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Hi Pete

I'm a Pico user without Workbench. I'd like to get Workbench, but I tell myself I need to get better with the Pico first. But that doesn't stop me being fascinated about how EigenD works inside. In response to your three queries...

1. There are commands available which dump the internals of EigenD. They are described very well at the videos of DevCon 2012, and see in particular the one entitled "EigenD Internals Part 1". Also, I wrote up a brief guide to some of the commands on the wiki, as well as a guide to Belcanto syntax.

2. The dump of some of the above commands is not very user-friendly, and I've found myself writing a sort of "EigenD explorer" to make better sense of them. I'll release this in a few weeks -- at the moment it's just scratching a personal itch in my spare time, and it's not really intended to be used by others, but no doubt it will be of some interest.

3. More and better documentation is always welcome ;-) I hope others will contribute to the wiki as they/we discover more together.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies, I'll go through the DevCon material, maybe I'll find what I'm looking for. I did my reading/watching of belcanto material already, somehow missed that one =)

The thing is – belcanto wiki/reference is nice, but the examples are quite scarce. (And again I do understand that the workbench is the solution, but I costs almost a Pico, so until it's Tau, I'll be crack the belcanto as heavy as I can). If there were more examples for the 2.0.x, maybe that would be easier.

But still seeing the world from pico perspective, what would be great:

1. octave changes via midi (as the 1.4 solution is not working, and it's quite crucial with small keyboard). I think that one is quite universal, so could be there forever.

[and a belcanto formula how to add new ones to the new factory defaults)

2. master volume listening for one CC to connect any universal expression pedal would be nice, too.

and for the belcanto missing examples:

I'd love to know the illuminator changes formula, so it would be possible to tweak the already downloaded pressets from here or build own ones.

I've made a few illuminator tricks, but I'm still missing the when-key changes or when-scale changes change map trick.

set and start playing the-web-illumination trick would be also nice to know, curl is nice, but why write applescript to run something inside =)) (like: when C#, scroll some bars, just for the whistles).

That one I'm still hoping to read through, but maybe there is an example I've missed for simple ones like:

"when scale changes, set illumination map"
or "when key changes set illumination map"

generally when->do things, and more not only the saved setups – but belcanto formulas to dig into.
plus a screenshot of pico factory-1 and pico factory-2 in Workbench on 2.x would be really helpful.

so much from the pico perspective, and again - I do understand it's easier in Workbench. i'm thinking about it as powering a bit the default pico setup and possibilities, and not loosing the things already covered in 1.4.x

Thanks a lot =)

--
pete

@Pete
I have to say this.... With so much ideas, better is to really get workbench and the sky is the limit.
One time purchase, you won't regret neither your Pico!

@0beron: but wouldn't it be possible to do "when something, light course 1 key 1?" and "when something else course 1 key 2?" in belcanto? =) I'm pretty sure I'll get there.

@keyman, @geert: I'd love to change my never claimed honorable-mention-bag for even-without-updates-workbench, giving back all crazy setups _with_heavy_descriptions_ =) [you know, rich pico setups repository] but seriously - given the fact it's Poland, £139 just after spending £49 for the base update is not that reasonable with only 18 keys to play with. So the plan is to squeeze it as much as possible and get Tau with Workbench on the achievement wave. Till then – fight hard to make it with Belcanto =)

At the moment I would really appreciate a fix for the midi-octaves switching which the update broke and maybe a master volume. Then I will gladly fight with the lights in belcanto to make my sense of achievement greater. =]

--
pete

@geert: once again, I do understand the only logical solution is workbench. still, just for setting up octaves and playing with lights for the moment is not enough to spare additional 99. but let's kill the money thing and get to code, as I really get the economic side =)

All I need for the moment is a possibility to dump the current setup visually to be able to tweak it just a bit OR a new receipe to tweak midi triggering, OR just an addition of octaves (preferably in a part of code on github, which I did browse quite a lot, did my homework =)).

You see, from my perspective it's a bug – something that worked perfectly on 1.4 now is broken after paid upgrade, and the only answer from you is "oh, pay twice that again and you'll get workbench and do everything =)". some day I will, now I just need a fix.

And after hours of fighting with bellcanto and feeling young and beautiful I hit the wall, because it's a bit difficult to know what's the wiring in 2.0.

