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Software: Changing the octave with MIDI in? (Or OSC)

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written by: 0beron

Hi keyman,
My post about changing instruments in belcanto was directed at stuwyatt:
"Also, I know that in previous versions of EigenD, there was no belcanto command for changing instruments. Is this still the case? "

You could potentially hook this up to the midi input talker as you describe, but you'd need some kind of variable mechanism to store the active output and then switch it off when a new one is requested.

written by: fzzzy

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:58:57 +0100 BST

Hello,

The new feature for changing scales and the key using MIDI is very nice, but it would also be nice to set the absolute or relative octave. I am more interested in absolute octave as I would like to map buttons on the monome to different octaves.

It also seems like it would be nice to be able to somehow trigger belcanto scripts over MIDI. Triggering scripts remotely seems like it would be an easyish feature that could add a lot of flexibility once people start figuring out how to do more things in belcanto.

Of course, I would much rather have all of the settings of the eigenharp exposed over OSC instead of MIDI, but since the MIDI feature is already there perhaps it would be fairly easy to add the ability to change octave.


written by: mikemilton

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:14:41 +0100 BST

I think one can 'play' belcanto (hence the staff and numbers in the vocabulary).

It would be interesting to know how to connect midi in and OSC to this process. I'd like to use my iPhone / touch as an (OSC?) source for this ... set up a screen of the 'scenes' you want and just click to change 'scenes' while playing

For the PICO it might be interesting to add an entry to the midi implementation to switch (toggle) between the present setup and playing to belcanto. I gather that an Alpha setup could include a section of the keyboard for this already


written by: fzzzy

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:57:58 +0100 BST

Well... That gives me a really interesting idea... what about a midi in port that interprets belcanto directly? While the ability to play belcanto live on the instrument is very awesome, I'm more interested in programming changes for songs.

Having the ability to play belcanto commands over MIDI would allow me to sequence all sorts of automatic changes while I am playing live. This seems to me to be a brand new type of instrument entirely, not only allowing the remapping of keys spatially but temporally as well... A virtual keyboard for the fourth dimension.


written by: john

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:07:52 +0100 BST

I think that this is already possible, I'll ask Sam but I think that a MIDI in can just be plumbed into the Interpreter. I'll let you know. This is in fact how we evaluated the feasibility of the idea originally - it was before there were any playable Eigenharps in existence so Isabel (my wife, who's a good pianist) and I played with it on a MIDI keyboard for quite a while. It's neat, being able to control stuff just playing notes, and it was a lot easier to learn than we originally thought it might be, particularly for non technical people.

One thing to remember about Belcanto though is that the Interpreter input is not like the Talkers - commands sent there are not timely, they are evaluated when they are sent and this can take an appreciable amount of time in musical terms, certainly for commands that do a lot of things this might be measured in several seconds (and longer if your system is busy doing lots of things). If you want to pre-program Belcanto commands, Talkers are by far and away the best way to do this as EigenD allows them to pre-evaluate the command, at which point most commands execute in one audio buffer time, less than 5 milliseconds, which is effectively immediate by musical measures. They are also a lot lighter in resource usage - it's a big overhead evaluating the original syntax.

It's a bit early to be doing too much to Talkers as we're about to make quite a few syntax changes to Belcanto to make them much easier to use (such as introducing the idea of variables) and we won't be providing an upgrade path for the Talkers when we do so, it's too hard to do this nicely. But if you want to have a play (and don't mind losing your efforts sometime later this summer) I'll get Sam to add documentation to the Wiki about how to do so for you. They are incredibly useful when you do know how to set them up, and are how many of the neat things on Eigenharps work.

John


written by: fzzzy

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:46:50 +0100 BST

John,

Awesome, thank you for the information. It's a bit difficult for those of us out here in the real world to imagine how things will all fit together, but I'm starting to get a better picture. More information is definitely welcome and useful. I would like more information now even if I will lose the ability to run existing scripts later... I will just rewrite the scripts later, and I'm sure having the extra time to soak in the information about how the system is architected will be beneficial.

It does sound like talkers are what I want. It definitely makes more sense to evaluate the scripts ahead of time to achieve the low latency on execution, and this is exactly what would be needed for live usage.

