Link: Venom VB-303 VSTi (Beta release)

[gts]

so when you are going to release it? i like the sound, nice work

[antto]

thanks, i'm sure it's not going to be this year.. it's only a matter of time & coffee.. i have to be jobless to have enough time, but then i won't have money for the coffee.. anyway, i dedicate every spare hour i have to this project, it's special to me..

much thanks to all the guys who are still interested and have supported me, who appreciate what i'm doing

[antto]

i am thinking over the new sequencer functions, need some advice/opinion

as you know, i plan to add a stack of 16 ON/OFF buttons, that will be "multifunctional" - you'll be able to edit one "property" of the whole pattern
for example, select "accent" and then the 16 LEDs above the buttons will show all the accents in the pattern..
kinda like the step sequencer in FLStudio for example..
now wait, don't get too excited, one thing i can't do is the behaviour when you press the button of step1 and "drag" the mouse over all the buttons, which would normaly result in all buttons being switched as you drag over them.. sorry, i can't do this
to "fill" all accents you would have to press each button sepparately (which is dumb, but at least you can see all the accents in the whole pattern)

ok, i hope you get the point..
now the good news..
i'll try to make a way to press these buttons with the MIDI notes!
say you have a MIDI-Keyboard attached to your DAW (or something like the virtual-keyboard function in FLStudio for example), normaly pressing a key activates a pattern and the synth starts playing it
now i can add a new "mode" where pressing a midi-key would act like you pressed one of the buttons on the stack
press C5 and the accent on the first step of the pattern gets switched!
and even more, press and hold C5, before releasing it, press E5 (just the way you play slides on a monosynth) .. accent on step0 gets switched, all accents on steps 1 to 4 get the same value as step0 (just the behaviour i explained above)

i think this is possible, i will try hard to make it happen, it'll be easy for everyone that way (you'll always be able to edit the pattern in the old-fashion way)
btw, while in this "mode" you won't be able to change the pattern, or the play/stop state of the synth, so this is generaly a "tool" for editing only

now i am wondering how to "map" the 16 buttons over the keyboard
the simplest thing that comes to mind is: step0 = C5 and every next key.. E6=step15

or accross two octaves, like so:
steps 0 to 7 >>> C4 to G4
steps 8 to 15 >>> C5 to G5

ideas/opinions are wellcome!

[antto]

an easier thing would be to just use 1 MIDI channel to "play" the synth, and another channel for this new stuff
both channels will be user-selectable (probably on the front panel)

i still hope to hear what you think, i still haven't had the chance to play with a MIDI controler of any kind (i am looking forward to buying a midi keyboard with knobs soon) so i have no idea how it works and if what i'm doing will be of any use in practice..

[daz.diamond]

one thing i can't do is the behaviour when you press the button of step1 and "drag" the mouse over all the buttons, which would normaly result in all buttons being switched as you drag over them.. sorry, i can't do this

isn't there a DH mouse overlay you could use for this ?
should be possible, if a bit of a pita ...

[antto]

thanks daz, but i'm trying to prevent myself from using "3rd-party" modules for this project
will have it in mind

step-editor (button-stack) is done, it's a stack of 16 buttons with 16 leds, representing the 16 steps in the pattern, there are 3 things which can be displayed/edited with this: Gates, Accents, and Slides
pressing a button "inverts" the target value for that step
there is a switch to select the target (Off, Gate, Accent, Slide)

next: i'll add another button-stack (again 16 buttons with LEDs) for this new thing i call "selection"
the idea is: you can select individual steps from the pattern, and manipulate only them
also, there will be a way to automagicaly set the selection:
>>> select all, clear, invert selection
>>> select all steps that have the same PITCH/KEY/OCT as the current step
>>> select all steps that have the same ACC/GAT/SLD value

and you can do stuff only with these steps!
transpose UP/Down, Shift(yeah!), Order, Paste from the clipboard, Mutate ..
when Shifting/Changing step Order, there will be an option to stick the selection to the steps

and then, this thing with the keyboard, if it works like i want it (i hope so)
it'll have at least 2 functions:
1. "press" the buttons on the button-stack (to alter gate/acc/sld)
2. "press" the buttons on this step-selector thing (it'll work the same way)

i am planning a lot of new functionality for the pattern editor, it's gonna be very interesting ;]
i also started making the new graphics (buttons, leds, backgrounds) in a new style, a little bit bigger, new colors, and they look like the TB-303
i won't copy the panel layout, i don't want to, and i have way more buttons and stuff, but the controls will look like these on the TB-303 (and the colors also)

[musikmachine]

No more posting until it's ready for release!

[JediMind]

No more posting until it's ready for release!

We may still have to test it just be sure that it's ready for release

[musikmachine]

No more posting until it's ready for release!

We may still have to test it just be sure that it's ready for release

True.

