5 May
2009
5 May
'09
1:09 p.m.
Hi @LAU people,
I would like to open a discussion about the MIDI capabilities of LAU
applications here.
There is quite a number of great LAU software of course and we have seen
frequent announcements of new versions or even complete new applications.
But from a particular point of view their use sometimes is a bit limited.
I have found that most applications require the user to work (record, program,
finetune etc.) from behind the computer on which the application runs. But that
limits the usability in case someone is actually playing an instrument with
MIDI interface, especially in a live playing environment, and needs something
more convenient to handle parameters etc.
I have seen few applications that allow for using MIDI commands let alone
allow me to enter a custom made (be it SYS EX message or any controller
message) MIDI message to trigger a particular action within the application.
There have been a number of hardware controllers available for some time that
come with numerous drawbars, pushbuttons and similar stuff to ease controlling
mixer applications, drum applications or anything else, so having a flexible
MIDI input interface (software) seems to me to be a really great idea.
At the moment things I would like to do force me to use a MIDI programming
language instead of using all these new fancy GUI applications with much more
and much better options apart from their MIDI support than the simple
programming environment has. I have to program nearly everything on my own.
And I find myself running against walls because there are just too many things
that simply do not work.
I wonder if noone else has a MIDI "Start/Stop" feature on their wishlist for
their favourite drum computer program, or "Fill
1/Fill2/Ending1/Ending2/Variation" etc. (which applications like hydrogen do
not yet have but they are on their way).
I wonder if noone else prefers a real hardware turning knob over a GUI mouse
slider (which cannot be moved from keyboard, as there is no MIDI controller
input for the slider...).
What do You think? Anything worth adding for You here? Is better MIDI input of
applications worth asking for?
Would like to learn more...
Regards,
Crypto.
6 May
6 May
12:23 a.m.
Crypto wrote:
Hi @LAU people,
I would like to open a discussion about the MIDI capabilities of LAU
applications here.
There is quite a number of great LAU software of course and we have seen
frequent announcements of new versions or even complete new applications.
But from a particular point of view their use sometimes is a bit limited.
I have found that most applications require the user to work (record, program,
finetune etc.) from behind the computer on which the application runs. But that
limits the usability in case someone is actually playing an instrument with
MIDI interface, especially in a live playing environment, and needs something
more convenient to handle parameters etc.
I have seen few applications that allow for using MIDI commands let alone
allow me to enter a custom made (be it SYS EX message or any controller
message) MIDI message to trigger a particular action within the application.
There have been a number of hardware controllers available for some time that
come with numerous drawbars, pushbuttons and similar stuff to ease controlling
mixer applications, drum applications or anything else, so having a flexible
MIDI input interface (software) seems to me to be a really great idea.
At the moment things I would like to do force me to use a MIDI programming
language instead of using all these new fancy GUI applications with much more
and much better options apart from their MIDI support than the simple
programming environment has. I have to program nearly everything on my own.
And I find myself running against walls because there are just too many things
that simply do not work.
I wonder if noone else has a MIDI "Start/Stop" feature on their wishlist for
their favourite drum computer program, or "Fill
1/Fill2/Ending1/Ending2/Variation" etc. (which applications like hydrogen do
not yet have but they are on their way).
I wonder if noone else prefers a real hardware turning knob over a GUI mouse
slider (which cannot be moved from keyboard, as there is no MIDI controller
input for the slider...).
What do You think? Anything worth adding for You here? Is better MIDI input of
applications worth asking for?
Would like to learn more...
I htink everyone would aggree that midi support for devices is not as
user friendly as it could be. It's something that has not had alot of
attention because there are simply not enough people with devices who
are prepared to spend time on it at the moment.
Have you tried working with osc to connect your device?
Which specific apps are you using to connect the device with and what
are the specific issues that you see? If we strip it back to specific
issues then we should be able to use your setup as a test bed of sorts
to get round them or give the original devs a heads up.
Cheers.
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
18 May
18 May
7:36 a.m.
On Wednesday, May 6th 2009 04:24:52 Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Crypto wrote:
Hi @LAU people,
I would like to open a discussion about the MIDI capabilities of LAU
applications here.
[...]
