piz midi plugins (windows/linux/mac)

[-PIKU-]

midipads requests:

- add a piano-keyboard preset with two octaves and another with 4 octaves
a 24 or 49 slider preset could work well too
- add drag&play option to play glissandos. it would be amazing with hexagons preset of with 16 sliders (great for additive synthesis)
- increase the number of keys in hexagons to 128 or 192 (axis like)
- add a special poly-trigger option: a special learnable trigger that suspends note off for all played notes until this trigger is released. it could be used with a pedal to play\build complex chords.
- add an option to extend the mouse trigger area in 16pads and hexagons, so chords can be played with one click in the intersections between two,three or four pads. if possible with a visual indication of the trigger area.
only for note triggering obviously.
- add some scene\snapshot buttons for xy-pads and sliders, and if possible a controllable morph (i think that morph becomes difficult to realize with more than 16 xy pads) or a glide time (like in soma's cc-morph)
each scene button can learn ot trigger a complete cc configuration
or make a separate cc-morpher plugin limited to 16 cc's controllable with external or virtual sliders\encoders
- if no icon\image is selected, the text will take central position on the pad
- add inertia to xy pads to smooth the mouse movements (selectable
- add a paypal donation address because i want to offer you a beer or something similar

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- transpose slider for notes (-32 +32) on the top. the snapshot\scene buttons will store even the transpose value.
- add z-axis for piezo support in the main menu. the z value is taken from a selectable note, and can be used in pad-menu to trigger a third cc or as velocity.
- external piezo triggering , selectable for single pads (the piezo triggering has more timing precision than the touchscreen\mouse )
- qwerty support: possibility to trigger keyboard keys with modifiers. or make a separate midi2qwerty plugin with a resizable gui and all the qwerty keys
- possibility to use a pad to send x,y,z,note and qwerty
- TOGGLE MODE for pads - usefull to control many audio editors od dj applications
- automatic preset change when a pc-message is recived
- rotary pots (absolute 0-127), rotary encoders (relative, endless), y value can be taken measuring the distance from the center. images could rotate with the pointer.
- endless sliders
- FULL SCREEN option. complatible with double monitor setups.
- if possible add the possibility to take the triggering directly form a specific ps\2 driver. so if i have a 2 monitor configuration and a touch interface installed on the second screen, if i disable the touch interface as mouse pointer in the control panel of win-xp, i can access it as a dedicated interface for midipads. leaving the mouse pointer free
- when a pad is triggered by midinote it lits...

[insertpizhere]

good suggestions. i've already been working on some of those. i'll be happy if i can get the drag & play thing to work.

try this:

there should be a comment box where you can instruct me to use it for beer only.

thanks!

[Lagrange]

[-PIKU-]

i used a piezo mic to get velocity values...it works
it's nothing professional but a nice to have

i used ktdrumtrigger for velocity

could you add a "external velocity trigger" option?
the incoming note will set the velocity and the mouse position will set the pitch to be played...

[insertpizhere]

hmmm... so tapping the screen creates a note from the piezo signal, and when midiPads receives the note, it will find which pad the mouse is over, and trigger that pad using the input velocity. normal clicking on the pads would have to be disabled.

seems like a good experiment. i'll see what i can do.

[-PIKU-]

midipads: i thought that the piano-like pad set idea is not that good...
probably is better if you add a simple 25 or 49 slider preset.

could you add a +36 -36 transpose slider for notes on the top of the plug?

[insertpizhere]

midipads: i thought that the piano-like pad set idea is not that good...
probably is better if you add a simple 25 or 49 slider preset.

i can certainly do that, but eventually i think i should do the piano-key shaped pads. though it wouldn't really matter until i can get dragging across pads to work...

could you add a +36 -36 transpose slider for notes on the top of the plug?

that would make sense, along with the velocity/cc-value offset sliders.

[insertpizhere]

i haven't been able to do much work on these lately, but i did fix one thing on midiPads the other day, so i'll go ahead and upload it. it used to steal keyboard focus when you clicked on the pads or sliders. now it will only if you do something that actually needs it, like renaming the pads.

http://thepiz.org/xt/midiPads20071109.zip

[-PIKU-]

please add the "external velocity trigger"!! i'm getting very good results...
i'm preparing a complete report of this experiment because i noticed that midi in ext2 is unaffordable compared to xt1.

