity, Octave buttons, modwheel and Pitch Bend.
• Arturia Moog Editor. A custom controller layout for the [Arturia Moog emulation] VST. It is a device that converts the incoming OSC to CC data that the VST accepts.
• Most pages have global controls like Overdub/Record/Transport and switching MIDI Quantization between Off and 1/16ths.

This project is finished as far as Mark is concerned. He has the controller he wished for and it works entirely to his specifications. It’s all running very smooth in Max For Live and the response on the iPad is great. TouchOSC keeps improving so that means that eventually we’ll have more than 7 colors to work with and lots of cool little features surely to come. The day this project was finished, TouchOSC 1.6 came out with the ability to change colors and hide objects. Something that’ll be off great use for making customizable interfaces.

MB Control (in it’s current form), is not for sale.

It is far too personalized to be useful to everybody. I will release some of the devices individually soon. As for the core ‘brain’ patch that controls everything, I will keep improving on that until I’ve got a device that supports Clip Launchers of all sizes. Regardless of how many tracks/scenes you want to display. All you should need is ANY OSC controller, configure it to your liking, type in your IP somewhere and never have to set it up again.

Once a M4L runtime is available then we will definitely consider making this (and possibly different versions of it) available commerically.

Thanks to Bjorn for all this great info.

By way of comparison, below is a video of the LiveControl project, which now has a new homepage:
http://livecontrol.q3f.org/livecontrol/

As you can see, there are a variety of approaches to how to make the controller – software setup useful for music.

LiveControl for the iPad/iPod from ST8 on Vimeo.

LiveControl for the iPad/iPod from ST8 on Vimeo.

It’s fun watching projects progress. Since we covered control of Ableton Live with the iPad – noting a few of the early wrinkles in the setup – we’ve gotten new reports as people work out more efficient systems. And incidentally, if you don’t own an iPad, or like handheld-sized control (especially if you prefer to reserve space for a full-sized tactile controller with actual physical controls), a lot of this works on iPhone / iPod touch, too.

I’m also curious to watch how people specify OSC messages for Live, as it could be possible to begin to evolve OSC messaging that works across platforms, to describe more generically the sorts of things people want to control and make a truly open protocol.

LiveControl (TouchOSC Edition) is an open-source, Python-based project for working with live control of Ableton Live. Yes, it’s a bit fiddly now, but I’d view this as something in development – it may be mostly hacker-friendly early on, but could be ready for a wider audience as it evolves. It’s already also very cool – check out those layout pages, even for the iPod touch. (It’s a fork of a monome project, which also looks quite nice.) And because it’s built in Python, it could be worth examining for other projects, too.

For an alternative approach to control, see the iPhone + Logic tutorial video after the break.

In other news, chipPad for iPad has gone live on iTunes. This one isn’t getting an iPhone/iPod version – the developer says it probably won’t fit. But this would be way up on my list if I owned an iPad, so do go and grab it and let us know what you think. What’s appealing to me here, too, is that rather than the iPad being just a remote control for a computer, chipPad really attacks the idea of what this form factor could do as a digital performance tool. And that’s very exciting to me – an idea I think could be explored not only on iPad, but on Android, Linux, and Windows touch devices coming out, too. Take a look at the developer site

chipPad for iPad (Live) from earsmack on Vimeo.

Lastly, here’s a different take on using the iPhone / iPad platform as a controller. Noe Ruiz saw the Ryan Noise video last week and it inspired him to do something that, for him, was easier – here using Apple’s Logic in place of Ableton Live. There’s other cool stuff on his site, including his own work on a DJ interface for the iPlatforms.

Why wait for The Future, when you can have a full-featured DAW that supports OSC (OpenSoundControl), right now, today? That DAW turns out to be Ardour, the open source workstation software that’s been maturing surprisingly nicely, and runs on both Mac OS X and Linux.

Ardour has had OSC support for some time, but early this year, it got proper documentation. Setup is absurdly simple: there’s a single menu item to check off at Options > Misc Options > Use OSC. If you’re using any recent build, it’ll be there – no need for the bleeding edge. (If you want to adjust the port on which Ardour listens, there’s a single line to edit in a configuration file, though the default will probably work just fine.)

