MSoundFactory concept & template round #3

[dmbaer]

Dmbaer, I can’t find the MPE apps. Are they only for iPad? I have an iPhone, but not an iPad.

The following are for iOS, so they should be good for the iPhone. One of them has a price that will double (to 10 bucks USD) on 11/27. The other is priced at 5 bucks.

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/ ... ontroller/

https://sonicstate.com/news/2018/11/21/ ... d-for-ios/

I would think an iPhone screen might be a tad small for a keyboard app, however. But maybe you can find some reviews. I have not researched these to any depth at all.

[dmbaer]

I have several initial reactions. The first is that I think that Volume must be accessible at all times. The other global parameters are set-and-forget. But volume is a different matter.

I would also like to see some discussion of standards for MIDI controller use. For example, to what extent is the sound designer as opposed to the user expected to decide what MW and AT do? The most common uses of these are for brightness (filter cutoff usually) and vibrato depth. So, what if the the sound designer goes one way and the user wants to flip that. I can think of a number of instruments where it's trivially easy for the user to choose what the MW influences right on the UI. In the Melda world, I can't think of a way to do that (I could be wrong on that, obviously). My main point in this is that some elaboration of such things would be most useful.

Also, an important question: will the user have the MIDI button and all it enables in the LE version of MSF?

Then we get to MPE, which is a subject that's somewhat of an extension of the above. As a novice in this area, it's not clear to me how much of the responsibility is in MSF's court and how much in that of the sound designer. Any per-voice parameter is potentially a candidate for MPE treatment, right? So if we define AT modulation for a per-voice parameter, is there anything else that the sound designer need worry about that isn't handled by MSF? I confess I'm scratching my head a bit here, not knowing what MSF will supply in terms of MPE support.

[Whywhy]

@dmbaer :
Mpe : you have 5 controllers :
Velocity ( strike )
Pressure
Cc74
Bend
Note off ( lift )
The beauty of mpe and what give all the playing expressions is in the continuous controller, like a volume pedal but per voices.
Pressure and cc74 are continuous controllers, it's like you have 2 envelopes under your fingers.
A basic example:
You can simulate a vibrato with the x axis, bend.
A tremollo with the pressure
The brightest with the cc74
The attack time with the velocity
A release effect with the lift.
That's just the most basic example.

Now, imagine this 5 dimensions combine with all the Msf modules :
Velocity to ratio module
Pressure to wavetable index and unison detune
Cc74 to multiple fx per voices amount
Bend to filter or lfo speed
Lift to noise .... an infinite number of combined expressions under your fingers.
The difficulty , for me, is to manage all this modulations, because you have some interaction between them but it's where the magic happens!
Mpe is like the pills into the Matrix movie, after you have take it, no way to comeback.
The only serum is playing real instruments, but that, it's another story.

[Chandlerhimself]

I have several initial reactions. The first is that I think that Volume must be accessible at all times. The other global parameters are set-and-forget. But volume is a different matter.

I would also like to see some discussion of standards for MIDI controller use. For example, to what extent is the sound designer as opposed to the user expected to decide what MW and AT do? The most common uses of these are for brightness (filter cutoff usually) and vibrato depth. So, what if the the sound designer goes one way and the user wants to flip that. I can think of a number of instruments where it's trivially easy for the user to choose what the MW influences right on the UI. In the Melda world, I can't think of a way to do that (I could be wrong on that, obviously). My main point in this is that some elaboration of such things would be most useful.

Also, an important question: will the user have the MIDI button and all it enables in the LE version of MSF?

Then we get to MPE, which is a subject that's somewhat of an extension of the above. As a novice in this area, it's not clear to me how much of the responsibility is in MSF's court and how much in that of the sound designer. Any per-voice parameter is potentially a candidate for MPE treatment, right? So if we define AT modulation for a per-voice parameter, is there anything else that the sound designer need worry about that isn't handled by MSF? I confess I'm scratching my head a bit here, not knowing what MSF will supply in terms of MPE support.

Thanks for the recommendation for the app. I was about to pick it up and then I found "geoshred". It seems to have more MPE parameters available and its based on guitar, which is better for me personally. The controllers version is only $10 which isn't bad.

As far as midi stuff. I believe things like the modwheel can be set up through the midi button and MPs. If designers do things that way they can always be removed or altered by users. I'm sure the midi button will be there. Its already on the easy screen and the other LE plugins like MTurboreverb have it.

I'm pretty sure per-voice control won't work if hooked up to an MP however, so that might need to be set up directly in the device. Can someone test this and see if things like per-voice AT, Timbre, etc work when set to an MP? If I'm wrong and it does work through MPs, it will be easy and simple to support MPE, but I imagine it doesn't.