I htink everyone would aggree that midi support for devices is not as
user friendly as it could be. It's something that has not had alot of
attention because there are simply not enough people with devices who
are prepared to spend time on it at the moment.
Have you tried working with osc to connect your device?
Which specific apps are you using to connect the device with and what
are the specific issues that you see? If we strip it back to specific
issues then we should be able to use your setup as a test bed of sorts
to get round them or give the original devs a heads up.
Cheers.
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
Patrick,
thx for your reply here.
I have had a look at the OSC webpages and it seems to me that OSC is not what
I need. It appears to exeed the abilities /overcome limitations of MIDI to
some degree, but if an application does not implement OSC features I am stuck
again (or if that is not true than I have not yet found about how to control
any application using OSC, a setup in which OSC acts as a MIDI-to-pc-command
converter).
This is what I have and what I would like to to with it:
http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=64174aa51a6518cc8da27b3e1b…
Following this lenghty link you can find a short description and a photo taken
of my MIDIfied formerly pure analogue electric organ. I have removed all
analogue circuitry that was inside of it previously and replaced it with a µ
controller operated MIDI board. This board can evaluate incoming events like
pressing a button, turning a knob and moving a drawbar and convert them into a
MIDI message.
What I would like to do in a first place is "simply" control MIDI applications
that run on my notebook via these MIDI messages. Or, if you will say it like
that: I need a MIDI link from my MIDI organ to the applications running on my
notebook. The commands are sent after triggering/switching/moving the turning
knobs/pushbuttons/drawbars.
I have already prepared a testing setup for controlling the B4II virtual organ
and in this case I can see drawbars moving on the notebook screen after moving
the hardware drawbars of my MIDI organ. I need similar behaviour/environment
with all other LAU applications. I need them to be controllable via MIDI in
the same way as they already are controllable via computer keyboard and mouse
operation on the GUI.
I would like to do similar to the B4II stuff with a drum application, such as
starting a rhythm and stopping a rhythm playing, and also play a fill in when
pressing a button, play an ending, have single finger chord recognition,
trigger single drum sounds. Similar to the moving drawbars of the B4II GUI it
means in this case that after pressing the hardware button on my MIDI organ a
MIDI message (typically "start") would make a drum application start a
particular rhythm to play (or a pattern, whatever). In that case it could well
mean that one sees an virtual button be pressed on the GUI of the drum
application.
So far I have not found any application that would be capable of doing all of
that, unless I have the opportunity of doing the programming myself. For that,
the only MIDI language environment I have found is keykit.
Keykit has other things that still need resolving (I have found it cannot yet
handle more than one MIDI input on linux machines), but it can do e.g.
realtime operation, deal with MIDI data in a programming like environment and
it can even run system commands in a shell. Unless other applications take up
with the MIDI track again I have planned to use keykit as a filter for incoming
MIDI events and even program my own drum computer with it.
I was stuck by the fact that an otherwise great application like hydrogen is
unable to perform a simple thing such as playing a fill-in via MIDI, although
it offers plenty of ways to play all sorts of MIDI sequences (I compare a fill-
in to a sequence here). I know that hydrogen offers some commands such as
"start" and "stop", but that is not enough for what I would like to
do.
hydrogen is like Edward Scissorhands without the human hands he should have
received. hydrogen could do it if it only had a more advanced MIDI handling.
Or to put it short:
Play a sequence as a fill-in: use computerkeyboard or mouse to start playing
it.
How can I do the same thing in a live play environment from my MIDI organ?
Fiddling with mouse and notebook keyboard is no useful option.
I am not asking for more features some applications already have, because I am
sure that LAU applications really have matured and become feature rich - I am
asking for a way to use these features by triggering them via a MIDI command.
That would enable live musicians to use their tools live, while playing,
without any staring at a computer screen.
I understand that some things are not defined by MIDI specification and that
could be the reason why there is no "fill in" option in hydrogen, to stay with
this example. But then: the B4II software which I mentioned above has all
kinds of controller messages overriding the standard MIDI definition. So I
guess it could be well possible to implement one's own MIDI controller
messsages into an application (if that really were necessary and there were no
standard MIDI message for doing that), otherwise SYSEX messages, NRPN...
