KVR Audio

incubus · Post by **incubus** » Mon Jul 17, 2017 6:57 am

I'm really confused: For us "basic daw use" people (windows or mac) it there anything distinguishable for the masses????????????

I just want stuff that works (I'm doze 10 here) and not interested in so much babel...............

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Jul 17, 2017 8:09 am

It works just like any other MIDI controller when you use it with a non-MPE application, which is most host applications around, and you can set up MIDI CCs to respond to the extra dimensions of touch. Obviously you won't get any of the per note functionality but I've only got the Rise 25, so I'm not playing chords anyway. I haven't tried to do anything fancy like that yet but I am confident it will give me something other controllers can't.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:12 am

Did anyone else get an email today about Traktion Waveform? MPE support in it looks really solid and who can resist $99 worth for free!?!

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:14 pm

BONES wrote:Did anyone else get an email today about Traktion Waveform? MPE support in it looks really solid and who can resist $99 worth for free!?!

Yeah I saw something on facebook about it yesterday so I gave it a quick try.

I managed to play synths like Equator through it ok, but something bad happened when I tried to record & playback the midi data to these synths. It seems to have recorded all the notes and expression data, but is not playing them back in the same MPE way, causing synths to sound wrong and Equator to complain that it was receiving midi notes on channel 1.

I had only about half an hours experience of the program, and no prior knowledge of tracktion stuff when I tried this so hopefully I was doing something wrong, otherwise it is quite a cockup!

So I would really appreciate it if anyone who gets this working posts here, so I know it was something I was doing wrong.

edited to add - there is a guide on the roli site, but it only goes as far as recording & editing notes & expressive data, not actual playback.

https://support.roli.com/article/using- ... -waveform/

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:29 pm

Think I already found the answer to my problem on this thread about waveform & MPE:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2&t=488546

There is a midi channel mode setting for midi clips, which affects playback and is supposed to be set to MPE automatically if the track was set to record MPE to note expression. But for whatever reason mine was not set to that automatically and it took me a while to even find the option!

Echoes in the Attic · Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:46 pm

The MPE functionality looks quite good in Waveform/Tracktion. And it's really cool that you get it for free with any seaboard, even a seaboard block, which is $300. So getting $100 dollars software with it is pretty nice. I wish Waveform had some sort of loping grid like Ableton/Bitwig though, I might be convinced to switch.

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:01 pm

Echoes in the Attic wrote:I wish Waveform had some sort of loping grid like Ableton/Bitwig though, I might be convinced to switch.

I thought I was going to be happy with bitwig but I need the ability to output recorded MPE midi with proper channel information. My own attempts failed, and a discussion elsewhere on the forums makes it sound like a bitwig limitation - any thoughts on this greatly appreciated.

The discussion I mention is here:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... E#p6779486

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:28 pm

Just out of interest, why would you need to output MPE MIDI data? Aren't all the MPE hardware devices just controllers? Except the Grand, I suppose.

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:27 pm

BONES wrote:Just out of interest, why would you need to output MPE MIDI data? Aren't all the MPE hardware devices just controllers? Except the Grand, I suppose.

There are a small bunch of hardware synths and midi->cv devices that can handle MPE midi and behave accordingly. As such I want the ability to be able to play back recorded MPE data and have it come out in the same way as the MPE controller originally transmitted it. Well to be more detailed about it I dont actually mind if a particular note & its expression data are replayed using exactly the same midi channel as was used when I pressed the note on the roli, but I do need each note & its data to be on a different channel.

My actual personal requirement for this right now is because I am building some software which visualises Roli MPE data and I want a way to replay such data and send it to another machine (via midi) that does the visuals. I dont actually have a hardware synth that can handle MPE yet, but the requirements are the same.

himalaya · Post by **himalaya** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:58 pm

SteveElbows wrote:
There are a small bunch of hardware synths and midi->cv devices that can handle MPE midi and behave accordingly.

What hardware are you using?

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:34 pm

himalaya wrote:
SteveElbows wrote:
There are a small bunch of hardware synths and midi->cv devices that can handle MPE midi and behave accordingly.
What hardware are you using?

As per the rest of my post, I'm not using any polyphonic hardware synth at the moment, though I hope to one day. Even controlling a monophonic analog synth with the seaboard is great fun, so I have no doubt the experience will be good, but I need to wait till there is more choice and hopefully more maturity in MPE & USB Host support in synths.

In terms of controller hardware I have the seaboard 25, a couple of lightpad blocks that I dont use much, and am impatiently waiting for the seaboard block to arrive ( I contacted roli support about my order and it sounds like I still have more than a week left to wait for mine).

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 5:26 pm

Speaking of the seaboard block, even before mine arrives I can tell its going to be way more configurable than the seaboard rise. Because I already have some lightpad blocks I am able to use the blocks dashboard software, and I can see what the default program & settings for the seaboard block will be. And it allows for easy changing of which cc value slide sends for a start.

I've also had a look at what the default program, written using their 'littlefoot' scrripting, consists of. It seems that most of the actual playing functionality is elsewhere on the device, the lightfoot script just calls a single function to do all of that stuff. What is visible in littlefoot code is the handling of the octave up and down 'buttons', which it seems can also send program change messages if you hold down the button on the side of the block before pressing them. These buttons' are just a couple of regions of the playing surface, and in littlefoot code we can receive info about touch events and do what we like with them, and thats what roli have done with these octave change regions.

The reason I am quite excited about this 'littlefoot' stuff is that these programs can be loaded into the hardware itself and run as its default mode of operation. I'd rather do it this way where possible rather than write something that has to run on a computer/tablet/phone.

I dont yet know how powerful the littlefoot side of the system is, in terms of whether I can completely replace the entire playing the instrument->midi side of things with my own stuff in littlefoot without running out of computing power, ram, or introducing too much latency or whatever. But I will give it a go when I have the hardware because it would be nice to experiment with some completely different note layouts, some more microtonal options and a few other wacky ideas I have.

edit - oops its called littlefoot, not lightfoot as I kept writing before this edit!

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Jul 27, 2017 12:38 am

None of that interests me in the slightest. Now that I've had it for a few weeks, I've settled into using my Rise 25 more like a hardware synth than a controller. I only use it to play Equator and I don't record anything. I still use my KeyStep as a controller for my plugin and hardware synths and see no reason for that to change.

Once I get more comfortable in Bitwig, I will try using the Rise to play Strobe 2 and the Equator VSTi but ultimately I think I'll continue with the standalone Equator separate to everything else because it fits in well for its intended purpose in my set-up - performing live.

SteveElbows · Post by **SteveElbows** » Thu Jul 27, 2017 7:20 pm

BONES wrote:None of that interests me in the slightest.

Well I dont expect the stuff I was going on about to interest everyone or even very many people. Especially the lightfoot stuff, where any useful tweaks and new modes of operation that people share may interest a fair few more people more than my premature talk about the development side of it.

I was hoping to already be developing for it by now, but since mine hasnt arrived yet I am stuck waiting and had spare time to talk here.

I am nervous just in case I dont like the feel of the seaboard block compared to the rise, seems like a long time between first seeing the seaboard block announcement, wondering about it, and me actually receiving one, but thats partly my own fault for not ordering on day one.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri Jul 28, 2017 12:08 am

Yeah, the thing that would worry me with the Block is that I find I have to be far more accurate with my key bashing on the Rise than on a normal keyboard, so having a mini-key sized keyboard might make that problem a lot worse.

Roli Seaboard RISE