[MeldaProduction]

Exactly as whywhy said! Personally I think there's no need to worry to much about MPE. I don't share the fear about making sounds worse if the MPE was "forced" (it's not anyways). Imagine you make any sound, then you can just provide the 2 main controllers (pressure and timbre) and you are done. Sure it would be better if you'd play with it properly, but if it just does something cool, it's already better than not having it at all. After what is the "perfect" settings? There's no such thing... And if a person without MPE uses the instrument, no problem. And if an MPE user touches it, he'll be even happier . I even think stuff like note-off velocity isn't really necessary, these are the really special details.

Now, I also don't think forcing people to do something specific with modwheel or anything makes sense. This one WOULD make the designer's life a bit ugly indeed. I'd simply assume mod wheel, expression, pressure and timbre are THE controllers to support and that's it. How, that depends on the designer. My 2cents anyways.

As for MPE testing, I think the MIDI files should do the trick, but I can also try to include some MPE piano in the botto of the plugin . It would be quite limited, but the pressure can be at least simulated with say mousewheel or something...

Btw. yesterday I was playing a new Nord Electro a bit and just couldn't hel myself bending with the fingers and stuff... damn I got quite used to MPE normal keyboards don't seem sufficient anymore

[dmbaer]

Exactly as whywhy said! Personally I think there's no need to worry to much about MPE. I don't share the fear about making sounds worse if the MPE was "forced" (it's not anyways). Imagine you make any sound, then you can just provide the 2 main controllers (pressure and timbre) and you are done.

But my question (one of them anyway) was not answered. It's simple, actually. It seems to me that if we set up a preset that modulates one or more parameters with pressure, one of those targeted parameters being a per-voice parameter, then we have an MPE-compliant solution for which nothing more need be done. MSF should take care of the rest automatically. If the controller is pre-MPE, then the preset responds to channel pressure. If the controller is MPE-enabled, then we have an MPE-compliant solution where the preset will respond to per-note pressure. That's it - nothing more needed. All the details are handled by MSF.

The same would be true for CC 74 and bend modulations, I presume. Velocity, both note on and note off has always been per-note, so nothing changes between non-MPE and MPE operation.

Is this an accurate view of things?

By the way, at the risk of annoying folks, I am going to limit my posts here to one question per post so they don't get lost. I have several more issues to bring up shortly.

[dmbaer]

I'd simply assume mod wheel, expression, pressure and timbre are THE controllers to support and that's it. How, that depends on the designer.

MW, expression, pressure and timbre (by which I assume you mean CC74 given the desire for MPE compliance) makes an excellent list of expected support (but more on this in another post).

A question arises, however, when considering expression, and I assume we are talking about CC 11. Expression is probably most often applied to volume. But it does not have to be the output volume of the synth. For that we have CC 7 defined as a very widely-established standard.

So, how do we resolve this ambiguity? I can suggest one possible solution. Hard wire CC 7 to MSF output volume, the way CC 64 is hard wired to sustain. Put a switch in the advanced global settings to turn it off, just as we can disable CC 64 hard wiring. But 99% of the time, the default will be just what is desired.

That way, when CC 11 is used to control volume as will often be the case, there will be no confusion on the part of either the sound designer or the user.

[MeldaProduction]

Yes, I think that's all .

As for the expression, I'm a bit lost - isn't MSF already listening to MIDI volume?

[dmbaer]

I'm pretty sure per-voice control won't work if hooked up to an MP however, so that might need to be set up directly in the device.

That's absolutely correct. The five per-note modulations that are MPE-sanctioned are velocity (both note on and note off), bend, CC 74 and pressure. That's the full list, at least at the moment.

But here's where I think some standard conventions need to be established. Take filter cutoff for example. In the pre-MPE days, CC 74 was designated as the official filter-cutoff modulator. But depending upon the synth and the sound-designer, MW or pressure is more often assigned to filter cutoff.

Indeed, for greatest expressiveness, the user will normally prefer either the MW or pressure for real-time alteration of filter cutoff. That preference may depend, for one thing, on how well their keyboard controller delivers pressure signals. For both of my own keyboards, an NFL linebacker might find it easy to play using pressure, but the ordinary keyboardist does not have the strength required to play with sufficient pressure to have any measure of success.

As for the MW in particular, the really good solutions I've seen allow the user to easily map MW to influence cutoff, vibrato depth or LFO modulation depth of cutoff at the users direction. UVI instruments do this as a standard feature of pretty much every synth recreation in their catalog. So, the user gets to choose how that precious MW control gets applied (because, of course, there's only one of them available and even if there are more knobs to MIDI-assign on the controller, the MW is always the one that's handiest for the player).