Kind regards,
Crypto.
7:57 a.m.
Crypto wrote:
On Wednesday, May 6th 2009 04:24:52 Patrick Shirkey
wrote:
Crypto wrote:
Hi @LAU people,
I would like to open a discussion about the MIDI capabilities of LAU
applications here.
[...]
I htink everyone would aggree that midi support
for devices is not as
user friendly as it could be. It's something that has not had alot of
attention because there are simply not enough people with devices who
are prepared to spend time on it at the moment.
Have you tried working with osc to connect your device?
Which specific apps are you using to connect the device with and what
are the specific issues that you see? If we strip it back to specific
issues then we should be able to use your setup as a test bed of sorts
to get round them or give the original devs a heads up.
Cheers.
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
Patrick,
thx for your reply here.
I have had a look at the OSC webpages and it seems to me that OSC is not what
I need. It appears to exeed the abilities /overcome limitations of MIDI to
some degree, but if an application does not implement OSC features I am stuck
again (or if that is not true than I have not yet found about how to control
any application using OSC, a setup in which OSC acts as a MIDI-to-pc-command
converter).
This is what I have and what I would like to to with
it:
http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=64174aa51a6518cc8da27b3e1b…
Very cool idea.
So from your description below, you have some trouble getting "some"
midi messages to be received by various applications?
Hydrogen is being actively worked on and I'm sure you would get a quick
response from the team by posting this specific issue of the message for
the fill in event not being understood/received.
It's possible that no one has thought to implement this but that it is
actually a small step with a couple of lines of specific code for that
feature connected to a specific function. I assume that Hydrogen/H2
already supports fill-ins with a gui control so attaching a specific
midi message to that control will be a straightforward step if you can
provide the sysex message and/or assist with testing.
I agree with you that we are sorely missing a universal method for
learning the sysex of the available controller. A daemon app that looked
after this and provided a standard translation for every app to access
would be ideal. So far it has been left to the devs to implement the
midi protocol directly via alsa/oss into each app. Recently things have
improved with jack midi but it is still being road tested as it is just
a couple of years old.
I'm not sure if anyone is working on a daemon for learning and
translating midi control messages. Perhaps someone could start by taking
the specific code out of Ardour or maybe if enough people put a bounty
on it Paul would consider splitting it out himself for everyone to use...
It's a pretty big project and would need a commitment of several months
to make it truly accessible. But we do have the building blocks in place
if someone wanted to make some headway.
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
Following this lenghty link you can find a short
description and a photo taken
of my MIDIfied formerly pure analogue electric organ. I have removed all
analogue circuitry that was inside of it previously and replaced it with a µ
controller operated MIDI board. This board can evaluate incoming events like
pressing a button, turning a knob and moving a drawbar and convert them into a
MIDI message.
What I would like to do in a first place is "simply" control MIDI applications
that run on my notebook via these MIDI messages. Or, if you will say it like
that: I need a MIDI link from my MIDI organ to the applications running on my
notebook. The commands are sent after triggering/switching/moving the turning
knobs/pushbuttons/drawbars.
I have already prepared a testing setup for controlling the B4II virtual organ
and in this case I can see drawbars moving on the notebook screen after moving
the hardware drawbars of my MIDI organ. I need similar behaviour/environment
with all other LAU applications. I need them to be controllable via MIDI in
the same way as they already are controllable via computer keyboard and mouse
operation on the GUI.
I would like to do similar to the B4II stuff with a drum application, such as
starting a rhythm and stopping a rhythm playing, and also play a fill in when
pressing a button, play an ending, have single finger chord recognition,
trigger single drum sounds. Similar to the moving drawbars of the B4II GUI it
means in this case that after pressing the hardware button on my MIDI organ a
MIDI message (typically "start") would make a drum application start a
particular rhythm to play (or a pattern, whatever). In that case it could well
mean that one sees an virtual button be pressed on the GUI of the drum
application.
So far I have not found any application that would be capable of doing all of
that, unless I have the opportunity of doing the programming myself. For that,
the only MIDI language environment I have found is keykit.
