Toms Midi Mangler 1.1 - Probabilistic Reaktor/Falcon Midi Ensemble (not only) for BWS... :-)

[ThomasHelzle]

Hey,

recently I was asked on the epic Bitwig Thread and via PM if BWS has Midi Devices like the Random Velocity and Random Pitch in Live or what similar Tools there are to replace those.
And while there are hundreds of Midi Tools available, none of them does what I usually want in a straight forward manner.

So to celebrate the BWS Release I want to introduce "Toms Midi Mangler", a Reaktor 6 Ensemble that allows you to:
a.) Set a probability for incoming Notes being played (or not).
b.) Set a probability for each the Velocity and the Pitch of those Notes going through to be randomly offset.
c.) Set a Random Offset Amount for those selected Notes.
d.) Set both for Velocity and Pitch if the Offset should only go up, down or both directions.
e.) Set an upper and lower Note Limit.
f.) Finally optionally keep the resulting Notes inside a certain Scale.
(the last part uses a Macro from bubu called bubumapper - thanks for that!).

This is a first public version - feel free to give feedback how it works for you and help me improve it - I'm relatively new to Reaktor so maybe some stuff can be done more efficiently?

This is the initial work-in-progress-Interface:



EDIT: 16 September 2015 - Version 1.1 uploaded.
I can't create hanging notes anymore - so I hope it's good for you guys too.
Completely reworked in Reaktor 6 with (mostly) Core.
Download here:
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/c ... show/7841/

- This allows you to have for instance one simple Midi Loop running and make it ever-changing - from subtle to drastic...
- Or feed the Midi-Only output of a Drum VST like Jamstix through it to add variety and map it with the note range knobs to the spread of a weird bunch of samples in the BWs-Sampler, DrumMachine or Kontakt...
- Use dense classical Midi Files as Input and check the Result if you reduce the Note Probability and add some variations...

With this you should be covered in the Midi Realm (if you have Reaktor) until BWS will have more Midi Tools included.

Other worthwhile Midi-Tools and Collections I would recommend to look into:

The PizMidi Collection: http://www.thepiz.org/plugins/?p=pizmidi (Free)
HyperCyclic: http://www.mucoder.net/en/hypercyclic/ (Free)
Blue Arp: http://www.graywolf2004.net/my-projects ... peggiator/ (Free)

And of course Kirnu Cream, Cthulhu, Thesys and Axon as well as some wonderful Reaktor Ensembles like nod-e http://www.antonioblanca.com/nod-e

Since you can have all those note generators and manglers inside one track, they're really a joy to work with in Bitwig Studio

Edit: There now is a slightly different version for Falcon as well:


Check it out here on the epic Falcon thread:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 4#p6297764

Enjoy!!!

Cheers,

Tom

[ThomasHelzle]

Here are some screenshots to show the routing for above Ensemble:

First a track where I run a simple Midi Loop through the Midi-Mangler to have it continually change and then route it through a BWS LFO to Chromaphone. Chromaphone is a bit low in modulations, so the LFO in this case modulates the Balance parameter between the two resonators:



Then a track where I have Jamstix' Midi-Only Output go through the Midi-Mangler to add additional variety and to confine the result to a limited note range, since the Kontakt Instrument that follows only spans 2 or 3 octaves.
The Midi-Mangler doesn't cut-off the notes outside the range but reintroduces them via modulo from the other side of the note range - so make sure you set both the upper and lower note knob to sensible values:



And finally a similar setup with Hypercyclic as the note generator, the Midi-Mangler next and finally a note-range limited instrument in the UVIworkstation:



Cheers,

Tom

[jc_vt]

Looks great, Tom, but ran into a Checksum error when trying to unpack it….

EDIT: worked using Unarchiver….

[dom@bitwig]

Great stuff, Thomas! Really great!

[Redukt]

Yes, stellar work Tom, thank you very much for this tool.

Looking forward to try it out tomorrow, and maybe there will even be something like this built into Bitwig in the future *hint* *hint*...

[ThomasHelzle]

Looks great, Tom, but ran into a Checksum error when trying to unpack it….

EDIT: worked using Unarchiver….

Hey jc_vt, newer versions will be zip files.

Thanks guys!

I have set the internal voice count to 25 since I didn't find a way to make it user-selectable other than by going into edit mode and change it globally.

Oh and I forgot to mention the Random Seed Parameter: It's pretty unimportant in this scenario I guess. I'm used to create fractal Shaders for 3D-Rendering with Perlin Noise and the like, and there the Seed decides how the result will look and is important to prevent, that two instances create exactly the same pattern. But so far it seems that in Reaktor this isn't using the same kind of "repeatable pseudo randomness" (which would be cool to have though - the same random pattern created each time you start the sequence...) so for the time being it can be pretty much ignored...

I guess I'll have to look into the core cell stuff and see if I can create my own thing there...

Cheers,

Tom

[ThomasHelzle]

Just uploaded it to the Reaktor User Library:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/co ... show/7841/

Cheers,

Tom

[JC Biffro]

Anyone been using this tool?

[ThomasHelzle]

Be careful with it. In more recent versions of BWS it produces a lot of hanging notes (it worked much better in the first versions after the original release (I don't know why), otherwise I wouldn't have released it at all).
It was my first "serious" midi-ensemble and only after a while I realized that I would have to implement much better note-tracking to make it really foolproof. This kind of stuff is quite involved in Reaktor and so far I didn't have the time to finish it.
If anybody has more experience with such stuff and can point me to resources on how to do this efficiently, I'd be all ears.

If you want to use it anyway, be sure to put a plugin behind it that limits the number of voices. PIZMIDI has several.

I mostly use PIZMIDI MIDIPROBABILITY these days instead myself and hope that Loomer will finish their !Epoch before the next century to take care of all my Midi-Mangling...

Cheers,

Tom

[Cedworth]

I ran into a similar hanging note problem with something I'm cooking up. Reaktor is not sending correct note-off messages to Bitwig. How I solved it was by sticking in a macro from Michael Lancaster's step sequencer here.

I don't think it will be as simple of a fix for yours, but I think the answer is in there, because the sequencer works and midi thru works. I'm not any kind of expert or I would have just fixed it myself.

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, I'm sure it could be solved somehow but I just find the whole midi part of Reaktor too much pain to be worth it for me personally - not my definition of fun
I'll check out your link though, thanks!

Cheers,

Tom

[powermat]

Does stucknotekiller not work?

[ThomasHelzle]

Hey everybody

Reaktor 6 finally gave me the kick to dive into this ensemble again.
After hours of trying out everything under the sun, streamlining the whole thing, doing my first core experiments, implementing an initial note-tracking solution via a table and almost losing my hair, I finally was able to get it running without all those hanging notes.

So if you have Reaktor 6 and are interested in some really fun tool to add variation to your tracks, check it out once again:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/c ... show/7841/

I'll fix the link in the initial post as well - the old one was really unusable...

Cheers and let me know how it works for you,

Tom

[ThomasHelzle]

Updated to 1.1 today.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/c ... show/7841/

Re-created most of the ensemble in Core, improved the internal logic and made everything more tidy.
On my system I no longer can produce hanging notes.

If you should encounter them, please let me know and list some information like OS, DAW, Hardware specs etc.
I'd love to make this rock solid for everybody.

Cheers,

Tom

[Tearing Riots]

Sure, make me upgrade Reaktor.
I´m set on waiting till i can snatch a cheap used licence.

Thanks for sharing though.