Tablet 2 MIDI - Feature requests

[lung]

very few instruments support this as far as I know.

Hi, I don't know if/how it could work together with tablet2midi, but Tobybear's MicroTuner allows microtuning with vstis. The 1-finger fingerboard would be incredible though. I'm not sure how Continuum has implemented it.

Wanted to mention that I just bought LiveSlice!
I love your design & use of dynamic colours in your guis.

Tablet2Midi looks like it's coming along great as well.

Some of my own FR's/ideas for Tablet2Midi (not in order). I use Borogrove's MIDITab and would like it's functionality implimented & extended in Tablet2Midi.

1. be able to see where the pen tip is at all times, I would like to be able to just look at the screen as well, so I wouldn't have to look at my tablet all the time (like not looking at the keyboard when I type), since I don't want to have to keep looking down at the tablet when I want to do something

2. cross-hair option on the xy pads - I find this much easier to see where my value is using cross-hairs (as well it's good with the next FR when things get small)

3. resizeable main window - ability to resize the main window so I could stick it in the corner as a visual reference while using say my sequencer in another area of the screen

4. ability to hide the file browser area of the gui (working mode)

5. always on top option

6. minimize to tray option

7. background colour select

8. edit mode (like MAX/MSP) where you can drag things around all at once, reshape, etc., then lock into a configuration

9. use draggable predefined shapes (rectangles, etc.) to define areas (I prefer to line things up on the screen)

10. little left-right preset buttons for quick patch changes as well as hotkeys defined to do this

11. little toggle button & hotkey to toggle Tablet2Midi on or off (to allow to quickly use tablet as mouse again for drawing-in envelopes etc. in main software seq/host)

12. ability to use the tip and eraser on the same area, yet have different values defined for both (use tip controls CC 1&2 on pad, eraser controls 3&4), like MidiTab - MidiTab even goes further to define sets for different pens & mice on the tablet (Intuos)

13. ability to define tilt, z-axis, tangent & twist of Intuos pen (like MidiTab)

14. ability to set MIDI rate (like MidiTab)

15. 14-bit CC support? EnergyXT can use high res CC internally (my seq of choice), not sure if this could be implemented in Tablet2Midi or if there would be any use for it.. or OSC support? I personally don't have use for this at the moment, but those people using pd (puredata) might.

Well just a bunch of ideas.
Thanks for making this cool app ohm

[lung]

Thinking outloud..

It would be nice to be able to label/name the controllers (either inside or outside of the control)
Cheers ohm

[spuddle]

Since you could only do one note at a time anyway, I recommend you go for a theramin VSTi controlled by a single midi CC via tablet to midi. You can map frequency to X, amplitude to Y and cutoff to preasure for instance - this will be much easier and give better playability IMO.

Ah, a good suggestion, I shall try it out and let you know how it performs.


lung: great suggestions, would like to see just about all of those you mention.

It seems like the tablet2midi is asking for a mode switch between edit and live/performance mode, this would make sure that no matter how complicated edit mode got with its buttons, layouts and onscreen information, you could still do away with it all to keep the lovely nice minimalistic interface we have already when you switch to performance mode.

[beatkyo]

Hi,

I haven't had a chance to try Tablet2Midi because I do not own a tablet. However this piece of software is looking very promising and I am planning on buying one.

Here is my idea, hoping it's not already in :

How about using controllers in a modwheel manner. Say I use the pen tu raise a CC and when then pen leaves the tablet that CC goes back to its original value. Would be nice if this could be activated by holding a button on the tablet. It would activate this mode for all/group of controllers while the button is held.

I though maybe detecting the pen leaving the tablet is impossible. Then the reset could occur when the button is released.

Though it could be a great feature to have .

[ohm]

when then pen leaves the tablet that CC goes back to its original value

Excellent idea. Will make it possible to create variations for a period and then revert to the previous state.
Fortunately it is possible to detect when the pen leaves the tablet, my buttons work that way. I have to check out some details about button events (If I can query the button state at any time or it's just a notification) to work out the details.
Btw. there's a new preview version ready soon with mouse and printer support, improved look and feel and some bugfixes.