Keykit has other things that still need resolving (I have found it cannot yet
handle more than one MIDI input on linux machines), but it can do e.g.
realtime operation, deal with MIDI data in a programming like environment and
it can even run system commands in a shell. Unless other applications take up
with the MIDI track again I have planned to use keykit as a filter for incoming
MIDI events and even program my own drum computer with it.
I was stuck by the fact that an otherwise great application like hydrogen is
unable to perform a simple thing such as playing a fill-in via MIDI, although
it offers plenty of ways to play all sorts of MIDI sequences (I compare a fill-
in to a sequence here). I know that hydrogen offers some commands such as
"start" and "stop", but that is not enough for what I would like to
do.
hydrogen is like Edward Scissorhands without the human hands he should have
received. hydrogen could do it if it only had a more advanced MIDI handling.
Or to put it short:
Play a sequence as a fill-in: use computerkeyboard or mouse to start playing
it.
How can I do the same thing in a live play environment from my MIDI organ?
Fiddling with mouse and notebook keyboard is no useful option.
I am not asking for more features some applications already have, because I am
sure that LAU applications really have matured and become feature rich - I am
asking for a way to use these features by triggering them via a MIDI command.
That would enable live musicians to use their tools live, while playing,
without any staring at a computer screen.
I understand that some things are not defined by MIDI specification and that
could be the reason why there is no "fill in" option in hydrogen, to stay with
this example. But then: the B4II software which I mentioned above has all
kinds of controller messages overriding the standard MIDI definition. So I
guess it could be well possible to implement one's own MIDI controller
messsages into an application (if that really were necessary and there were no
standard MIDI message for doing that), otherwise SYSEX messages, NRPN...
Kind regards,
Crypto.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
11:40 a.m.
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Crypto <crptdngl71(a)gmx.net> wrote:
What I would like to do in a first place is "simply" control MIDI
applications
that run on my notebook via these MIDI messages. Or, if you will say it like
that: I need a MIDI link from my MIDI organ to the applications running on my
notebook. The commands are sent after triggering/switching/moving the turning
knobs/pushbuttons/drawbars.
at LAC 2006 (? it could have been 2005 or even 2004) there was a
presentation of an app that converted MIDI into X Events, allowing
MIDI to be used to control any X Window application even if it did not
use MIDI itself. i don't know if this app is still available, or how
well it worked, though the demonstration certainly did. You could make
MIDI trigger arbitrary buttons on the screen, move knobs, faders etc.
i'm not much of an advocate of this kind of approach, but its worth
being aware of.
Keykit has other things that still need resolving (I
have found it cannot yet
handle more than one MIDI input on linux machines),
this is not true. I (re)wrote the linux MIDI support in KeyKit
specifically to support this. there is a readme file in the
distribution about how to do it.
I was stuck by the fact that an otherwise great
application like hydrogen is
unable to perform a simple thing such as playing a fill-in via MIDI, although
it offers plenty of ways to play all sorts of MIDI sequences (I compare a fill-
in to a sequence here). I know that hydrogen offers some commands such as
"start" and "stop", but that is not enough for what I would like to
do.
hydrogen is like Edward Scissorhands without the human hands he should have
received. hydrogen could do it if it only had a more advanced MIDI handling.
I think you are totally confused about what Hydrogen wants to be.
12:03 p.m.
On Monday, 18 Mai 2009 15:40:42 Paul Davis wrote:
I understand that keykit is able to do that, and I was able to make keykit
have two separate input ports as described in that readme file you mention
above. But there is a problem if one out of several ports uses running state.
Keykit then shows an error message that it expected a status byte but got data
bytes instead. I wrote to keykit group about this, and Tim replied it is a
problem of function src/fsm.c that does not take MIDI input port into account.
He also suggested on maybe how to fix it, but he himself does not have the time
to do that at the moment, and I at the moment cannot do that myself either
(although it is probably rather simple to fix).
Maybe hydrogen is not ment to be what I thought it is at the first place, but
browsing the hydrogen forum I have found several postings asking about the
same thing. They say, to put it short, this has to wait until v. 0.95 of
hydrogen has arrived, as there are several major GUI changes planned. I'm
actually looking forward to trying out that future version of hydrogen.
Kind regards,
Crypto.
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Crypto
<crptdngl71(a)gmx.net> wrote:
That to me really sounds worth closer examination as it could really be the
stuff I need.
