"flavored" oatmeal skin, download more colors now (v37-4)

[sinkmusic]

Ok, then here are some patches i made for Oatmeal, if anybody wishes to gather user patches and the fancy skin from Grymmjack :

http://stashbox.org/5695/SInk_oatmeal+sounds.zip

these aren't randomized ones right? but orig? random is cool but banks of randoms are kind of, i dunno, not as fun?

The starting point is random, for all of them, but then i tweaked untill i found what i wanted. So this is custom, i guess

[.jon]

jon; you would prefer the small pots instead of the horiz faders then? i could accommodate small pots i think, but not the large ones.

Yes, personally depth is something that usually is handled by a pot... but I see your problem - and those faders can well be less fiddly than small pots.

if i tightened the margins/padding on the envelope slots i lose distinction for the labels (whitespace separator helps there). i could make the void spaces between each logical/functional block smaller but if i do that it will make the blocks less obvious/distinct. it looks like i could shave one or two pixels tops before i lost the scale/relation of logical visual grouping.

I vote for one/two-letter abbreviations! A H D1 B D2 S R

if i ditched the header labels "sound source", "modulation", etc, and kept them only bg colors i could make a note of the bg colors and their purpose by using color chips and pointing it out by VA / key follow area? hrm...

I don't find the headers necessary. They look a bit cramped as they are. You got the block titles very nicely and clearly in there so grouping them is sort of vain?

[grymmjack]

jon; ooh! i thought about abbreviating the envelope labels, but didn't do so because they were kind of unique and not typical 4 stage adsr. though i think it's impossible to make everything so explicit the manual will have to be reffered to so maybe i could abbreviate them plus oatmeal has the status tip show up on hover....

hrm. what if i abbreviated the lables, tightened the spacing between the faders, and then grouped the target destinations into a dropdown menu and a small pot and made them 2 x 2 instead of 4 down, or.. i was thinking because the horizontal faders are different than pots it's further obvious that they are target depth sliders. if i keep that through the ui for any target depth parameter (including mod matrix) it could be a cool design bit.. maybe i could enlarge the sliders so that they would be not so fiddly (and yes i agree with you on that potentially happening as they are sized now). would that be cool?

also i concur about the labels and grouping and such and will remedy that as well. i was trying first for ease of programming and my brain works in logical hierarchies of visual groups the best (but this is not my goal to enforce my way of working on others)..

ok i'll get to work on this.

[grymmjack]

Ok, then here are some patches i made for Oatmeal, if anybody wishes to gather user patches and the fancy skin from Grymmjack :

http://stashbox.org/5695/SInk_oatmeal+sounds.zip

these aren't randomized ones right? but orig? random is cool but banks of randoms are kind of, i dunno, not as fun?

The starting point is random, for all of them, but then i tweaked untill i found what i wanted. So this is custom, i guess

cool. i'll have a play when i get some freetime not devoted to skinning the oatmeal

[[ xerocreep ]]

This is looking really great Rick! Awesome work.

I had just thought of you yesterday as I was driving to and from Dearborn for the wifes fam.

Hope you had a good t-day!

[grymmjack]

This is looking really great Rick! Awesome work.

I had just thought of you yesterday as I was driving to and from Dearborn for the wifes fam.

Hope you had a good t-day!

thanks XC. Yeah we had a pretty good thanksgiving, mellow, lots of tryptophan - knocked me out like 20 min after i had eaten my father-in-law-to-be fried our bird, looked pathetic coming out of the fryer but man it tastes good.

lots of leftovers

the michigan KVR crew should get together and do a hangout someday.

[grymmjack]

i posted a new version in the first post in this thread without color adjustment. i usually create an adjustment layer on top of all the other layers which increases contrast and adjusts hsb but i'm actually liking it without the adjustment layers turned on.

please voice your opinion, i'll leave the temporary color one up there for a while.

i adjusted all the sliders to be a little more hip. i think this is a good compromise.

[grymmjack]

@jon; if you still dont like the sliders, i can put the pots in there easily. the sliders are the same height so it's easy to swap.

@all; are the gradients too much on the slider type controls? i'm not sure about them yet. it's easy to toggle the gradients so dont be afraid to speak up.

if i do remove the horizontal sliders i buy myself some more room on the envelope-only row under noise/phase/tune/ampenv -- though i dont know what i could put there.

moving on now.

[poonna]

Hmm, frankly, I think now the sliders stand out a bit too much. They look like they don't really belong to the whole thing, IMHO.

[sinkmusic]

Well, i'm not sure having read everything, and to have undesrtood everything too, but here is what i can say :


1- about the arp : as long as you keep the right-click : show full names, icons are Ok (i just discovered those icons and right click this morning !)


2- about the skin : well, not easy to tell, but :

I like this version (11-24-06_b.png) the better (version "a" was a bit too dark, version b's color scheme is just perfect to my taste).
The last one (at that moment, called "11-24-06_c.png") is fine too, but if the positive thing of those gradient faders is that it both shows your skills, and give a "hitech" touche to the whoel GUI, i also thinkn it makes it less easy to read : Oatmeal is already so much bloated with features that i think it needs something quite "sober" to increase its readability, and with those faders, my eyes keeps focuing on them, and not on blocks (osc, phase, etc).

I think i also prefer the bigger size (the one used in version "b"). I was quite sceptic about a "big" GUI, but when i see the "b" version,n it just looks perfect !


cheers

[grymmjack]

poona; after looking at it for extended amount of time i agree. back to the old non-gradient version.

[Debutante]

Hmm, frankly, I think now the sliders stand out a bit too much. They look like they don't really belong to the whole thing, IMHO.

@all; are the gradients too much on the slider type controls? i'm not sure about them yet. it's easy to toggle the gradients so dont be afraid to speak up.

I think the IDEA for the sliders is great. I agree with poona that they do stand out, only because of the colours, or maybe their thickness; they seem to have taken over the scheme. I think it's starting to look a little bit more like one of BONES' synths somehow, which always have pretty cool skins normally anyway.

I also agree with your suspicion that the gradient is too steep. Maybe less of a gradient, or an all together different colour, or solid colour .. or maybe giving the filter and amp sliders a different colour from the other slider group. In any case please keep the sliders... and thanks for the public approach! Oatmeal is really so dear, it's nice to have a little input on what it could finally look like.

[brok landers]

but grym, you stick with numerical readouts, yes?
they are very important. also a "fine" mode, maybe via shift click ...
oh, and can you make something about easier reching desired values?
i remember the transpose slider made me hard days to get it on full half-notes, it was allways a bit next to the desired value ...
however, dunno if my requests are present in the original, had to make a rollback of my system, and oatmeal is not installed right now, so forgive me if these fr's are redundant ...

[GaryG]

I like the contrast of the version without adjustments more.

I like the sliders for mod depth too, very logical. And just to buck the trend, i liked the gradient sliders...

Anyway, overall this is looking great, really pulling Oatmeal together so it looks less like some old modular, a sprawl of knobs, and more like a modern software synth as we expect today.

.g

[sinkmusic]

BTW, here is part2 to my contriibution to this excellent synth :
http://stashbox.org/5720/Sink_Oatmeal+patches+bank2.zip

Someone making a GUI is really a good motivation for inspiration !

I think it is easier with Oatmeal to make pads and leads, and efx and metallic strings sounds than phat warm basses, but who cares ? We already have thousands of "warm analogue emualtions"!