So. To make my question as basic as possible, why this simple, beautiful piece of code doesn't work anymore? =)

"
kgroup 1 listen
midi input talker listen
midi input listen
octave when 1 up
octave when 5 down
"

changing kgroup 1(as it seem cease to exist) to anything from main keygroup to pico keyboard 1 doesn't help, and the answer is "inappropriate use of up" every time =)

--
pete

Pete, just my 2 cents but you really are not going to just use workbench for a few settings. You will absolutely use it to explore the full setup (it would have saved those hours) and, when you do, a great many ideas will come to mind.

I personally find that it is worth what it costs as a learning / exploring tool.

Have fun

m

@earthspot, the biggest problem with scripts is that they only work within the exact same setup that has the same agents, with the same names and similar connections, etc ... As soon as people start modifying their setups, scripts just start failing.

EigenD setups aren't intended to be a program, they're intended and have been designed as a living environment that changes along with you as a musician. They purpose is for it to be different for everyone as they gradually change and adapt their instrument to their needs.

given your latest annoucement, we can now assume everyone will have WB in the future - which is great news , and thanks again to eigenlabs shareholders!

however , i think WB lacks a couple of features for helping share setups...
lets assume ( and it is a big assumption) that rigs could form a shareable unit (reqd to protect namespace i think)
then i think WB lacks:
- copy/paste rig ... this can be seen in std setups, many rigs are very similar
- import/export rig ... useful so you can bring into an existing setup

principle being, a rig imported/pasted does not wire up it external gateway, but if its a small interface it should be simple enough for another user to wireup to thier setup :)

is this something easy to do?
unfortunately community cannot do until WB is open sourced (if it is)
hmm, unless we do it as an external agent perhaps...

@john: it's all perfectly clear, which brings me back to the main topic, leaving behind pico tweaks, as without workbench it's almost impossible to change anything, as it's impossible to get the knowledge, where everything is after a change to 2.0 (however - stage still has an ability to show active elements, so maybe that's my way of finding out what has changed before somebody kills that too =), which was not exactly how it worked in the beginning for the low budget pico. [it's quite like second VAT now, if you want' to get something done, buy workbench].

but having the whole righs in mainstage (which costs like $20, has 20gigs of instruments, fully programmable loopers and geert's midi jigger gratis] I'll stay on not having workbench until tau, still.

really, all I wanted is the midi octave switching back for pico on eigend 2.x =))

and having said that – a repository of setups for pico wouldn't be that difficult to do, you give two already, giving five more would solve most problems we have (like: 5 midi rigs + piano + cello + clarinet -- which would be the most efficient way of using pico with external tools, having the physical models and the rest on midi, best mainstage setup ever). add lights on, lights off, octaves and say, master volume via midi and we're set, no more noise from that side.

just saying =)

--
pete

The issue with the saving and loading of Rig's is of the Belcanto Talkers. Belcanto provides a system wide orthogonal control mechanism that is not connection based. The Talkers get their speed by an effective 'pre compilation' (which does actually create a connection, one we hide in Workbench for clarity and is just a convenient mechanism) and they make direct connections into the Rig when that happens, bypassing all the Rig encapsulation. This is part of the power they bring (so you can say suff like 'all scaler' and have it be meaningful). We have discussed this issue many times at Eigenlabs and there have been quite a number of suggestions as to how to make it work with pluggable Rigs. We have discarded most of them and the debate ended up centered around either bringing named 'Talker ports' out on to the suface of the Rigs, or making the current system work transparently. There are so many downsides to the 'Talker port' idea (think it through and you'll find them all in time) that we decided that the correct thing to do is to just make it work. This is quite possible, just either complicated or slow. It involves managing a dependency list for each Talker that keeps track of exactly what things in the system it might affect, then triggering the re-evaluation of that Talker when any of those things change, such as when any Rig is loaded or unloaded. This is possible to achieve in stages by just crudely re-evaluating all Talkers when Rig's come and go to start with, it's just likely to be slow and clunky without a proper dependancy management system as such a re-evaluation is likely, especially in bigger setups, to take some time and cause the hardware to be heavily loaded while it happens.

So in summary, loading and saving of Rigs as a plugin component is not a million miles away, but does involve a bit more trouble than you might think. It's something we've been thinking of for 2.2 or 2.3. If you want to have a look at it as a problem, please get in touch with Jim, as he's spent quite some time looking at the issues and has a good idea of the major work that needs to be done, and I'm sure that he could help get you started. It would be great to see someone working on this, if you can find the time. If you need access to the closed source part of EigenD (which will probably be released GPL later this year anyway, post foundation startup) please write to me and if you're happy to sign a contributor agreement an an NDA we can arrange that.

John