What I would like to do in a first place is
"simply" control MIDI
applications that run on my notebook via these MIDI messages. Or, if you
will say it like that: I need a MIDI link from my MIDI organ to the
applications running on my notebook. The commands are sent after
triggering/switching/moving the turning knobs/pushbuttons/drawbars.
at LAC 2006 (? it could have been 2005 or even 2004) there was a
presentation of an app that converted MIDI into X Events, allowing
MIDI to be used to control any X Window application even if it did not
use MIDI itself. i don't know if this app is still available, or how
well it worked, though the demonstration certainly did. You could make
MIDI trigger arbitrary buttons on the screen, move knobs, faders etc.
i'm not much of an advocate of this kind of approach, but its worth
being aware of. Keykit has other things that still need resolving
(I have found it cannot
yet handle more than one MIDI input on linux machines),
this is not true. I (re)wrote the linux MIDI support in KeyKit
specifically to support this. there is a readme file in the
distribution about how to do it. I was stuck by the fact that an otherwise great
application like hydrogen
is unable to perform a simple thing such as playing a fill-in via MIDI,
although it offers plenty of ways to play all sorts of MIDI sequences (I
compare a fill- in to a sequence here). I know that hydrogen offers some
commands such as "start" and "stop", but that is not enough for what
I
would like to do. hydrogen is like Edward Scissorhands without the human
hands he should have received. hydrogen could do it if it only had a more
advanced MIDI handling.
I think you are totally confused about what Hydrogen wants to be. 
2:27 p.m.
Paul Davis wrote:
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Crypto
<crptdngl71(a)gmx.net> wrote:
lac 2005, MidiKinesis, by Peter Brinkmann of TU Berlin:
http://lac.zkm.de/2005/papers/peter_brinkmann.pdf
What I would like to do in a first place is
"simply" control MIDI applications
that run on my notebook via these MIDI messages. Or, if you will say it like
that: I need a MIDI link from my MIDI organ to the applications running on my
notebook. The commands are sent after triggering/switching/moving the turning
knobs/pushbuttons/drawbars.
at LAC 2006 (? it could have been 2005 or even 2004) there was a
presentation of an app that converted MIDI into X Events, allowing
MIDI to be used to control any X Window application even if it did not
use MIDI itself. i don't know if this app is still available, or how
well it worked, though the demonstration certainly did. You could make
MIDI trigger arbitrary buttons on the screen, move knobs, faders etc.
i'm not much of an advocate of this kind of approach, but its worth
being aware of. 
12:14 p.m.
Hi Crypto,
I'm a Hydrogen dev, and am copying it to the hydrogen dev list. I invite you to
continue the discussion over there.
Crypto wrote:
I was stuck by the fact that an otherwise great
application like hydrogen is
unable to perform a simple thing such as playing a fill-in via MIDI, although
it offers plenty of ways to play all sorts of MIDI sequences (I compare a fill-
in to a sequence here). I know that hydrogen offers some commands such as
"start" and "stop", but that is not enough for what I would like to
do.
hydrogen is like Edward Scissorhands without the human hands he should have
received. hydrogen could do it if it only had a more advanced MIDI handling.
Or to put it short:
Play a sequence as a fill-in: use computerkeyboard or mouse to start playing
it.
How can I do the same thing in a live play environment from my MIDI organ?
Fiddling with mouse and notebook keyboard is no useful option.
The development version (and possibly 0.9.3) of Hydrogen has something very much
like this, although it's totally undocumented as of yet. When you put Hydrogen
in Pattern Mode and allow "Live" mode or "Stacked" pattern mode, you
can trigger
individual patterns to start or stop playing based on MIDI input. In addition,
Hydrogen responds to MIDI program change events... mapping the program change to
the pattern that you want triggered.
Note that this is very similar to features provided by the sequencers seq24 and
non-sequencer, as well as live looping programs like freewheeling and sooperlooper.
* To get pattern mode, there's a widget at the top
where you switch between "Song" and "Pattern".
* To get "stacked" pattern mode...
On the left, there's a listing of all the patterns
that are currently loaded. At the top of this list,
and on the right, is a button called "stacked mode."