[ohm]

Hi there. A new update has been released. This implements some of the FR's made here. For a full list, go to the website. The manual has been updated as well.

I've updated the list of FR's to include, among others the good ideas posted by lung - please forgive me for not commenting on all FR's - been busy programming

Those of you using Penabled tablet PC's please comment on how well tablet2midi works for you. The new version adds a calibration function, so the mirroring problems should be gone. I imagine you are missing a fullscreen display mode that displays the controllers in the correct size ratio, so you can click them directly. Perhaps this view could be semitransparent, on top of the other windows.

[jimmo]

hi jacob!

it would be great to have some kind of ermmm... magnetic sliders or xy-pads. beatkyo already posted something like that....
the idea is: you define a value / position where the slider / point on the xy pad goes back to when the pen looses contact to the tablet or optional when the pen leaves a controller. a further addition would be an option to define the manner of how the value goes back. maybe like a bouncing ball (sinus with envelope on pitch and amplitude?) or linear or logarithmic....

i think one can go nuts on this topic. maybe it would even be cool to have an option to define multiple magnetic ranges. so it jumps back to the nearest value of the actualy position (the last position before leaving the tablet)

ps: midiox does the trick of combining t2m and my midi keybord

greetings
jimmo/patrick

[Machinate]

I believe the continuum fingerboard does midi conversion by using a combination of pitch-bend and midi notes. I guess that could be done within this system?

[ohm]

a combination of pitch-bend and midi notes

TobyBears Microtuner plugin uses pitch bends in an attempt to allow the use of alternate tunings on all VSTi's. The problem is that VSTi's apply pitch bend to ALL voices (if you hit a chord and then pitch bend the whole chord is bent). If you play a chord on the continuum fingerboard then perhaps the root is a little sharp, the fifth a little flat and need to be pitched up / down accordingly - this is not possible. One workaround is to send each note to a different midi channel and use multiple instances of the VSTi (one pr. voice). Perhaps this is what the continuum fingerboard does - you need a fast computer though to get a playable number of voices this way - not to mention changing parameters in 8 VSTi's each time you want to tweak a patch.
We might be able to squeeze two voice polyphony from a tablet by using two channels and two VSTi's - I will get back to this when I get my second tablet pen

[Eska]

Is it possible to analyse the speed of the pen movement, playing notes by strokes (speed= velocity)?

[ohm]

Is it possible to analyse the speed of the pen movement, playing notes by strokes (speed= velocity)?

It will be soon - it's already implemented but not uploaded yet - it's very cool for strings and pads so stay tuned for the next update.

Note that speed does not translate well to velocity, because velocity is only applied once (when the note is started) it works better to map the speed to some kind of volume parameter.

Also note that there will be a small latency before the first speed parameter can be sent out (measuring speed takes a little time - perhaps I'll make that latency configurable).

I'm aiming for a final release in mid february by the way.

[Eska]

Groovy! My Graphire starts tracking ~ 1cm from Pen-contact, so latency schould depend on play style and can be used as a feature.
Another possibility to get velocity might be a " trigger on crossing objects border" option. Like scratching a guitar string. From position, speeed, angle,pressure.

[ohm]

I really like the plucked string idea - I'll have a look at how to implement that. I recently purchased tassman 4 so I would definately find good use for a string controller type.

[atomx]

Hi

I would suggest the Tablet2MIDI to send user definable MIDI Sys-ex messages over MIDI.

I would highly appeciate this for my Kawai K1 and K4 synthesizers. K1 has joystick to "Morph" between 4 sound sources but it is impossible to record it in sequencer. With AM synthesis the joystick is really cool and I miss it a lot on K4.

This feature would be useful for many other hardware synths (e.g. Roland JD/JV/D series, etc)to emulate Vector synthesis.

I would also like to assign more MIDI CCs or Sys-ex strings for one tablet axis.

Tom

[ingredient t]

is it possible for Tablet 2 MIDI to output relative values? or incremental values? also, what is the max output resolution of the controllers? are NRPNs supported? I never saw a detailed MIDI spec.. and since I am trying to decide whether or not to buy a new tablet to try out your utility (no serial port on my laptop..) I want to know just what I'll be able to do with it. thanks!