MIDI fx plugin ideas, product and feature requests.

[Kalamata Kid]

Have some ideas about MIDI you want to share?

My request:
Would like to see more VST midi fx and arps to be able to host VSTi’s such as Nora 2 and Midi Madness 3. This eliminates the sometimes annoying midi routing in some DAW’s

[Kalamata Kid]

Another silly request:
Sorry perhaps an impractical request, take a sequence of single notes on a track and detect the key or force the notes to a key and then analyze the midi notes and offer several variations of chord progressions. Not in real-time. You can then choose your virtual instrument and select which variation to hear.

Then provide a way to easily manipulate the midi chords or edit the result. Perhaps to be able to control how strict the progression should be.

[acYm]

^have you looked at pluginboutique's Scaler?

[Kalamata Kid]

^
I have checked Scaler out and may eventually buy it but for now I am waiting for Architect to be released: viewtopic.php?f=141&t=517104

Another one that interests me a lot is Midi Madness and may get it on the next sale.
https://midimadnesssoftware.com/midi-madness-3

Do you have Scaler? Apperently you like it for you to recommend it.
Do you have any ideas for a midi plugin?

[acYm]

actually I'm looking at the market for such a plugin. it's hard to decide between the likes of Scaler, Riffer, and CaptainChords. of these, I believe Scaler has the most of the features you listed.
these vst's aren't trivial investments... you can get a good synth or fx for the price of some of these tools... but feels like all the important or novel features are spread out between different ones.

I'm using the Kore sub-host where you just insert anything with a midi output, then insert any synth or midi-enabled fx next to it and it's automatically wired, so using midi-generating plugins is quite seamless for me and the more good ones I find, the merrier, at the same time, gotta avoid clutter... and now it seems like there's yet another contender, as MIDI-Madness seems like a legit tool indeed.. but again, for (nearly) a hundred bucks

[David]

FWIW, I'm a collector of MIDI FX and am also waiting with very little patience to explore Architect, but I just recently got another one that's quite blowing my mind, since it does something that seems unique to me, never having seen any other tool that exactly does what it does, and does very easily.

It's that old horse EzKeys, which I just picked up here for $50 (posted a WTB and quickly got several replies willing to sell for that price).

I'd recently seen on YouTube some excellent tutorials about it, along with and compared to Scaler, Instachord, Captain, etc. (—though my own musical interests are very far from those of the video maker; he IS a good explainer!), and as a result saw that EzKeys isn't just the way over-priced, Band-In-A-Box sort of tool (retail $179!!) it appears to be, for making jingles and commercial-track mimics, etc. while spending another fortune on their "in-app" options for new instrument sounds and MIDI style packs.

Nah, the killer feature here is it lets you run almost any sort of one-track (solo-instrument) MIDI file, NOT just the factory ones (tho it does come by default with a good bit of quite interesting stuff, from very basic to very stylized, the same in every engine version) through any sort of chord progression with lots of very fast ways to generate, tweak, and randomize the progressions, as well as analyze melodies you throw at it to create new ones.

I've been collecting MIDI files, too, for many years going back to the early 90s, and have a ton of everything from short phrase/style/chord/progression clips to complete solo-instrument pieces from medieval to modern times—many found free online—along with the many oddball clips and tracks I've compulsively saved out myself from years of DAW/arp/MIDI-FX tinkering, despite having rarely found any serious use for them.

But NOW, in EzKeys, I can load or invent any kind and length of progression, and with a click, audition it as played through by virtually any of my MIDI collection, as well as easily drag out, DAW-mangle and drag back in whatever stuff I hit on. All while using my own sound makers, not the built-in instruments at all, tho some are quite nice.

Bottom line, I'm finally using my MIDI-file and MIDI-gen collections in the way I'd always vaguely hoped they'd be good for, merging and morphing them around so easily with other sorts of harmonies, both randomized AND well-established, and getting a very high percentage of useable and delightfully surprising results, compared to any of the general, typical, or even a-typical, randomize-it or arp-it techniques I'd often previously dabbled with using my MIDI-FX arsenal, and usually quickly tired of, up til now.

It's definitely re-defined the game, for me anyway.

[woggle]

FWIW, I'm a collector of MIDI FX and am also waiting with very little patience to explore Architect, but I just recently got another one that's quite blowing my mind, since it does something that seems unique to me, never having seen any other tool that exactly does what it does, and does very easily.

It's that old horse EzKeys, which I just picked up here for $50 (posted a WTB and quickly got several replies willing to sell for that price).

I'd recently seen on YouTube some excellent tutorials about it, along with and compared to Scaler, Instachord, Captain, etc. (—though my own musical interests are very far from those of the video maker; he IS a good explainer!), and as a result saw that EzKeys isn't just the way over-priced, Band-In-A-Box sort of tool (retail $179!!) it appears to be, for making jingles and commercial-track mimics, etc. while spending another fortune on their "in-app" options for new instrument sounds and MIDI style packs.