Click it so that 3 lines appear (this enables stacked
mode).
* Using the GUI, you can add/remove patterns from
the "currently playing" list by Ctrl+Click-ing
the pattern. The pattern will start playing
on the next cycle (not immediately).
* Using MIDI, sending a program change will select the
pattern for the next cycle. I don't know how well
it works with stacked mode, and I think the patterns
are numbered starting with 0, 1, 2, .... Pattern #0
is at the top of the list.
I've only recently discovered this feature... and I've never used it -- so let
me know how it goes.
FWIW, I'm not a fan of using a PC for this... should have been a CC... but it is
what it is. :-)
HTH,
Gabriel
6 May
6 May
10:17 a.m.
Crypto wrote:
Hi @LAU people,
I would like to open a discussion about the MIDI capabilities of LAU
applications here.
There is quite a number of great LAU software of course and we have seen
frequent announcements of new versions or even complete new applications.
But from a particular point of view their use sometimes is a bit limited.
I have found that most applications require the user to work (record, program,
finetune etc.) from behind the computer on which the application runs. But that
limits the usability in case someone is actually playing an instrument with
MIDI interface, especially in a live playing environment, and needs something
more convenient to handle parameters etc.
I have seen few applications that allow for using MIDI commands let alone
allow me to enter a custom made (be it SYS EX message or any controller
message) MIDI message to trigger a particular action within the application.
There have been a number of hardware controllers available for some time that
come with numerous drawbars, pushbuttons and similar stuff to ease controlling
mixer applications, drum applications or anything else, so having a flexible
MIDI input interface (software) seems to me to be a really great idea.
At the moment things I would like to do force me to use a MIDI programming
language instead of using all these new fancy GUI applications with much more
and much better options apart from their MIDI support than the simple
programming environment has. I have to program nearly everything on my own.
And I find myself running against walls because there are just too many things
that simply do not work.
I wonder if noone else has a MIDI "Start/Stop" feature on their wishlist for
their favourite drum computer program, or "Fill
1/Fill2/Ending1/Ending2/Variation" etc. (which applications like hydrogen do
not yet have but they are on their way).
I wonder if noone else prefers a real hardware turning knob over a GUI mouse
slider (which cannot be moved from keyboard, as there is no MIDI controller
input for the slider...).
What do You think? Anything worth adding for You here? Is better MIDI input of
applications worth asking for?
Would like to learn more...
In my particular case, as the developer of Jackbeat, MIDI support has been
postponed until I get a clear idea on how to do it right. I would like to
achieve something as user-friendly as possible, but that can still be adapted to
various hardware.
So, I need ideas and feedback, and yours would be appreciated as new tickets or
by commenting the relevant ones:
http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/ticket/20
http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/ticket/21
http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/ticket/19
Here are the questions that come to my mind:
- what would be the best MIDI configuration system in Jackbeat?
- how to achieve *both* easy and flexible bindings with a control surface?
- should a hw knob control a fixed track and/or the current GUI active track?
- what hardware do/would you use, and what are their peculiarities?
--
Olivier
4:27 p.m.
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Olivier Guilyardi <ml(a)xung.org> wrote:
Crypto wrote:
regarding your first two questions: I use a device with multiple knobs
(as I am sure do many others), so it makes sense to have multiple
assignable knobs, one option being the current active track makes
sense.
Regarding flexible/easy setup, implement midi learn, it is simple:
user presses learn button on GUI control (ie. a right click context
menu on each knob or slider), then moves a slider or knob on midi
device, software takes the fist cc it sees from the external device,
and assigns it to that software control. IE I right click and select
"learn" on the track 3 fader, then I move a slider that sends CC 6,
from now on CC 6 controls the track 3 fader (and for bonus points,
have anything other than midi that changes the track 3 fader
(automation, gui activity, etc.) SEND a CC 6, for those of us with
motorized or LED-ring knobs/faders).
Hi @LAU people,
I would like to open a discussion about the MIDI capabilities of LAU
applications here.
There is quite a number of great LAU software of course and we have seen
frequent announcements of new versions or even complete new applications.
But from a particular point of view their use sometimes is a bit limited.
