MPE with Hardware Synths

[SteveElbows]

Funnily enough I just got an Analog Four MKII to use in exactly that fashion. I familiarised myself with using it directly with the Linnstrument this evening so that I will know what I am doing when I try it with bitwig tomorrow.

I dont want to get my hopes up too much about the likely remaining stumbling blocks being eliminated during the 2.4 beta, since they might be considered new features that wont get added at the beta stage, but I will give it my best shot anyway.

[pdxindy]

Funnily enough I just got an Analog Four MKII to use in exactly that fashion. I familiarised myself with using it directly with the Linnstrument this evening so that I will know what I am doing when I try it with bitwig tomorrow.

I dont want to get my hopes up too much about the likely remaining stumbling blocks being eliminated during the 2.4 beta, since they might be considered new features that wont get added at the beta stage, but I will give it my best shot anyway.

Cool... I'm curious to hear how it goes with the A4!

I understand about not getting to excited for improvements during the betas... however the ability to set PB range arrived in Beta 2. My guess is it depends on how much work it is. Being able to send midi channel via the Hardware Device seems like part of adding midi channel support in general... so on topic as it were.

Once you test it, I will also send an email about it. I'd like to be able to do MPE with hardware synths!

[SteveElbows]

Cool... I'm curious to hear how it goes with the A4!

I understand about not getting to excited for improvements during the betas... however the ability to set PB range arrived in Beta 2. My guess is it depends on how much work it is. Being able to send midi channel via the Hardware Device seems like part of adding midi channel support in general... so on topic as it were.

Once you test it, I will also send an email about it. I'd like to be able to do MPE with hardware synths!

Thanks.

I am still an hour or two away from doing the test, but in the meantime since you mention midi channels, I would like to return to the theory of what I thought the issue was when I made that first post in this thread a few days ago:

1) The midi channel stuff is solved, this is no longer a missing piece of the puzzle.

2) The 'special way' that bitwig treats MPE expressiveness messages is now the issue. ie they are not treasted just like any other midi message like cc etc, they are treated as special Expressions like TIMB and PRES. And this data does not come back out of bitwig as the standard types of midi messages that it went in as from the controller.

Like I said, I really need to check point b again carefully, and I dont know if there is a way around this or if I overlooked something. It doesnt help that I am not the most experienced bitwig user, but for example I can find messages about bitwig Hardware Instrument going back years, where people were having trouble even getting pitch bend midi out. In that case it sounded like there was a way round it, ticking or unticking something that stopped bitwig from treating the pitch bend data as a special expression. So I've assumed that what I saw the other day was the same thing, but also including channel aftertouch and cc74.

Hope that makes some sense, and as always I am all ears if someone knows about this and especially if they have a workaround.

[ThomasHelzle]

All this speculation is moot IMO, now that there are Midi Channels inside of Bitwig Studio.

Since you now can have all midi information go into a track with channel information preserved, anything that is broken on that side is a bug, to be reported and fixed.
If the Hardware Instrument device isn't sending out all of that information correctly, that is a bug to be reported and fixed.
If it's not translating the internal information correctly, again, bug, report, fix.
If the Controller scripts that come with BWS are not fully adapted to the new realities (and I'm sure they aren't yet) that as well is a bug to be reported and fixed.

So nobody is saying that the road may not be stony since it's early days with Midi Channels in BWS, but at least now all needed Lego is in place and everything not working is a bug (at least in my book).

That is the reality of Bitwig and it's small team of developers and now is the time to speak up and get it fixed your way.

Cheers,

Tom

[SteveElbows]

I can appreciate where you are coming from but this isnt moot speculation, its figuring out exactly what the situation is right now, with a view to reporting it is a bug, series of bugs, missing functionality or whatever. Just because I wasnt that positive about it being sorted by 2.4 final doesnt mean I have just given up now, and the detail really matters in order to be able to communicate with bitwig and other users.

