a few notes

I have not really paid this blog much attention recently, but I see there are still people coming across the things I’ve made and put here.

There are two reasons for this. I work by day in a shop, and Christmas was busy – I was tired, and I didn’t have any time to concentrate on any of this. And it was Christmas, other things were more exciting. I still haven’t got a lot of time to sped with this, although I might have more from February.

Secondly, my Max demo ran out, was re-installed on another computer, ran out, etc. So I cannot develop any further. I have not installed the Max 5 demo, because I want to do so when I have enough time to really get to know it. I haven’t bought Max, because it’s epensive, and I don’t have a lot of money; and because the educational discount is so generous, I’d like to become a student again an take advantage of that.

Also, the forthcoming Max4Live looks very exciting, and would enable all sorts of fun for my BCR2000 and pK in Ableton. However, I don’t particularly want a copy of Max that will only function with Live, so I’m waiting to see if the objects in it are also available to Max 5, if not what kind of discount or deals are available. In other words, now doesn’t look like a good time to buy Max 5, when potentially you could end up getting a worse deal than if you’d waited a few months for any promotional offers.

The BCR patch for Cubase may well be in a form on my computer that has progressed beyond the one on this site. I will try to spend a lttle time testing it so that I know it is working correctly, then upload it if it seems to be working any better. I have succeeded in getting vstxml to work with Cubase 4, so it can also be used with Cubase 4 – all this I will documentif I have the time.

Before my Max ran out I had started to clean up the Max patch for the pK – it was very messy, because I was learning it all as I went along, so frequently things were over-complicated because I didn’t know which object to use (I still don’t really). Anyway, my plan after the initial tidying was to abstract everything – so that I had simple objects which read midi in or sent midi out for the pads, buttons, etc – which would remove a layer of clutter, and allow more concentration on programming the interesting parts, rather than the Native Mode parts. Once I get hold of Max 5, demo, M4L, or otherwise, this is probably what I will start with.

In the meantime, the CovOps have released their Max patch. On first, brief inspection, it looks like I could learn a lot from it, since it’s all been made by someone who actually knows what he’s doing. Anyone interested in pK <-> Max interfacing might want to take a look. And maybe listen to some of his music while you do

then, if ou still have time to waste, make me one of these

Cubase Generic Remote and the BCR

Do you want the Cubase Generic Remote for remote control to be better? Do you have a Behringer BCR? Check out the new page

new video – autohotkey script

had a little time, so i thought I’d add a video demonstrating the autohotkey script. It needs a little tweaking still.

http://www.vimeo.com/1251504

New version which fixed a couple of minor bugs will be uploaded soon. Manual in the .rar was written at the time of the previous post, and is not 100% up to date, but I think covers most things.

in fact, here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zgdwpoozzd2

You will need autohotkey installed for the script to run. It’s ace, and won’t run annoying background services, so have no fear. Get it here.

There is a readme file in the .rar which tells you in which order to run things. The Max patch has another drop down box for a midi output, this time to autohotkey. You need to set this, and set the midi input of the autohotkey script … do this by right-clicking the icon in the systray, and selecting which one you want:

you can set the default by editing the autohotkey script – it’s almost the first line.

If you find this is useful, but that opening the Max patch, the autohotkey script, and Ableton, is a bit annoying, then find out about batch files. You can easily write them in autohotkey – just look up the file commands in the help file.

Known issues – the looping/clipbrace part of the script can be a bit dodgy.

Anyone able to use the Max patch on a Mac? I know someone tried and couldn’t use it properly, and I cannot figure out how, so any info anyone has on that would be helpful.

Left this alone for a while since I’ve been using Cubase a fair bit recently…
Anyone who knows anything about the vstxnl implementation in Cubase 4 / vst 3 please get in touch.

0.30

here

Max patch updated too

Manual is included. Many new functions require autohotkey to be installed, which is Windows only. Sorry.

More info when I have time.

see the previous post for some more details, or read the manual.