Check the menu item, and Ardour is ready to receive OSC messages, meaning it’d be really easy to build an OSC-compliant control surface from hardware or software. (I probably shouldn’t mention this in public, but I’ve started a simple remote control for Android. If you have feature requests or an idea of how it should work, let me know. One thing I’d like is to use Android’s gesture library for making menu shortcuts. I only bring this up in case anyone is interested in helping.)

The advantage of OSC over MIDI or even traditional keymaps is that there’s no translation of one thing to something else. Ardour simply responds to any message sent to any menu item. The message for Save, then, is Save. The message “edit cursor to previous region start” is edit-cursor-to-previous-region-start. Everything is described in human-readable English.

http://ardour.org/osc_control

It’s also not hard to look at the OSC commands and imagine a more generic spec for common, shared commands that would work across DAWs.

Ardour is already a joy to use for audio, especially if you think of it not as an all-in-one app that has every conceivable effect you’d ever need, but as a JACK-enabled host that works with other tools. Little wonder: JACK audio, an ingenious way of routing sound and transport between software on Linux and Mac, is also the creation of lead Ardour developer Paul Davis. (On Linux, I’ve started using the combination as a way of conveniently recording sounds from Pd.)

If you’ve found other DAWs have gotten overcomplicated and want an audio host that focuses on exceling at the basics, Ardour is well worth a look. Of course, for many of us, MIDI editing is a basic we can’t do without, so needless to say a lot of folks are impatient for Ardour. Paul tells me progress is going smoothly, though, so stay tuned – and consider donating at the site if you like what you see and want to support more development. Another way to help: on Mac, there’s the fantastic-looking Mixbus, a commercial version of Ardour that turns it into a full-featured, analog-style mixing console with effects.

http://ardour.org/

And commercial developers, I do hope you’re paying attention, too. Yes, this is something you could do.

Readers: what would you want to see from OSC controllers for a DAW?

Updated: Ardour + TouchOSC

Max Breakwell has blogged the Ardour DAW and also has set up a convenient-looking template for TouchOSC. I agree with Max that one of the big challenges is just picking out what you want to control – you wouldn’t want everything (that’s what the UI is for). On the other hand, it’s great to have that flexibility. Wanted to post this and haven’t yet had time to ask him, but I find it curious that he needs to run Max/MSP in the background to process the ports; I have to find out why.

TouchOSC and Ardour

“Ardour and OSC Ideas” / Ardour mini-review

Needless to say, though, OSC does not have to mean iPhone/iPad, exclusively. OSC hardware is gradually evolving, and other platforms are possible, too — including what promise to be some dirt-cheap, Android-powered tablets later this year. So I’d keep my eye on this one; even if you’re not ready yet, you might find yourself using this combination down the road.

Updated: Ardour + Pd

With OSC control providing full control of everything Ardour does, you wind up with something a little bit akin to the combination of Max for Live and the Ableton Live API calls (Live DOM). Not only could you control Ardour yourself via a tablet or controller or other device, but you could build a patch that provides programmatic control of Ardour. What might you do with that? Well, that’s up to you – it seems it could range from the practical (automating common tasks) to the somewhat unusual.

Apostool is a set of Pd patches that turn Pd into a “scripting” tool for Ardour. Developed by a user by the name of seegwen, it’s in its first steps, but it’s a good place to start if this interests you (and from comments on Twitter and elsewhere, I think it might). In case this seems like a distraction, too, there’s no reason not to keep such a patch simple, pulling only what you want to manipulate – indeed, it’s likely faster than some MIDI assignments and the like would be.

There’s a great discussion on the Ardour forum, which even raises the possibility of “algorithmic mixing.” Dave Phillips, the awesome Linux audio author, even chimes in with some ideas of other software that could get in on the fun. Sure, it sounds intensely geeky, but because of the potential simplicity of the tools involved, there’s no reason you couldn’t come up with a simple project and make some actual music with these ideas.

Apostool, Ardour Puredata Osc Scripting tool [Ardour forum]
Apostool – Puredata – Gwen [Project page]

And MIDI… For all the MIDI gear you’ve got that does MIDI and not OSC, Ardour needs your help creating mappings:
We Need You: creating MIDI controller mappings for Ardour 3