I think I can actually execute part of my vision right now using the existing ability to switch scales over MIDI. I'm going to load a set of custom scales, each containing the notes of a particular chord in a chord progression, and sequence the MIDI to switch between them over time. Then, I can just jam on the instrument -- even just randomly mash keys -- and the song will still follow the same progression. I'm sure once I experiment with this a little bit I will get more ideas of things like this to do. Experimentation is why I bought the eigenharp after all :-) Eventually it would be nice if EigenD had it's own high resolution DAW which allowed you to sequence these sorts of things, but building a DAW is hard work, so it's important to build bridges to existing systems with MIDI and OSC.

Regarding controlling things by playing notes being easy to learn -- I'm eager to learn, and I'm quite sure it will be easy with a little practice. Just need more information -- right now we're all mostly staring into an opaque box.

I actually created a 10 key chording keyboard, using chords of my own design, and it has been surprisingly easy to learn as well. You can type almost any key on a regular computer keyboard using various chords of 6 keys. The other 4 keys are shift, control, option, and command. It also uses three of the keys up top as a mouse. One key allows you to move the mouse, one key allows you to scroll the scroll wheel (up and down as well as left and right), and one key is for clicking.

I'll make a video demoing this tomorrow, and if people are interested I can bundle up the max patch for it, which anyone should be able to run in the free max runtime. The only issue is that you also have to own the Plogue Bidule audio unit for the mouse, to get the roll and yaw info into Max over OSC, and OSCulator if you want the scroll wheel support, since the aka.mouse external for max doesn't support the scroll wheel. But it's just a prototype, and one that works extremely well.

The thing I like best about the eigenharp and the monome is the community of imaginative users who see no walls with these new interfaces. If you can imagine it, you should build it, and if it doesn't turn out to be a great idea, you learned something. The sharing of techniques also sets up a powerful network effect of people encouraging each other.


written by: stuwyatt

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:50:24 +0100 BST

This is something that really interests me. I plan to expand the Pico with a Novation Launchpad controller, and I would love to set it up so that I could control the entire Pico's functionality using the Launchpad.

It is already hard-coded into EigenD to load setups, change scales/keys etc. via midi, but it would be hugely useful if we could have the ability to run scripts based on midi note triggers. That way, it would be possible to change so many elements of EigenD with one keypress. Presently, you have to use both hands to change settings on the Pico, which means that the playing has to stop while all this goes on. It would be lovely to instantly switch between instruments, to change the pitch bend settings, the cello impulse file... etc... all on the fly.

How time consuming would it be to modify the midi talker so that it reads a set up file on startup that contains lines consisting of [xxx:script name/belcanto command(s)] - with xxx being the midi PC number?

Also, I know that in previous versions of EigenD, there was no belcanto command for changing instruments. Is this still the case?


written by: sam

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:05:29 +0100 BST

Hi all,

I will add octave up/down to the MIDI triggering that occurs in the Factory Setups and post here when it is available in a release.

Sam
Eigenlabs Software Department.


written by: fzzzy

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:18:26 +0100 BST

Sam,

Would it also be possible to add absolute octave selection? I want to have a row of monome buttons representing each octave.


written by: keyman

Thu, 6 Jan 2011 05:28:03 +0000 GMT

By now I can "play" with the octave talker, change location for example
but either way one hand has to stop playing...
MIDI triggering would be awesome! anytime soon??
please....

Could it be also possible with the pedals? (octave changing) I did refer this to Dave...

keyman


written by: 0beron

Thu, 6 Jan 2011 22:12:30 +0000 GMT

You can change instruments in belcanto -

kgroup (n) listen
output (current) un set
output (desired) set

Tricky thing is knowing what instrument is currently active and turning it off, and knowing the output number for the instrument, which is the number of the key you use to select it by hand.


written by: keyman

Thu, 6 Jan 2011 23:18:08 +0000 GMT

Hi, 0beron
Is you're last post for me ?? octave changing?

By the way left you a message on you're youtube...

keyman


written by: keyman

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:05:16 +0000 GMT

@keyman

me to me:
Manage to find out how to add MIDI triggering to ALPHA 1 split standard setup (other splits and setups...have to check)

kgroup 1 listen
midi input talker listen
midi input listen
octave when 53 up
octave when 52 down

This works on the PICO too... uffff, octave jamming on the way!

keyman


written by: 0beron

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:26:29 +0000 GMT

Hi keyman,
My post about changing instruments in belcanto was directed at stuwyatt:
"Also, I know that in previous versions of EigenD, there was no belcanto command for changing instruments. Is this still the case? "

You could potentially hook this up to the midi input talker as you describe, but you'd need some kind of variable mechanism to store the active output and then switch it off when a new one is requested.



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