FR theme: MIDI functions

[Diek]

HI

Being able to zoom verically in the piano-roll would be nice.

Flipper.

I had an idea related to this one. It's an strip behind the piano. Once you click on it you get a cursor for scrolling and/or zooming, centerig the view in the note closer where you clicked. Something like this:

This strip could also be used for fine tuning controllers or other functions I have not seen yet.

A second idea would be while inserting in the MIDI editor to have a note silouette with the length and position. This way you'll know exactly what are dealing with. If you could make it shorter or longer with the arrow keys before inserting it would be better. And making this note visually related with the piano it could be perfect. Something like this:

[disturb]

uh that's basically built in eXT1...

[Caleb]

Regarding the midi sampler idea, I tend to thing eXT1 was getting there with that. You could turn eXT1 into a giant midi sampler and then just plug it into another host.

XT2 may even be set to do this more elegantly with the Group Comp whenever that is developed. I got the idea you could load anything into those comps: VST midi plug-ins, sequencer components, sampler components, multi-effect components and then treat it like a separate instrument.

So depending on how cool the midi area of XT2 is going to become: Composer, Live Mode, Arpeg Comps etc... you can build yourself a very nice midi sampler type device all within a group comp. I'm hoping that XT2 follows the trend of eXT1 where everything is possible if you have imagination.

Regards
Caleb

[disturb]

time to bump that one too

[gaitkeepah]

-further crucial workflow (since EXt is used alot as a vsti like for instance tracktion) is drag and drop a midiclip from extVsti (loaded in tracktion) onto a tracktion track without this tedious saving midifile first to directory and then importing it to tracktion.

That is something I would love to see happen. I would really consider this app if it were there.

[horn]

FR:

• midi inserts for tracks
  toggle the VST receive channnel

[DWb]

Bump cos I was thinking about this today.

It's not exactly a priority for me, but it would be great to have lots of little low level midi comps plus a few bigger 'playback' things (like the midi parts in 1.4) so you can build all sorts of big complicated processing / triggering setups that react in different ways to your controller. Gate logic, triggered things that toggle a note on/off, midi controlled midi transposers, various sorts of randomness generators, midi feedback... at the moment I get the impression that most people who do this sort of thing use stuff like Reaktor or Max/MSP or whatever - it'd be amazing to have it natively available in XT2, where I suspect it'd be a bit more useable.

An extreme (possibly excessive) idea would be some sort of 'midi scripting comp' that lets you write "if A and B then do C" sort of things.

Btw you probably can do most of this sort of stuff with plugins, but it'd be rather nice to have it native. (And presumably most of it isn't massively difficult to implement compared to sticking in new DSP based comps?) It kind of suggests to someone picking up XT2 for the first time that philosophically, this sort of thing is part of "what it's designed for".

[Caleb]

DWb - I tend to agree.

I think XT2 should come loaded with all sorts of fascinating midi madness in the form of small comps that can be used on sequencer track output as well as midi input - the more the better. These will work an absolute treat in the Group Comp when it's developed further as you can
create incredible "Combinator Style" instruments which actually have a
whole new level of sophistication given the addition of the various midi components.

For the start we can add the Arpeg comp and Chords comp, Midi Splitter etc... from XT1 and then we could have added all sorts of simpler (or even more complicated) midi comps.

I'm with you on this - although I'm not really in any rush for it at the moment tbh.

Regards
Caleb

[disturb]

Whole heartedly agree with the 2 posts above.

[gamble]

well, I can see three basic fields of use for midi or what people expect of it after reading this thread:
1: destructive clip based midi operations (ext1's composer)
2: non-destructive midi track based inserts
3: non-destructive midi comps for the main view

2 + 3 can be combined with the new sequencer layout in ext2. instead of many different midi plugs I'd rather have a generic midi comp which works as a container for all the other operations that'll be possible. so you have one midi comp in which you can add a chord module, an arp, a gate etc
these modules are after one another per default, like some midi fx chain. using many different midicomps you can also make countless connections between them, just as you like.
I suppose something like might be a good consensus between different user requirements

[Charlie]

I agree with what gamble has observed. I love creating midi machines in XT using either the built-in comps, or nicfits and somas creations. BUT, I miss the ability to recall 'machines' like they were synth patches. I'm hoping the group comp will allow this sort of functionality.

Some more FR:
+ note grouping and related functions (e.g. select a group of notes which can then be grouped and locked together, the grouped notes can then be stretched, distributed over time and other functions.)

+ advanced note properties (We are all used to the idea of what a note means in a typical piano roll, e.g. pitch, duration and volume. What if we took the idea that the note can have other properties too. Suppose the note had a modal chord property. When triggered the note would create a chord instead of a single note. Or, the note had a split property so that the note would play a triplet for example.)

[Diek]

An extreme (possibly excessive) idea would be some sort of 'midi scripting comp' that lets you write "if A and B then do C" sort of things.

I loved CAL programming in Cakewalk, that's more or less this idea.
I agree also with the power of that inside a Group Comp.
If all that MIDI processing were built inside XT2 we could also share our MIDI Group Comps

[soma]

Did I already ask for scripting for the composer? I did?

[Caleb]

I'd love scripting not just for creating comp logic like this, but also for controlling XT2 using an exposed API.

For example, I could automate tasks or build my own destructive midi functions, really cool functionality within audio clips - and share the scripts with others. OK - drifting off-topic there but you get the drift.

If nothing else, then being able to build real-time non-destructive midi "comps" would be awesome.

Regards
Caleb

[fandango]

FR regarding the forthcoming Arp/Chord comps

Please. Please. Please. INTELLIGENT arpeggiation.

Draw a chord in your host of choice for an arp to arpeggiate through.
On playback, "Down" should start the arpeggiation from the highest note. Likewise, "Up" should arpeggiate from the lowest note. NOT THE FIRST NOTE IN THE EVENT LIST. Please look at the notes that start at the same time and have the arpeggiator iterate through them correctly depending on the Arp mode.

Synth1, Slayer2 and Sytrus are the only synths I've come across who's arps do this properly. I have as yet to find a MIDI arp that does this correctly (not even the Chords comp in XT1 would do this).