(the product formerly known as) Epoch

[treebeard]

Awesome! Great news. ;D

Thank god that somebody is even taking the time and effort to develop this at all - I say!

I have to admit that if I had the skills to program it myself I would most likely be hesitant to release it at all to anyone. It would be a labour of love, my precious, my secretweapon.

We are really lucky that this is coming to us! I remain patient...

[wesleyt]

Colin,

I may have asked this before, so forgive me, but the thread search (nor a quick Google search) didn't turn up anything. Will FKA Epoch function as a MIDI FX plugin in Logic Pro X?

Happy new year!

Thanks,
Wes

[coincidental]

And I do restate: it really isn't far off at all.

Yay! We're relying on you to cheer up an otherwise drab and dull January...

[colin@loomer]

Will FKA Epoch function as a MIDI FX plugin in Logic Pro X

Yes... but it doesn't yet. In fact, that is one of the few outstanding to-dos left to do. In theory, it should be simple - the MIDI output to host works already for VST, RTAS, AAX, and even Audio Units (for hosts like Bidule, which do already support Audio Unit MIDI output.)

So in all likelyhood, it'll have AUFX support in the beta, but if not, it's high enough on the list to be ready for v1, or shortly after.

One caveat though: according to my research notes, AUFX is only supported on Mac OS X 10.9 and higher. There are other work-arounds though, such as just hosting the 'down-stream' plug-ins internally, or, as a last resort, using the IAC driver to route out and back into Logic. Which has, admittedly, about as accurate timing as me playing drums (ie, not very.)

[wesleyt]

Cool; thanks. I can see three scenarios.

1. Use it as a MIDI FX plug where it'd generate the MIDI for the instrument on the channel.

2. Use it as an Instrument plug and it'd wrap the instrument it's sending MIDI to.

3. Use it as an Effects plug and it'd wrap the MIDI-controlled effect it's sending MIDI to. It couldn't receive MIDI in this case I think, which should be fine.

It seems scenario two would be ready out of the box, and scenario one would be coming soon, which is just fine. Scenario three was kinda off the top of my head, but could be interesting.

Regards,
Wes

[colin@loomer]

Yes, all three scenarios are possible. There is also another situation I often use it for: MIDI processing. For this, I insert it between an input MIDI source and an output plug-in. Here, it won't generate MIDI per se, but alters the incoming MIDI in whatever way you require. This is useful for harmonizers, humanisers, velocity limiters, channel re-mappers, re-scalers, etc.

[aMUSEd]

Rescaling would be useful - will it support microtuning?

[colin@loomer]

I've not made any accommodation for micro-tuning yet, but that's not to say it can't at some point.

Although - and you'll have to forgive me because my knowledge on this area isn't too hot - but isn't micro-tuning more of a synth feature, rather than the responsibility of the host? Does the MIDI spec even have accommodation for micro-tuning?

[whyterabbyt]

Although - and you'll have to forgive me because my knowledge on this area isn't too hot - but isn't micro-tuning more of a synth feature, rather than the responsibility of the host? Does the MIDI spec even have accommodation for micro-tuning?

AFAIR, the VST plugins which have done this in the past (eg TobyBear MicroTuner) did it by translating a midi note into a combination of midi-note plus a pitchbend message derived from the scale. Obviously the synth would need full-scale pitchbend set to a specific amount (2 semis to get the right accuracy I think?).

[aMUSEd]

Yes that's the only one I know of that can do that (and it's defunct and Win only). Logic seems able to pull it off with full Scala support but only for built in instruments. Such a tool would be very useful and there are many plugins that do not support microtunings.

[colin@loomer]

Yes, that it do-able as is. There are several ways of accomplishing this, more or less complicated depending on what you actually need, but they all revolve around the same idea: take a MIDI note and depending on its pitch class, generate a pitch-bend message. Simple; would only take a couple of modules to do this.

With pitch-bend being per channel, you could also be a bit clever and route each MIDI note to its own channel if you wanted up to 16 note polyphony. Or (if the synth supports it; I know Aspect does) use polyphonic aftertouch per note and route this to the oscillator's pitch.

As a general rule, when dealing with polyphonic MIDI streams, you're usually better off using the Lua module. Assuming MicroTuner does what you suggested, it could be done here with only a few lines of Lua code; I'll make a note to get something along these lines including in the factory library.

[whyterabbyt]

Yes, that it do-able as is. There are several ways of accomplishing this, more or less complicated depending on what you actually need, but they all revolve around the same idea: take a MIDI note and depending on its pitch class, generate a pitch-bend message. Simple; would only take a couple of modules to do this.


With pitch-bend being per channel, you could also be a bit clever and route each MIDI note to its own channel if you wanted up to 16 note polyphony. Or (if the synth supports it; I know Aspect does) use polyphonic aftertouch per note and route this to the oscillator's pitch.

As a general rule, when dealing with polyphonic MIDI streams, you're usually better off using the Lua module. Assuming MicroTuner does what you suggested, it could be done here with only a few lines of Lua code; I'll make a note to get something along these lines including in the factory library.

Does your lua interpreter support loading external files?(*) That'd be needed to parse scala microtuning files, I'd imagine.

(*) because Im imagining a scenario where that could have been removed for security.

[colin@loomer]

Yes, you can load files with the Lua script. There are security restrictions with the Lua module, but I deemed reading a file essential enough to allow it into the environment.

The only catch here is that you shouldn't read files (or do anything operating system-y) during real-time MIDI generation. Instead, you should cache the contents by placing the read in the script's init function, leaving the tick function lean and fast.

Alternatively, I imagine writing a Scala -> Lua table definition parser would be trivial. You could then just paste the Lua'd Scala files directly into the script.

[ThomasHelzle]

Bitwig supports Midi Tuning [SINGLE NOTE TUNING CHANGE (REAL-TIME)] for it's internal instruments and supporting VSTs:
http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php
A PDF with the specs is in preparation as I understand it.

Syntogy Ivory supports the Midi Tuning for whole banks, but I'm unsure about the exact specs. I'm sure their support could help. Most other synths I know support internal loading of tuning tables only.

But honestly: As nice to have this tuning stuff is, I'd rather do the other 5000 things I want Non-Epoch for right now than have this one thing right from the start.

The child needs out, it can continue to grow in the sunshine of the real world...

Cheers,

Tom

[colin@loomer]

I've just (very very quickly) glanced at that spec. If it is just dependant on sending SysEx messages, Epoch'll do it nicely. It's actually pretty good at SysEx handling, although there is a limit to the size of SysEx messages (I think about 1Mb, if memory serves), which is a side effect of it all being real-time and lock-free. Other than sample dumps, I don't think you'll hit this SysEx size limitation.