(links thoughout rest of site haven’t been updated yet – just use these ones please)

progress

right, first, sorry to Jekblad (sp?), this time it will actually be tomorrow. Probably. Since you’ve not got autohotkey abilites on ayour mac, I will send the standalone version over whether I get the autohotkey script sorted or not.

Had a little spare time so I gave this a bit of attention. First of all, the memory “colls” have been gone over, since some parts of them were buggy. Using notes worked ok, but cc’s had been added as an afterthought and it showed.
So, now each pad can be assigned as a note or a cc, and a midi channel. Each pad could play C1 on a different midi channel if you wished. This works fairly reliably, and I think the visual update of this on the pk now matches the data which is in fact sent out. Each pad can be transposed individually, and there is still a global transpose. Bugs were fixed for both of those a while ago, but never updated on here because my Max demo had run out.
Since this makes the cc’s a bit more useful, I have added a fixed velocity switch, so that you can have each cc’pad send out at e.g. 127

Everything else is related to autohotkey. For those unable to use autohotkey (Macs) I will provide a midi out list, and you will have to create your own in …erm, I dunno really. Midistroke?

Meanwhile, everyone else:
- Touchpad has a second mode (and a toggle button to activate), which provides cursor keystrokes, and Enter.
- [Message] now flips clip details/plugin details. Shifted it flips Session/Arrange.
- [Fixed Velocity] moves focus between clip details/plugins and session clip grip/arrange page (good e.g. for automapping). No shifted action yet.
- [Prog Change] selects top item in browser, and repeated presses toggle through browsers, and hide browser.

There’s also a play/pause/stop button, and an Arrangement loop/record button.

There is almost also:
- Select clip brace
- Toggle clip loop
- Set clip loop at 16 bars, turn loop on
- Quant off, 1 beat, 1 bar, 8 bars
- undo, redo
- zoom in/out
- toggle follow
- Toggle Cue/Solo
- Toggle Rec Quantise

think there’s a few other things in the autohotkey script too. I have these working from cc’s on one of the scenes, it’s just that cc’s currently send out on a different midi out than the inbuilt parts. I’ll get that sorted tomorrow and then upload it.

oops, new link

mediamax seem to have rebranded and in doing so wiped all of their free accounts, so the old link has gone. Here’s a new one for the last standalone version
http://www.mediafire.com/?bbzifn4hh2w

However, I know that there is a bug in that one with what I call Pad 15 (3rd along on the top row) – it won’t transpose properly on it’s own. I’ve fixed that in my Max patch. There is also a bug which sometimes causes the global transpose to change when a single pad is transposed. This I haven’t fixed yet, but should be able to fairly easily. There may have been other bugs fixed since I uploaded the last version, I’m not sure. So, I need to fix those and recompile the Max patch into a standalone program.

I think that I can now get midi into autohotkey thanks to Orbik on the autohotkey forum. I will play with these tonight, and maybe tomorrow – there might be an update by tomorrow, otherwise I am going to Barcalona for a few days holiday, and it will be after that.

(no updates recently because I have been messing with vstxml and the Cubase generic remote – ugly – and I now have my BCR controlling any plugin I want without all of the hellish pre-programming that Cubase expects of you – oncethat’s tested and reliable I’ll post about that too.)

Bomes, Glovepie, questions

spent some time on my last day off learning Glovepie, and considering its merits versus Bomes.

I have an Autohotkey script which I use for Ableton, and I would like to make it easily available to anyone using my patch. Autohotkey, for those who don’t know, is a scripting language which at it’s most basic allows you to remap a key, say the Right Shift key to Shift and Space. It can be a lot more complicated than that, sending strings of keystrokes, moving the mouse, carrying out a variety of actions on files, all sorts really. Mine allows one-click access to functions in Ableton which should be simple, but aren’t; maybe they’re hidden in a menu, or maybe they cannot be midi-mapped normally.

The autohotkey script is the complicated part, and that’s been written for ages, and occasionally added to. However, autohotkey doesn’t accept midi input, and Max cannot output keystrokes, at least on a Windows machine. So their needs to be another layer of translation in between the two, which translates midi to keystrokes. Bomes and Glovepie both do this.

