MbiraGen

[Shabdahbriah]

Holy crap I just watched the vid for Nova3.

It is a very nice video, isn't it?

It is an awesome program! The only thing I can think of to make it even more 'engaging' would be using those little "space-invader" guys on the grid - instead of the moving arrows. Being able to assign them to different instruments/tracks, for visual reference... nice.




(hint-hint)

[sinkmusic]

ToneCarver, thank you once again for an innovative and well-designed, carefully thought instrument.
In order to get the most out ot it (and despite the fact that it is still in development and subject to change), I took the freedom to make a 1 page PDF manual with screenshots, so if you're ok i can share it on Box.net ?

[sinkmusic]

I hope it can be useful to someone, so here it is :

- The PDF version(a bit small, but everything sticks on 1 single page - except credits and hints-)

- The Libroffice version, if anyone wants to improve/edit it along with forthcoming updates.



Enjoy

[ToneCarver]

In order to get the most out ot it (and despite the fact that it is still in development and subject to change), I took the freedom to make a 1 page PDF manual with screenshots, so if you're ok i can share it on Box.net ?

Sure, that's great. Feel free to share it. Nice work.

[abovethoughts]

Tried Nova3 last night and I think you will be getting some presets from me I decided to use Nova3 this month to help compose my song in One Synth Challenge #58 Spectral.

I do have a question about Nova3 and/or MbiraGen ... any thoughts of moving these towards a Multi Channel MIDI out VSTi, so we can control multiple tracks within one VSTi instance ?

[ThomasHelzle]

Nova 3 is in my personal generative Top 5 for a long time and this one seems to be just as beautiful.

Thank you very much for all your work.
It's really brilliant.

Any plans for making Boids output Midi?

Cheers,

Tom

[Kenit]

Wow
Thank you, ToneCarver.
I'm enjoying with Live9.1 and Studio one 64bit win.

And thank you, sink music.
PDF helpful

[ToneCarver]

Nova 3 is in my personal generative Top 5 for a long time and this one seems to be just as beautiful.

Thank you very much for all your work.
It's really brilliant.

Any plans for making Boids output Midi?

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks Tom, appreciated.

I haven't thought about Boids in a while. If it were to get Midi out I would probably remove all the audio/grain/delay processing and make it a plain midi-only modulator plugin. The trick would be figuring out various ways for the flock to trigger midi output. It's probably overkill to assign CC movement to each individual boid, maybe a couple of CCs following the center of the flock, or the density, the width/spread, .. ?? play notes as boids enter/exit a boxed area?

Any ideas?

[ToneCarver]

Tried Nova3 last night and I think you will be getting some presets from me I decided to use Nova3 this month to help compose my song in One Synth Challenge #58 Spectral.

I do have a question about Nova3 and/or MbiraGen ... any thoughts of moving these towards a Multi Channel MIDI out VSTi, so we can control multiple tracks within one VSTi instance ?

Cool, I'll keep an ear out for the OSC this month.

An earlier version of MbiraGen did have 2 channel outputs and the midi generator toggled the output between the 2 channels. I did not end up using that so it came out to keep things simpler.

What sort of multi-channel behavior are you looking for? Sending a note to multiple channels? Sending notes to alternating channels? Assigning channels to a range of notes? I'm open to ideas....

[experimental.crow]

automatable transport button would be nice ...
i believe i asked for that w/ nova , which you supplied ...

[abovethoughts]

On cell excuse grammer / the bottom 8 slots on Nova3 intuitively seem like they could output to separate MIDI channels / that was my 1st impression when I first opened Nova3

[studio4]

Thanks for the 32bit version. Real fun to use. One small thing: the setting for Degrees and Major/Minor is not saved by the host/project.

[ThomasHelzle]

Nova 3 is in my personal generative Top 5 for a long time and this one seems to be just as beautiful.

Thank you very much for all your work.
It's really brilliant.

Any plans for making Boids output Midi?

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks Tom, appreciated.

I haven't thought about Boids in a while. If it were to get Midi out I would probably remove all the audio/grain/delay processing and make it a plain midi-only modulator plugin. The trick would be figuring out various ways for the flock to trigger midi output. It's probably overkill to assign CC movement to each individual boid, maybe a couple of CCs following the center of the flock, or the density, the width/spread, .. ?? play notes as boids enter/exit a boxed area?

Any ideas?

Yeah, that is very tricky. I just find the basic idea so fascinating and beautiful and somehow the current implementation doesn't work for me as well as this idea would have earned it. (Just my personal view of course).

Brainstorm:
As you said already
- A certain number of specific boids/the center/the goal can be "tagged" to create output. Output could be CCs, pitch, pan or can influence the output of other boids (one boid creates the pan, another the pitch, a third velocity).
- Collision with walls/squares/circles can trigger notes. Not sure how a setup similar to Nova3 would work.
- Pitch on such a trigger could be generated by xy position of another boid for instance.

- Collision/speed/position/vector of tagged boids creates notes. Collision objects could be assigned specific notes. They could or could not influence the path of the boids or have a certain amount of attraction/avoidance (food/hunter/repulsion).
Those could be moving or static.

- totally different idea: the boids swim in a central circular area instead of a sqare which is representing a circular sequencer/circle of fifths like construct where notes/chords are generated depending on density and position of the center of the flock.
Either there is an additional flexible sequencer that triggers readouts of said positions to create regular beats or it works on a collision basis. Hm - I guess that would need plenty of experimentation, much harder to predict the usefulness of the output as in a more regular setup.

- A circular sequencer working like a kind of stepped radar extracting note/pitch etc. from the boid swarm/individually tagged boids/density at the radar-sweep-line/collision with said line. Again maybe combined with a linear sequencer for certain other things. Hmm...

I'll keep it in the back of my mind.

Cheers,

Tom

BTW. MbiraGen works great in Bitwig

[MRT]

Thanks for sharing MbiraGen and thanks too sinkmusic for the pdf.
After playing with this for a while I felt like wanted more control over the 48 Melody Grids.I was thinking that some kind of step entry for the Rows would be nice. Being able to enter a 3 note chords from your midi keyboard?
I like the idea of multiple midi channel outs, possibly split by range or assigned by row.
Regardless you have created a very interesting SeqaGen thing.

[ToneCarver]

Thanks for the 32bit version. Real fun to use. One small thing: the setting for Degrees and Major/Minor is not saved by the host/project.

Good catch. I have a feeling that there may be other settings that are not getting saved/restored too. I'll look into it, thanks.