[-PIKU-]

ok... here is the report:

piezoelectric mic on the border of the screen (no matter what point of the screen you tap on)
apogee minime instrument-input preamp\converter
the piezo signal goes into the kt drumtrigger vst from smartelectonix
the outcoming midi is sent to kontakt

i compared touchscreen triggering and piezo triggering
and i can say the the piezo has a better "trigger response"... i can play a very fast note repetitions without loosing any note and with a better timing.
it's probably cause of my resistive touchscreen, with acoustic impulse or other touch tecnologies the results could be better... but this is not sure, and the costs are higher

i tested it all with ext2 first, with a bad result... the midi notes where too delayed even with 3ms and 1,5ms latency!!!
i tryed with ext1 and the timing is absolutely perfect. you can lower the latency down to 6ms without problems, playing complex grooves.
it's playable!!

play with fingernails on a touchscreen is different than playing drum or sampler pads of course, but with midi-pads there is the possibility to control other two cc's!!

ok... sice i think that midipads+touchscreen+piezo is a concrete and economic way to play, my request is for full support for external triggering
* take noteon and velocity from external note leaving x and y free for cc control
* find a way to use the external triggering for noteon and mouse\touch release for noteoff
* choosing the note pitch regarding the last mouse position refresh...
* without any added latency

[insertpizhere]

i'm going to try to implement a few things tonight, which should help you use midiPads this way. if this works well, i might have to buy a touchscreen...

- pads will be able to use the y-direction to send CCs (not just aftertouch) in note mode (i've been meaning to do this).
- "external note-on trigger" mode will use an external note-on to trigger the pad under the mouse. mousedown will have no effect on the pad, but dragging and mouseup will still work.

[insertpizhere]

here's something to test.

http://thepiz.org/xt/midiPads20071109_test.zip

there's a preset in the default bank that demonstrates the new features. i called it "Piezo Mode" for now. it will use the trigger for Pad 1 as the trigger for whatever pad the mouse is hovering over.

i'm not sure if this will work, because the trigger signal might arrive before the cursor actually moves over the pad. in that case the trigger might need to be delayed slightly.

[-PIKU-]

ok... i tested the thing
the piezo signal arrives before the mouse pointer refresh. this is probably cause of my 150€ touch screen. the refresh rate of my resistive screen is not exactly thought for extreme musical applications... it's around 30ms.
if you intend to buy one you could consider the acoustic pulse recognition type from elo

http://www.elotouch.com/Technologies/compare_all.asp

a "60 one should work well

regaring piezo midipads: i used drumatic3 for some tests. i noticed that the use of piezo note triggering with the use of x and y axis brings to an amazing level of control over the sound. as i sayd before the piezo timing with ext1 is much better than the touchscreen click timing...
the sad point is that you cannot play many notes like in akai samplers because everytime you change pad, the first note is always referred to the previous pad...

so...
* try to add a delay slider that goes from 0 t 50ms for some tests.
i don't think that the delay slider will solve the mouse latency bug... it could be tryed, but higher delay brings to difficult playing.


* add a Z-axis (in main-manu) that is alwais referred to the incoming velocity from a selectable note (the piezo). so the piezo velocity can be selected on pad-menu: eg. use Z-axis as velocity or use Z-axis as cc.
*selectable "use Z as trigger", so you can play all pads with mouse\touch precision and only some pads with piezo timing precision.

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i found a mad video on youtube regarding piezo sensing.
there is some program\algorithm around that consents to transform every kind of surface in a sensitive surface using two or more piezo mics like the one i used. if it works... you don't nee to buy any touchscreen, you only need a piece of glass!
this is technique used by acoustic-pulse touch monitors

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=T5WS0Vfln_I

[-PIKU-]

another little thing ... the kt drumtrigger vst sends a value of 127 for note off... i needed to make a plugin with maxmsp that converts to zero every 127 value. could you make a workaround for this?

[insertpizhere]

i guess i haven't made anything that can alter the noteoff velocity. a midi munger plugin could do it... if i do one it would just be a version of midiVelocityScale that worked on noteoffs instead of noteons. that would only take a few minutes.

does a high noteoff velocity actually cause any problems?

the sad point is that you cannot play many notes like in akai samplers because everytime you change pad, the first note is always referred to the previous pad...

so...
* try to add a delay slider that goes from 0 t 50ms for some tests.
i don't think that the delay slider will solve the mouse latency bug... it could be tryed, but higher delay brings to difficult playing.

that's what i was afraid of... it may not be worth it if the signal has to be delayed that much.