So, if the sound designer wants to have the mod-wheel control vibrato depth, as one example, what should the standard approach be? Should we have a vibrato depth MP and map the MW to that parameter's value in the preset? That choice assumes the user wouldn't prefer to use the MW to influence cutoff. But maybe that's OK, since the user could change the MIDI mapping, assuming that user took the time to learn how to do it. It's not rocket science but it is not nearly so obvious a change as the simple UI solution UVI has delivered consistently.

I'm not advocating a particular solution here, but I am advocating that some standard really ought to be agreed upon and published.

By the way, I don't think we can actually duplicate the UVI solution with MPs and MIDI modulation as things stand right now. If we could, I would be advocating for doing it the way UVI does this.

[dmbaer]

As for the expression, I'm a bit lost - isn't MSF already listening to MIDI volume?

Don't know ... haven't read the manual yet.

[Sampleconstruct]

Just checking MSF for the first time, there are far far far too many taps, sub-taps. pop-ups, sub-pop-ups, just trying to assign a single new envelope to one of the oscillators seems like rocket science and I really know my way around Melda plugins usually. I would never spend a minute on the easy page when making a new patch, there are too many FX modules, rotary, amp distortion and whatnot, get rid of it all and make it slick. Couldn't find any MSEGs/sequencers respectively no way of creating my own like I would do in MXXX.

[DarkStar]

@ DarkStar :
https://www.midi.org/articles-old/midi- ... ession-mpe
A standardization.
And that :
https://www.hakenaudio.com/mpe/

+1 about Mp information.

Thank you, but the Spec is only available to Association Members and the second link is for MPE+

I did find these:
https://support.roli.com/support/soluti ... at-is-mpe- (with the Spec attached at the bottom of the page)
https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/mpe-m ... mpact-you/
http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/mpe.html

[Sampleconstruct]

Eventually I would just offer a bunch of templates for the most common synthesis forms like:

-VA
-Additive
-FM
-Physical Modeling
-sampler
-granular
-spectral resynthesis
-wavetable

offer an FX tap with 4 empty slots which can be extended to maybe 8 if needed.

Seeing an easy screen with a detuned saw oscillators when opening MFS for the first time is totally misleading and extremely retro.

[Chandlerhimself]

Just checking MSF for the first time, there are far far far too many taps, sub-taps. pop-ups, sub-pop-ups, just trying to assign a single new envelope to one of the oscillators seems like rocket science and I really know my way around Melda plugins usually. I would never spend a minute on the easy page when making a new patch, there are too many FX modules, rotary, amp distortion and whatnot, get rid of it all and make it slick. Couldn't find any MSEGs/sequencers respectively no way of creating my own like I would do in MXXX.

Are you talking about the easy screen? I think assigning things like envelopes in the edit screen is easier than other programs. The drag and drop with visual feedback makes it more clear to me. If your talking about the easy screen, I don't think that is an actual preset that will be included, just a template to give people an idea of what can be done. I'm also assuming most people won't be using that many FX, or at least I won't. Most of that will be removed in people's presets. This 1st preset is just kind of a prototype, but I don't think many/any presets will actually be like this.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to you making some sounds using MSF, I always enjoy your work.

[Sampleconstruct]

Just checking MSF for the first time, there are far far far too many taps, sub-taps. pop-ups, sub-pop-ups, just trying to assign a single new envelope to one of the oscillators seems like rocket science and I really know my way around Melda plugins usually. I would never spend a minute on the easy page when making a new patch, there are too many FX modules, rotary, amp distortion and whatnot, get rid of it all and make it slick. Couldn't find any MSEGs/sequencers respectively no way of creating my own like I would do in MXXX.

Are you talking about the easy screen? I think assigning things like envelopes in the edit screen is easier than other programs. The drag and drop with visual feedback makes it more clear to me. If your talking about the easy screen, I don't think that is an actual preset that will be included, just a template to give people an idea of what can be done. I'm also assuming most people won't be using that many FX, or at least I won't. Most of that will be removed in people's presets. This 1st preset is just kind of a prototype, but I don't think many/any presets will actually be like this.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to you making some sounds using MSF, I always enjoy your work.

But I thought this kind of active preset is what the discussion is all about, what does the user see when first opening MFS without the edit screen. Getting rid of the master envelope on the global tap (why is it even there) is the thing that got me confused, assigning the envelope to a new osc was fairly straight forward but then I still had the master envelope controlling the entire patch/device/gadget/whatever. And all those advanced sub-pages could be streamlined imo.