Bomes I have used plenty of times, and it works nicely. The basic (free) version suffices for what I want, but it has a nag screen when loaded which makes you wait so many seconds before anything can be done (removed I think by registering … edit: now by buying it, hmm), and I cannot get the command line switches to work (which would allow you to open it with presets and midi in/out ports already loaded.

Glovepie seemed like an alternative solution. It’s easy to write in, and you can fit it into a batch file to open it with the right Glovepie script loaded. But, because it loops constantly, when you hit a pad on the pK to send out midi, and effectively hold it for N ms before releasing it, Glovepie translates this into quite a few keystrokes. You can input a pause in the loop, but then you can have a problem with quick taps of the pad. I couldn’t get a pleasing solution that way. I posted a question on the Ableton forum, since there are people there using it for (I guess) similar applications, but no answer as yet…

Any way in Glovepie to output translations once at a time, instead of a stream… in other words, if I have a translator

Space = midi.Control110

I would like to press cc110 and get a single [Space] output, rather than a stream of outputs as the Glovepie script loops over that translator again and again for as long as cc110 is held down.

So, although I can use my pK with my various autohotkey functions, I can’t really offer them in an easy to use package for anyone else, until I find a solution. If anyone knows how to sort any of these issues out, then please comment. If I can get the Glovepie script sorted out, then I will offer a batch file which with one click will load the pK app., Ableton, Glovepie, and the Autohotkey script.

Max patch

updated to latest version (i.e. 0.22) – sorry for the brief period of hosting a locked collective instead of the patch to anyone who was interested, that was pretty dumb.

Native Mode 0.22

edit: bugger, there is a bug with the cc’s, would take a moment to fix but the computer with Max on is downstairs, and off, will fix it tomorrow.
editedit: fixed.

http://www.mediamax.com/stutter/Hosted/pK%20Native%20Mode%200.23.rar

updated to fix bugs, most of all with the pad led feedback, also notes being passed when trying to change scene.

Currently cc’s send out all sorts of values, depending on the velocity that the pad is hit. For what I currently use cc’s for this is ok, but I remember this sort of thing being annoying in the past. If anyone would like the option to set cc’s to act in three modes, velocity, toggle, and trigger (i.e. as now; 127, then 0, etc; always 127) this could be done quite easily (well, easily if I do it the cheap way and make the setting global for all pads, a little harder if each pad is to have it’s own setting, which is probably how it should be done). If you’re interested then comment, since it’s not a feature I currently need, and I’ll probably try writing other things first.

Since I can find no way to output keystrokes from Max in Windows, and I want to integrate this with my Autohotkey script (you can probably guess from the name, but check this Ableton thread for more details) I am trying to learn a bit of Glovepie next, since it should be able to easily do what I want, be loaded as a batch script, and doesn’t require everyone to have (the wonderful) Bomes (sorry folks, this one’s Windows only – mac has midistroke and controlaid to create similar things – sadly there is no cross-platform solution)

If that Ableton link doesn’t work then you need to search the forum for “The Definitive Live Autohotkeys script!”

After the Glovepie thing I might get back to trying to set up the pads so that I can receive feedback from Ableton’s clip grid (yes, everyone wants a monodeck). Also thinking of messing with the xy pad a bit and writing different modes for it – cursor key functions, mouse functions, pitch bend and mod wheel functions – any ideas then comment.

Ultimately would like to dice into the LiveAPI stuff, but I want to get all of this to a reliably working point first, and I’m feeling a bit more like making music instead of messing with this, so who knows…

Standalone mirrors

Last upload was buggered, due to tiredness. Fixed it. Been trying to sort out some led feedback for clip launching in Live, but the Tranzport midi messages I’m using to provide info on whether a cli pslot contains a clip seem a little buggy themselves. So, in the meantime, I thought I’d at least replace the last patch (which added cc support to the pads, but didn’t work) with a fixed version. So, here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/?bbzifn4hh2w

http://homepage.mac.com/bighairmusic/ableton/FileSharing5.html

those might avoid zshare advertising.