Slicer (in development)

[ModuLR]

My intention is to kinda blog this thread, and use it as motivation to turn an idea into something real. Stale Bread's developer slicer challenge is the inspiration. At this point, I've got quite a few slicers... however, they really don't work the way I'd like them to. My goal is to create a brand new slicer... a slicer rethunk from the ground up! I have no idea how long it will take, but my intention is to finish it regardless. It will be developed using the juce framework because it's fantastic and cross-platform. I intend to pay the juce licensing fee as I have no intention of releasing the source code. Therefore, this will probably be my one and only commercial vst venture... an uberslicer. If all goes well I *might* recoup some of that licensing fee since donations really don't work. In any case, just wanted to be up front that it won't be free.

Feel free to add any ideas you might have regarding things you'd like to see in a slicer... I'm all ears, but don't be offended if we don't see eye to eye.

Finger's crossed.. I think I can do it.

this might look lame, but I started with the weirdest part... the filebrowser. Don't mind the way it looks.



should be interesting to chronicle the changes as progress is made.

[pHz]

keeping an eye on this

slainte rob

[shamann]

[metrosechual]

i would say at least something easy like FLstudio's slicer and as effective. Perhaps with a way to drag and drop a midi from it to put in your sequencer to play the sliced notes...

good timestretching too... to stretch each slice.

[spuddle]

Hear hear to new development.

Could you please define what a 'slicer' should do as its main functions, or is that up to us to request?

[laputa_sync]

i like the browser!!!!

thats all you need!!!

cannot wait...

[Ubiety]

Uh, will this be platform independent? Please?

[Lagrange]

This is pretty cool.. Please please please can you try this...

Instead of only making a transient detecting slicer. Can you create an option that make slices based on MIDI on/off messages? This way if you have a synth being fed into the slicer it could slice based on the exact notes (would work great for strings type instruments).. Also it would be great if each slice (when being recorded) could be sent directly to disk as the separate files...

Keeping an eye on this one..

L

[ModuLR]

@spundle
I have ideas as to what would define an interesting slicer, but I'm definately curious as to what other people think... as I mentioned I'm all ears.

@Ubiety
Juce is cross platform, so hopefully that won't be much of an issue (XP and OSX). Juce is even linux friendly, so even jorgen's XT2 Linux-VST stuff might be possible (haven't really investigated that tho).

[pHz]

Juce is cross platform, so hopefully that won't be much of an issue (XP and OSX). Juce is even linux friendly, so even jorgen's XT2 Linux-VST stuff might be possible (haven't really investigated that tho).

slainte rob

[Lagrange]

Oh I forgot.. Maybe it could save the file with slice info intact (I think it's the RIFF info)..

L

[PTV]

If it will be as half as good as pseudograins...
then

[ultimo]

Hmmm, let's see.. to qoute every FR I ever mentioned in slicer-software forums is gonna be a hard time recalling, but this is a unique chance, so I will make a start and will expand it if better ideas come up:

Good/easy/simple wave editing possibilities
It's almost a shame that the amiga pro-tracker sample-editor was more advanced than the ones incorporated in the slicers of today. Dragging/copying/ slices or a selected area, moving slice-points without any hassle would be a relief. Good zooming possibilities of the individual slices and the whole loop are a must too. This is the most important working area of the tool, so please don't cut the investments on this one (see FruityLoops)!

Give every slice-object or key a set of parameters
I want to have the possibility to reverse, time-stretch, pitch-shift, change volume, change ADSR, assign outputs, voices etc... for every note that the slice is assigned to. If this means that for e.g. I get five rendered instances of a slice for five assigned keys because it can't be done in real-time, so be it (as long if the program is smart enough to know what slice-instance is the parent and hide unnecessary info for the user) ! The program must render the loop to individual slices, but still work with it as one sample/loop.

Make loop-points a powerful feature of a slice
Loop points and Loop-modes per slice:
There are some situations where I need this, for e.g. you may want to use a 'Ping-pong'-loop-mode on a string-sound in a loop.

loop-points arrangements/programming per slice.
So you can set how many times a loop can occur between two loop-points, before continuing to the next loop-point

selected slice-points or loop-points parameter entring or scrubing.
so you can fiddle with the exact start-point and end-point of a slice/loop

Grouping slices to a key
So you don't have to fiddle more slice-points in a crowded area.

Drum layering features like battery/guru.

Auto-slice-assigning features to keys.

file-browsing capabilities like guru/kontakt

Some extra pointers:
* Don't hang the slicer up on the host tempo (intakt). (I want to turn this feature off sometimes).
* Don't rely only on the auto-slicing features (kontakt/battery).
* Try not to introduce different working modes like sampler/slicer etc… I see them all as one, If things cannot be done in the same mode, it wasn't meant to be in the tool (kontakt/intakt).

[Meloday]

can't wait. good luck!

[ModuLR]

<blog mode>
I've kept at it with the browser portion of the slicer, and it's come quite a way since the initial post. Here's a peek at what we've got so far...



Hmmm.. now we've a few icons for directories and files (yay!), drag n' drop is now working (yee!), and it lists all folders/files properly (had some issues before). The "stars" at the top are for favorite directories which you can dragndrop to... and the "arrow" takes you back to the previous directory. This will probably get adjusted a bit look wise, but you get the gist... I have no interest in a more traditional look, kinda want to it to be fun and inspiring (what that has to do with the file browser, I dunno ) Double clicking an item will take you one level deeper (ohhh!), or you can alternatively hit the [+] to unfold the directories (ahhh!). Once I get a few more elements implemented, I'll convert it over to a VST... then we'll see if this browser portion is crach prone in a host. Once it's solid (no problems here so far which is a good sign.. sorta...), I'll move on to the next part.

Anyways, this has been a good starting point as it's kinda gotten me back into the flow of coding. (fingers crossed)
</blog mode>

@Ultimo... you've touched on a lot of good ideas. If you are a former tracker, then you are probably a fan of sample manipulation which I am as well... so that's a high priority for me. Anyway, I've really been giving a lot of thought on how to attach tracker'esque elements in to a totally new interface. Once I get my thoughts a bit more sorted, I'll attempt to explain it... beyond that I'm all ears to any ideas.

@everyone... Kinda in brainstorm mode, so anything is fair game. So share your thoughts...