Anyway I just have to take some rubbish to the tip and then I will begin todays mission and report my findings here.

[SteveElbows]

Doh, had a migraine and now seem to be coming down with something so my plans to re-test are delayed for a few days, my brain is too foggy at the moment to do it properly.

[ChamomileShark]

Keep going Steve. I've now added Bitwig to Cubase and I'm keen to see how it all works given that Bitwig was supposed to be the MPE leader in the DAW field.

[BobDog]

Ok I tested the hardware instrument with a Linnstrument.

Using the linnstrument script pitchbend is not sent out of the hardware instrument.

Using tomsgeneric to pretend the linnstrument is a 16 channel midi controller then pitchbend is sent.

Unfortunately BW seems a bit buggy for me in the recording of PB from multiple channels.

In the included image I recorded 4 notes on 4 different channels 1,2,3 then 4 and did a 1 octave pb up and down. While recording this BW was basically sending garbage PB to the synth, bug number 1.

When looking at the recorded PB data, channels 1 and 2 were recorded correctly, channels 3 and 4 had extra data in somehow it looks related (but not the same) as the PB data from channels 1 and 2. Bug number 2

So basically I think for me the multi channel stuff is pretty broken, I would email BW but on recent experience it is pretty hard to get them to listen to me!

I have included images of the data:

[BobDog]

Channel 1

[BobDog]

Channel 2

[BobDog]

Channel 3

[BobDog]

Channel 4

[ThomasHelzle]

I can only repeat myself here: So far, BWS could not internally handle Midi data on multiple channels.
I fully agree that this was a massive failure in implementing basic 101 functionality, I made that point even in pre-release times.
And I also fully understand why some of you are not very motivated to send even more emails after it took so long to get to this point.
But: THIS IS THE TIME TO DO SO.
BWS 2.4 is in Beta and since this is new functionality, there will be bugs.
But now it is bugs while so far it was simply not there at all.
That is a massive difference!

So - and please correct me where I'm wrong:
As I understand it, you now need no special script or setting anymore to use multichannel Midi. In theory, any script that allows to let in Midi on whatever channel it's send from the controller should do, especially with external hardware.
You can test that side if you put a midi monitor on your track and make sure everything is received as you intend.
The track itself has to be in Omni mode which means Channel From: All and To: Same (this is in the inspector for the track).
I do not know if P.Bend should be translated to Expression or not for hardware, I do not have an MPE controller or synth so can't check it out.
In theory, both should work but it may be easier to start without that.
Everything that does not work up to this point should be reported to beta@bitwig.com until it is fixed.

Since I have absolutely no clue about hardware synths with MPE, I can't help there, but again, if everything on your track is correctly coming in, the hardware instrument device should also send it out if it is in "Preserve" mode for the channel.
If not: beta@bitwig.com

And I am fully aware that this is work, time and annoying and that one would expect it to just work.
But this company has only 4 developers and they have a brutal amount of work on their plates, so they simply can't test all scenarios that we may think are obvious. I find this often frustrating myself, but persevere and you will reap the benefits once the bugs are ironed out.
In the end, you are here because you want a really good and easy to use DAW supporting MPE!

I personally fought very hard for MPE to become an integral part of BWS, since in my view it is the future of controllers.
We're really close now and IMO it is worth the time you people put in.

Sorry, if I'm a bit over the top at times, but this topic is really close to my heart and so I'm getting a bit "enthusiastic"...

I hope it will all work out for you in the end and look forward to one day get into using MPE myself!

Cheers,

Tom

[Hez]

I don't currently have any hardware synths (except a modular which isn't a whole lot of use testing this...), but I've had a little play around testing by sending MIDI out the HW Instrument via loopMidi to Falcon standalone.

At the moment it appears there's no conversion between MPE recorded data (recorded into Bitwig as pitch expression) & "standard multichannel" MIDI with a single channel per note with pitch bend. I swear in the past that Bitwig had an option to convert its proprietary pitch expression messages to standard pitch bend, but I can't find that option anymore - only the opposite way round, i.e. convert pitch bend to pitch expression.