I have found that most applications require the user to work (record, program,
finetune etc.) from behind the computer on which the application runs. But that
limits the usability in case someone is actually playing an instrument with
MIDI interface, especially in a live playing environment, and needs something
more convenient to handle parameters etc.
I have seen few applications that allow for using MIDI commands let alone
allow me to enter a custom made (be it SYS EX message or any controller
message) MIDI message to trigger a particular action within the application.
There have been a number of hardware controllers available for some time that
come with numerous drawbars, pushbuttons and similar stuff to ease controlling
mixer applications, drum applications or anything else, so having a flexible
MIDI input interface (software) seems to me to be a really great idea.
At the moment things I would like to do force me to use a MIDI programming
language instead of using all these new fancy GUI applications with much more
and much better options apart from their MIDI support than the simple
programming environment has. I have to program nearly everything on my own.
And I find myself running against walls because there are just too many things
that simply do not work.
I wonder if noone else has a MIDI "Start/Stop" feature on their wishlist for
their favourite drum computer program, or "Fill
1/Fill2/Ending1/Ending2/Variation" etc. (which applications like hydrogen do
not yet have but they are on their way).
I wonder if noone else prefers a real hardware turning knob over a GUI mouse
slider (which cannot be moved from keyboard, as there is no MIDI controller
input for the slider...).
What do You think? Anything worth adding for You here? Is better MIDI input of
applications worth asking for?
Would like to learn more...
In my particular case, as the developer of Jackbeat, MIDI support has been
postponed until I get a clear idea on how to do it right. I would like to
achieve something as user-friendly as possible, but that can still be adapted to
various hardware.
So, I need ideas and feedback, and yours would be appreciated as new tickets or
by commenting the relevant ones:
http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/ticket/20
http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/ticket/21
http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/ticket/19
Here are the questions that come to my mind:
- what would be the best MIDI configuration system in Jackbeat?
- how to achieve *both* easy and flexible bindings with a control surface?
- should a hw knob control a fixed track and/or the current GUI active track?
- what hardware do/would you use, and what are their peculiarities?
--
Olivier
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
7:10 p.m.
Justin Smith wrote:
The trouble with midi learn is that when binding the pitch widget in the active
track property panel, there will be an ambiguity about whether the user wants to
control the active track or track N.
Plus, from what I read on this list the push buttons on control surface have
various behaviours. So when binding a push button to a mute widget, what to do:
- mute for CC value > 0 and unmute for CC value == 0
- the opposite
- toggle muting (ignore value)
- mute (ignore value)
- unmute (ignore value)
?
I sense that most if not all of these cases are possible.
So, what about a configuration dialog such as those found for shortcuts? You
would see the complete list of functions, could select one of these, then click
a "Learn" button and move/push/slide some hw control... Rational and easy to
me.
And, at a later time, I could implement widget-based midi learn, which would
fall back on some reasonable default when there is an ambiguity.
Btw, thanks for mentioning motors and leds, I completely forgot those ;)
--
Olivier
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Olivier Guilyardi
<ml(a)xung.org> wrote:
- what would
be the best MIDI configuration system in Jackbeat?
- how to achieve *both* easy and flexible bindings with a control surface?
- should a hw knob control a fixed track and/or the current GUI active track?
- what hardware do/would you use, and what are their peculiarities?
regarding your first two questions: I use a device with multiple knobs
(as I am sure do many others), so it makes sense to have multiple
assignable knobs, one option being the current active track makes
sense.
Regarding flexible/easy setup, implement midi learn, it is simple:
user presses learn button on GUI control (ie. a right click context
menu on each knob or slider), then moves a slider or knob on midi
device, software takes the fist cc it sees from the external device,
and assigns it to that software control. IE I right click and select
"learn" on the track 3 fader, then I move a slider that sends CC 6,
from now on CC 6 controls the track 3 fader (and for bonus points,
have anything other than midi that changes the track 3 fader
(automation, gui activity, etc.) SEND a CC 6, for those of us with
motorized or LED-ring knobs/faders).
5696
days inactive
5709
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
10 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Crypto -
Gabriel M. Beddingfield -
Justin Smith -
Jörn Nettingsmeier -
Olivier Guilyardi -
Patrick Shirkey -
Paul Davis