But when will that be???

[CypherOne]

still no workie for me

I tried again today and no sound is made at all (and I do 'usually' know what I'm doing). I noticed that I also couldn't manage to operate some switches, i.e. they no workie too.

[antto]

currently, i've started doing big changes again, there is a lot of new partialy-working and messy code, some older code that doesn't work, so it's very ugly
the GUI is a mess too
i need time, grr, my job takes too much of my time (almost all of it)
i'll have 3 days-off around xmas and new year, i'll be able to do some useful work then

CypherOne: beta1 or beta2 that is?
test this: load the DAW, load the plugin, hold down a note, press "Randomize"
if nothing happens - press 2-3 times the "Pat Edit" button, till the red light lights up again, then press "Randomize" again
if this still doesn't work, give me some details about it, what DAW, which version, etc..

[antto]

ok, i'm now working over the new functions i mentioned earlier
my doubts that it might not work are gone, the basic code is half-way there
so the synth will accept MIDI notes on two different channels, channel1 for pattern play/stop as before, and channel2 for this new step editor (the 16 button stack)

i'm not sure if it would be easy to "use" the synth this way with different DAWs, or with actual hardware MIDI controllers (keyboards)
for example, in FLStudio, there is a MIDI-Out generator, that can send MIDI notes/events/whatever to any port, any channel, this is the only way for me at the moment to use the synth, i'll have to switch to channel2 to use the new pattern editing stuff with the (virtual) keyboard

for someone with a real MIDI keyboard, i guess it'll have to have a channel selector, so he can play notes on channel2 to use the editor

yet, i'm not sure about any of this..

i have to complete this part of the sequencer before i continue toward the other new features.. so, if someone can give me tips about how (MIDI) hardware usualy works - it'll be very helpful, thanks!
and i will probably release yet another beta with this thing, just for a bunch of people to test it with their different DAWs/hardware, to ensure that i did it properly

and one more thing in the same aspect - controlling my synth (the knobs) with a MIDI controler - i don't remember anyone saying anything about this?
i know, i didn't do anything special, i just decided which parameters to be "automatable"
does it work? if not - how can i improve it?

i hope to buy myself a MIDI controler soon, very soon, and i'll be able to figure it all, but yet, i don't know, that's why i'm asking you guys

thanks for any response!

[mztk]

hi antto, if you want to test the controller thing for free,
get bomers mouse keyboard, it has virtual midi cc's.
there's another one too
?duh...relaykeyboard something, all controllers; but bomers is good
anyhow, and you can add extra panel controls in the options.
looking forward to checking it out.

[antto]

mztk: thanks, tho, couldn't get it to work, i guess i did something wrong

since the host-sync is not really perfect when the tempo is automated (which is a rare case, but i sometimes do that myself) i'm also gonna add another sync option
another MIDI channel will listen for noteON/OFF pulses which will act as a clock
this also means that the step-length value for each step will be ignored, and all steps will have the length of the input notes..
and the built-in shuffle won't work (doh, you can shuffle the input notes now)

i just tested the button stack function, it works in my DAW too, but it's kinda silly because i use a virtual MIDI controler to send notes to channel2, and it looses focus when i click on my synth, but this won't be a problem if it was used with a real keyboard (or another DAW which doesn't change the keyboard focus like that)

so, (channel2) C4 to G4 respond to the first 8 steps in the pattern
.. C5 to G5 respond to the second 8 steps..
this "key layout" is not really good, it's only okay if you use your PC keyboard to play notes (where you usualy have 2 octaves, 4th and 5th)
if i had a 61key midi keyboard, i could simply "lay" the 16 steps to 16 white keys (that would be perfect)
so, i guess i can add a second option for the layout selection later

there will also be 2 special keys (erm, midi notes) on channel2, that will "move" the current step (like clicking the NEXT/PREV buttons on the GUI)
and btw, i could actually add special notes for the other buttons (gate/accent/slide/transpose) so you could really "press" the buttons of the sequencer and program your pattern without the mouse, hm.. ;]

one more thing, i was thinking of adding a "pattern link" value per each pattern in the memory, so two or more patterns can be "joined" toghether, i actually figured it would be easier and more flexible to do it another way
there will be an automatable parameter for the number of patterns to play
right before you press a key for a pattern, set the parameter to 2 (automate it) and when you play pat7, it'll "continue" on pat8 and loop back to pat7, where it'll check the parameter again (so, you could even do smart-a$$ things with automation of that parameter)

btw, phoscyon has it's own pattern format too? i'm interested..
i guess it'll be useful to add support for that one too ;]
that's it for now, i'm working, gonna release yet another beta (beta4) with all the new MIDI channel wierd stuff, when they are ready

[mztk]

bomers will work; check out the preferences; maybe midithru needed;
you also need something like maple midicable. its a really cool little
app.