It seems like what is required is the inverse of that current option, i.e. convert pitch expression messages to pitch bend? I suppose it's not trivial to map because what does 100% "pitch bend" look like when your pitch expression can be any range of notes? Perhaps you could just set the max expected pitch expression range and that is considered 100%, i.e. if you set pitch expression -> pitch bend conversion @ 12 semitones, then any pitch expression greater than 12 notes simply caps at 127 MIDI pitch bend (or whatever the 14-bit equivalent is for PB)?

Given that we already have the PB -> Expression toggle and the interface element below (once the toggle is clicked), all we'd really need is to convert that toggle to a drop down which gives another option, Expression -> PB, and use the same interface element below to set our expected pitch expression limit. Bitwig should then handle the pitch expression/pitch bend conversion stuff behind the scenes and allow us to output whatever we need.

At the moment, I believe the pitch expression -> multichannel pitch bend conversion happens when you tick the "Use MPE" option which appears when you select a VST container. Actually perhaps that "Use MPE" just needs to be added to the HW Instrument device?

EDIT: All of the above is assuming we record MPE as Bitwig intends, i.e. to their pitch expression messages. I think this is the method that should be pursued, as it keeps it clean with the interface and you can simply map to/from 'regular MIDI' whenever you need to at an output. We shouldn't need to do what BobDog is valiantly attempting above (i.e. skip the proper controller script and try to force MIDI input to 8+ channels of ugly pitch bend messages) to be able to use MPE both with internal and external synths.

EDIT2: On further investigation, using a non-MPE capable synth (IL Harmor), I've found the following:

- Ticking "Use MPE" on the VST device container makes Bitwig convert its proprietary pitch expression messages to standard MIDI pitch bend, presumably with channel information retained.

- If you set PB Range under the "Use MPE" toggle to 24 (equal to the maximum pitch expression allowed in the Bitwig note expression editor), then Bitwig will convert pitch expression messages linearly to midi pitch bend messages, where a note expression slide up to 24 semitones converts properly to a MIDI PB max of 16,383 or whatever it is.

- If you set PB range to anything less, then it will cap out at whatever you set it to. I.e. if you set it to 12 semitones, then a 12 semitone note expression slide will send 16,383 midi PB message. If you program a 15 semitone note expression slide into your clip that will also send 16,383 as its already capped (in line with the behaviour I expected above)

- I think all we need is for this "Use MPE" option to be enabled on the Hardware Instrument device. This solution is probably cleaner than my suggested track level solution above, as it means you could have a hardware instrument layered with e.g. a Bitwig internal instrument and send the appropriate data to each one.

[pdxindy]

Ok I tested the hardware instrument with a Linnstrument.

Using the linnstrument script pitchbend is not sent out of the hardware instrument.

Using tomsgeneric to pretend the linnstrument is a 16 channel midi controller then pitchbend is sent.

Unfortunately BW seems a bit buggy for me in the recording of PB from multiple channels.

In the included image I recorded 4 notes on 4 different channels 1,2,3 then 4 and did a 1 octave pb up and down. While recording this BW was basically sending garbage PB to the synth, bug number 1.

When looking at the recorded PB data, channels 1 and 2 were recorded correctly, channels 3 and 4 had extra data in somehow it looks related (but not the same) as the PB data from channels 1 and 2. Bug number 2

So basically I think for me the multi channel stuff is pretty broken, I would email BW but on recent experience it is pretty hard to get them to listen to me!

Dude... it's new functionality on a beta... of course there can be bugs... (send to: beta@bitwig.com)

And whether it seems like it or not, Bitwig devs listen. All the major new features from this and the previous upgrades are the stuff users have been asking for.

Please please send in a bug report... and if it is not corrected by Beta 3, then send it again. Doing so will actually get the feature you want working correctly.