another toy for your pleasure: my "Dust Arp 32" polyphonic "MIDI" gate

[mystran]

teemu you should consider a donate button.

Sadly, I'm not sure if I'm even legally allowed to do that kind of thing in this country, so.. I'd rather avoid having to think about it. I have an alternative plan.

Its the internet, how are they going to catch you
lol

Well, that's not really the point.

Anyway, right now I'm working real hard on implementing my always-online webcam-surveillance-dongled postcard-challenge-response copy-protection plan for my new customer-focused plugin renting plan, so this issue will soon be solved.

[knowix]

Another thing I might consider making more editable is how it deals with incoming notes. For instance, the maximum gap between two notes that is considered a chord.

When the notelist is updated has also given me issues. A split second between putting my finger on a new note and taking my finger off the previous one has lead to the wrong notes playing. I'm not sure how you'd sort out that though.

Arp latch and reset at new note/chord would of course be clearly useful additions.

[mystran]

Another thing I might consider making more editable is how it deals with incoming notes. For instance, the maximum gap between two notes that is considered a chord.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. The plugin isn't really supposed to care about chords at all.

When the notelist is updated has also given me issues. A split second between putting my finger on a new note and taking my finger off the previous one has lead to the wrong notes playing. I'm not sure how you'd sort out that though.

The update always happens at the exact beginning of a step. The trick is to play "a little bit early" since .. from the possible schemes that I tried, I found this to be the most reliable way to get predictable results. Arguably it takes a bit of getting used to, though.

As for latch/reset.. yeah on the list of things to do.

[ejr]

Tried it last night and I'm very impressed.
My new favourite arpegiator

Many thanks for a great plug in

John

[damstraversaz]

Hi,
I'm still using Dust arp a lot , and a some suggestions about it (sorry for my poor english):

1 It could be great to have access to the menu option with automation, or for controlling it with midi. Actually, there is no way to control rotate, random etc exept with the mouse, as the host does not see the parameters.
2 it will be fantastic to have some more options like the velocity linen without loosing the simplicity of dustarp. For exemple,some basic features like length ( different than ties, as each note have his own ties) and a "divisi " sequence line ( like kirnu free for exemple). divisi can really had life to the sequence.

anyway, that's one of the most useful midi tool I know, the workflow is near perfect !
all the best,
Damien

[mystran]

1 It could be great to have access to the menu option with automation, or for controlling it with midi. Actually, there is no way to control rotate, random etc exept with the mouse, as the host does not see the parameters.

This is sadly something that isn't really possible currently, since the rotations and randomization is actually just "scripts" that edit the current pattern. The way it works is that when you select something from the menu, the editor (in GUI code) reads the current pattern, performs edits on it, then stores the new pattern data.

So.. there are no parameters and therefore no automation. The data-changes resulting from the edits CAN be automated, but not the logical edits themselves. About the best I could do without completely rewriting the whole thing, would be adding MIDI triggers for the operations.. but I think that wouldn't be very user friendly either.

The menu options do have keyboard "shortcuts" defined for most options, so once the menu is open, the selection can be done by using letters, which is a bit easier to do repeated.. but sadly modern Windows doesn't show the underline markers by default (it's a system-wide option, defaults to not drawing them.. and doesn't seem like I can override that without replacing the whole menu with a custom one) and since I don't take keyboard focus, you still have to click the menu open.

I've been meaning to replace the menu with separate "toolbar" of buttons though, so you wouldn't need to click twice in different places; that would make rotation or repeated randomization a lot easier. Getting rid of the extra menu for the pattern selection could be a good idea too.

I could also take the focus from the host (maybe optionally), which would allow simple editing with keyboard directly (eg arrows to rotate and such).

But yeah.. I agree with you that the current "only from menu with the mouse" is a bit less than ideal.

2 it will be fantastic to have some more options like the velocity linen without loosing the simplicity of dustarp. For exemple,some basic features like length ( different than ties, as each note have his own ties) and a "divisi " sequence line ( like kirnu free for exemple). divisi can really had life to the sequence.

I've given some thought to the possibility of more flexible timing and there are some nasty problems to be solved in terms of how it would interact with host playback position sync. It's not really a technical problem as such.. but I need to find a design where it's reasonable for a human to predict what's going to happen.

The basic problem is that the whole thing is designed to NOT track time. It takes the host song position (or it's virtual song position if host transport is stopped) and figures out what step should be playing, whether it's the current step and if not, what state changes do we need to send via MIDI.

There's a reason for this method: it completely avoids all kinds of sync issues. Even with pattern length automation, it'll play things back the same every time, even if you jump around your song randomly. I don't really want to lose this, so variable step-timing should somehow work within this framework with a user interface that makes it reasonably difficult to shoot oneself in the foot.

Adding another line of controls (like the velocity) for something like MIDI CC output would be pretty easy though; it's on my TODO list to add a row or two, just there's been a bunch of other things I've been working on.

...

[damstraversaz]

Hi Mystran,
thanks a lot for the great explanations ! I perfectly understand yout choices . This is really a fantastic plugin.

[mystran]

Hi Mystran,
thanks a lot for the great explanations ! I perfectly understand yout choices . This is really a fantastic plugin.

It's still very valuable for me to hear about the things that people would have, if they could have anything.. because it really does help me make better choices in terms of both updates and future plugins.

[RikkShow]

Hi, this "Angle Grinder" synth in the second Dust Arp video, sounds nice. Was it ever released?

[simonhans73]

Thanks for a great plugin! I have been looking for something like this for a long time

[mystran]

Hi, this "Angle Grinder" synth in the second Dust Arp video, sounds nice. Was it ever released?

It was never released, since it's really just a prototype... but there's really nothing special into it, just a big stack of unison oscillators and a basic state-variable filter.

[antto]

mystran: it's probably a few years late, but for video editing, if you got a linux box - try kdenlive

[mystran]

mystran: it's probably a few years late, but for video editing, if you got a linux box - try kdenlive

Not sure what this has to do with anything, but the only Linux box that I currently have is a Rasberry Pi running headless to run a few services for my home network and there's a whole number of reasons why that's not really ideal for video editing.

[antto]

it was about this post: viewtopic.php?p=5462423#p5462423
yeah, video editing, especially now with big resolutions and what not, requires more serious hardware than that

[layzer]

just stumbled upon this.... wow, simple and effective.
this is going to be a great new addition to my composition tools
and will see lots of use, thanks Mystran!!