Nah, the killer feature here is it lets you run almost any sort of one-track (solo-instrument) MIDI file, NOT just the factory ones (tho it does come by default with a good bit of quite interesting stuff, from very basic to very stylized, the same in every engine version) through any sort of chord progression with lots of very fast ways to generate, tweak, and randomize the progressions, as well as analyze melodies you throw at it to create new ones.

I've been collecting MIDI files, too, for many years going back to the early 90s, and have a ton of everything from short phrase/style/chord/progression clips to complete solo-instrument pieces from medieval to modern times—many found free online—along with the many oddball clips and tracks I've compulsively saved out myself from years of DAW/arp/MIDI-FX tinkering, despite having rarely found any serious use for them.

But NOW, in EzKeys, I can load or invent any kind and length of progression, and with a click, audition it as played through by virtually any of my MIDI collection, as well as easily drag out, DAW-mangle and drag back in whatever stuff I hit on. All while using my own sound makers, not the built-in instruments at all, tho some are quite nice.

Bottom line, I'm finally using my MIDI-file and MIDI-gen collections in the way I'd always vaguely hoped they'd be good for, merging and morphing them around so easily with other sorts of harmonies, both randomized AND well-established, and getting a very high percentage of useable and delightfully surprising results, compared to any of the general, typical, or even a-typical, randomize-it or arp-it techniques I'd often previously dabbled with using my MIDI-FX arsenal, and usually quickly tired of, up til now.

It's definitely re-defined the game, for me anyway.

sounds useful - I can't understand what ezkeys is from the toontrack website tho - seems like a bunchofmidi packs, which can be cheaper than $50 - is there some sort of instrument/plugin involved as well ? Where?

[David]

Yeah, it IS a bit complicated at first, sorry. There's three types of products. You need to start with an Instrument (what I'd call an Engine, or as you say, the plug-in itself—THAT's the expensive one) and then you can optionally add new Sounds to whatever starter instrument you chose, by selecting from the same Instrument list but choosing Sound Expansion in the type or "variant" drop-down instead of Regular, which is a complete engine, AND/OR new MIDI style-packs that any engine can play.

To use your own sounds, you just send MIDI only out of the Instrument, and you can drag your own MIDI into the factory MIDI browser's file/folder structure and then use it just like any of the style packs clips which also go there. Those are carefully sorted by style and song parts, but you can ignore that sort of categorizing just as easily with your own stuff.

[woggle]

Yeah, it IS a bit complicated at first, sorry. There's three types of products. You need to start with an Instrument (what I'd call an Engine, or as you say, the plug-in itself—THAT's the expensive one) and then you can optionally add new Sounds to whatever starter instrument you chose, by selecting from the same Instrument list but choosing Sound Expansion in the type or "variant" drop-down instead of Regular, which is a complete engine, AND/OR new MIDI style-packs that any engine can play.

To use your own sounds, you just send MIDI only out of the Instrument, and you can drag your own MIDI into the factory MIDI browser's file/folder structure and then use it just like any of the style packs clips which also go there. Those are carefully sorted by style and song parts, but you can ignore that sort of categorizing just as easily with your own stuff.

got it - thanks

[David]

Just watched some MIDI Madness intro vids, and it's definitely interesting. The Trigger Mode seems potentially powerful and somewhat similar; it maps whatever MIDI you send into it—live, in real time—to whatever chord sequence you preset and have rolling. EzKeys is quite a bit more demanding as well as adjustable about what parts of your MIDI file get mapped to which chords, not infinitely so, using bars and beats and ½-time, normal and 2x rates. As well as much more detailed in how you can define your chords, or so it appears… I don't think there's any sort of real-time mapping of live input, but there is a recording mode if you want to play rather than drag in MIDI.

[acYm]

well now. ezkeys is yet another I've been sleeping on, it seems. at first glance, looks like it's kinda similar to what jamstix can do, but for melodies and harmonies, eh? gonna have to demo that.

[Kalamata Kid]

Just bumped into this $5 gem, MidiBot.
https://robbykilgore.com/?p=141

[David]

Just bumped into this $5 gem, MidiBot.
https://robbykilgore.com/?p=141

Too cool! Thank you!

[David]

The MIDI Madness video that featured CC control of plugin parameters getting randomized along with the notes…wow, that's really clamped onto my brain, more so than the note phrases! But, yeah: $80!?!?

Anybody know of something else that offers something similar? Not just FX randomizing, but parameter-mod.

Thanks again!

[Kalamata Kid]

The MIDI Madness video that featured CC control of plugin parameters getting randomized along with the notes…wow, that's really clamped onto my brain, more so than the note phrases! But, yeah: $80!?!?

Anybody know of something else that offers something similar? Not just FX randomizing, but parameter-mod.

Thanks again!

They had a -$20? sale recently but was not low enough for me to bite.
I'm definitely in at $40. Others have mentioned the high price so if
they are reading this please lower your price for a week and you will get
many sales.

Your comments about MidiMAdness make it even more desirable
for me to buy.