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I've just finished watching Dave's most recent seminar on talkers, and the belcanto picture is starting to fill out and make more sense. Something I've wanted to do for a while is shunt some of the control keygroups off the main keyboard and onto the percussion keys - ie so I can toggle loops but still have all of keygroup 1 available for playing.

Here are the steps I went through, based on the contents of belcanto seminar 2, and the latest one on talkers:

percussion kgroup 1 hey
output 7 create
talker create
it to setup talker name ify
percussion kgroup 1 output 7 to setup talker connect
empty join
drummer listen
setup talker listen
1 when 1 toggle play
2 when 2 toggle play
3 when 3 toggle play
4 when 4 toggle play
5 when 5 toggle play
6 when 6 toggle play
7 when 7 toggle play
8 when 8 toggle play
9 when 9 toggle play
10 when 10 toggle play
11 when 11 toggle play
12 when 12 toggle play
empty join


This makes a 7th output on the percussion keys, so if you hold in the percussion mode key and selct that 7th light, you get 12 toggle keys that control the first 12 of the 16 drum loops.

I think I've also figured out how to put recorder arm controls in the same places, ie centralise all the recorder arming for 12 of the instruments, instead of '1 when 1 toggle play', you need to say:

setup talker listen
" sampler 1 recorder hey variable bar record " when 1 do
" sampler 2 recorder hey variable bar record " when 2 do
" sampler 3 recorder hey variable bar record " when 3 do
" sampler 4 recorder hey variable bar record " when 4 do
" audio unit rig 1 recorder hey variable bar record " when 5 do
" audio unit rig 2 recorder hey variable bar record " when 6 do
" audio unit rig 3 recorder hey variable bar record " when 7 do
" audio unit rig 4 recorder hey variable bar record " when 8 do

etc...


This all works with 1.2.11-stable and Alpha setup 1. I tried some of these things with 1.3.2-unstable, and it seems that the internals of the Alpha setups have changed a fair bit to the point where this no longer works.

It's particularly satisfying to hit 'enter' in the eigencommander and see a new light appear somewhere on the 'harp.

superb, I'll be trying this

I found a nice trick, based on the extra buttons in the Stage setups for the Alpha. If you use the percussion keygroup again with a new talker, and for the various keys have things like:

percussion kgroup 1 hey
output 8 create
talker create
it to base note talker name ify
percussion kgroup 1 output 8 to base note talker connect
empty join
audio unit rig 1 scaler listen
base note talker listen
base note to 0 when 1 set
base note to 1 when 2 set
base note to 2 when 3 set
etc...
empty join


Then this lets you record stuff on AU 1, say an octave bass part with lots of movement and expression, then leave it looping on say a 2 bar sequence. Now hitting the percussion keys lets you transpose it after it has been recorded so you can play the same bass part with complicated articulations on any of 12 notes by just pressing one key .