Announcing: Free experimental sequencer plugin!

[opia]

thanks

[outsomnia20]

wow this is amazing! great idea. one suggestion tho: add more midi support like pitch, length and room size. it may defeat the purpose of it being an experimental sequencer but you may want to raise the min value for the room size too as the triggering of so midi events its too much for most cpus.

[carrier down]

Thanks for all your feedback! It's fun to release things like this when people are so enthusiastic about it.

Thanks. It's a great toy, and addictive too .

btw did you ever read Joseph Schillinger's books? He created a music/rythm theory, on which a.o. Gershwin's Summertime was based. This VST fits in well, because it's not random:).

I'm not familiar with those books, though I really like the concept of things that might sound random, but actually aren't. I did read Stephen Wolfram's 'A new kind of science' though, which I found very interesting (Well, I didn't read *all* of it ).

[carrier down]

...and now, after crashing once, it refuses to work in eXT anymore

Gives an access violation every time I try to load it.

A crash like this is probably caused by eXT storing parameter data from the previous session, which probably got corrupted in some way. When this is loaded back in, a crash results. If there's some way for you to delete this info (in TobyBears Minihost, this type of information is stored in a separate file together with the plug) you would be back in business methinks.

[carrier down]

Pretty nifty tool, carrier down! reminds me a little of the koan products but I haven't played with those dealies in years...don't even own'em
did just a little poking around with ballsequencer and it does *appear* that you may be able to route just cc settings via ball events, but you'd have to turn note velocities to 0, yes? I'll experiment later, just want to know if I'm on the right track...

If I understood correctly, you're trying to make the balls transmit CC-values, like androidlove mentioned. I'm afraid the plugin isn't designed to do this, but it's a good idea, so I'm considering adding it in the next version. I don't really know when I will have the time to do a new version though, but I'll get round to it some day I'm sure.

[carrier down]

One note; the plugin shows no VST parameters in energy XT, only "parameter 0", usually instruments display all their parameters in the list. It would be cool to be able to map for example the room size and note velocities to CCs.

Yep, I'm thinking of adding some more CC-control, to cater for room size and possibly note lengths. As for individual control over velocity assignments...
How many midi controllers do you have?

[.jon]

A crash like this is probably caused by eXT storing parameter data from the previous session, which probably got corrupted in some way. When this is loaded back in, a crash results. If there's some way for you to delete this info (in TobyBears Minihost, this type of information is stored in a separate file together with the plug) you would be back in business methinks.

Thanks, deleting & re-installing the plug cured that problem. Other thing I noticed is that some plugins refuse to receive any MIDI data from ballseq. Tassman, TriangleII and MicroTera all remain silent. Funnily Waldorg PPG indicates that it's receiving data on channel 2, but it's one weird synth anyway so dunno.

Yep, I'm thinking of adding some more CC-control, to cater for room size and possibly note lengths. As for individual control over velocity assignments...
How many midi controllers do you have?

energyXT can map any VST parameters to MIDI CC's, so in that sense there is no need to add extra control. There is just something weird with the plugin outputting the list of it's parameters (not even those that have CCs attached to them), as it only gives the "Parameter 0".

But thanks for this thing, I find it really inspiring to work with.

[sinkmusic]

One Killer-feature that maybe could be implemented is a tempo-sync option : i mean : the trajectory/speed of the balls, and the moment they hit the square could be set on a grid (let's say 1bar, 1/2, 1/4, etc.), to reach randomly everchanging melodies or beats, still in the tempo...

[HanafiH]

Superb.

[R.A.W.]

There is just something weird with the plugin outputting the list of it's parameters (not even those that have CCs attached to them), as it only gives the "Parameter 0".

pakana, that's not weird at all. devs can code a plug like that so they have no automation parameters at all to control the plugin. it's the same in LiveSlice, it has no vst-automation because it's using a modular midi-implementation internally.
i have to admit though, that i think it would be nice to have vst-parameters for this seq as it's not as complex as LiveSlice. also one could get really interesting stuff out of it with using automation.

One Killer-feature that maybe could be implemented is a tempo-sync option : i mean : the trajectory/speed of the balls, and the moment they hit the square could be set on a grid (let's say 1bar, 1/2, 1/4, etc.), to reach randomly everchanging melodies or beats, still in the tempo...

i was thinking the same to get a little more controlled results while keeping the experimental approach. then again i was thinking if it is possible at all, but perhaps it could be done by setting the overall tempo to bars or fractions of bars and using the horizontal and vertical speeds of the notes as factors grounded on the overall tempo.. would be nice to have but still this plugin rocks like it is now!

[mckenic]

One Killer-feature that maybe could be implemented is a tempo-sync option : i mean : the trajectory/speed of the balls, and the moment they hit the square could be set on a grid (let's say 1bar, 1/2, 1/4, etc.), to reach randomly everchanging melodies or beats, still in the tempo...

Just spotted this - already I like this idea!!!

Thanks for the plug carrier down!!! Looking forward to giving it a test run!!!!

Dave

[carrier down]

Other thing I noticed is that some plugins refuse to receive any MIDI data from ballseq. Tassman, TriangleII and MicroTera all remain silent. Funnily Waldorg PPG indicates that it's receiving data on channel 2, but it's one weird synth anyway so dunno.

Thanks for the tip! There was indeed a small bug with the way midi channels were assigned. I've uploaded a minor revision with 2 bugfixes:

* Fixed - Output midi channel was always offset by 1, so that midi channel 1 actually transmitted on channel 2 and so on. This explains why some VSTi's wouldn't produce output when triggered by BallSequencer.
* Fixed - Room size could be set all the way down to zero, causing some hosts to crash.


Get it at http://www.upland.no/software.html

Enjoy!

[waiting man]

sweet, thanx a lot!

[amoebe]

Great! This plugin has balls (sorry couldn't resist ). It works in Tracktion too.
There's 2 things that would make controlling this sequencer a bit easier although you might not be willing to do that:
Reset ball position to origin,
A speed minimum of 0 instead of 1, so you can make the balls move horizontal or vertical.

Bugfix for version 1.1: horizontal (instead of horisontal)

[carrier down]

Great! This plugin has balls (sorry couldn't resist ). It works in Tracktion too.
There's 2 things that would make controlling this sequencer a bit easier although you might not be willing to do that:
Reset ball position to origin,

I've come up with a nice solution for making the balls slightly more controllable, and I'm thinking of implementing this in the next update. This will be like an extended version of the 'revert balls' feature in the current version, but instead of only being able to revert once, you can revert ten times for instance. Like a multiple undo/redo thing.