Anything and everything about MIDI - arp, mapper, mangler, generator, chorder, controller, utility, fx etc.

[bharris22]

I don't believe the shading of the lanes themselves have any meaning other than to break things up visually.

I just heard from Venomode about this, who advised that "The different shades are the velocity - the darker the note, the quieter. They also go slightly transparent when you reduce the chance for that note."

[Kalamata Kid]

David,

Thanks for posting the ToyBox info and videos.
wOw!
I am impressed!

[UncleAge]

I don't believe the shading of the lanes themselves have any meaning other than to break things up visually.

I just heard from Venomode about this, who advised that "The different shades are the velocity - the darker the note, the quieter. They also go slightly transparent when you reduce the chance for that note."

I misread your question. I didn't think you were asking about the notes/triggers themselves. I thought you were asking about the shading of each lane. My bad.

[UncleAge]

THIS is closest thing I've seen yet to matching the sort of fantasies I had when I first heard of Architect, fwiw.

First, thanks for posting the links to those vids.

Second, I have Reaktor and I haven't touched anything with the blocks yet. Shame on me. I have Architect and it hasn't been the easiest thing to wrap my head around and I have used Usine's Hollyhock quite a bit. Shame on me again. Both are fine environments. I guess I have been waiting to see what comes around on the next major update of Bitwig.

I have a Live license and I have messed around with MAX4L quite a bit. But every attempt to do what Venomode was able to do in Phrasebox failed. I could never get the timing right with the larger note counts due to either my inexperience in MAX4L or the left-to-right priority. Either way I gave up. I am hoping that Bitwig will enhance the grid that is there and add midi capabilities and some logic units. Basically I'm waiting to see if they come up with a more graphical version of MAX. Or MAX lite. Either would suit my needs. I don't have any evidence they are headed in that direction but it seems an oversight to have left the midi functionality out. That and the original vision of letting users get under the hood and roll their own. So far they have been on track so I'm not making any more impulse buys until I see what they come up with.

[David]

Yeah, MIDI in the Grid would (will!) be sweet!

Would love to see some videos about your Hollyhock discoveries! I'm very attracted to that sort of thing, but I couldn't do much with the demo—the tutorials didn't see helpful at all, or what I was expecting didn't match what was actually available, or something. Anyway, it seems underexposed!

Reaktor's secret MIDI treasure-house is one of MY favorite things on the planet! I haven't yet found Blocks to be important in that respect, which is why I'm so jazzed to see that coming around with this ToyBox stuff, great times, these…despite the times:)

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
I bought Hollyhock in the hope that is will be available as a VST.
I like any software that is multi-touch and modular with midi features.
I did not find HH intuitive so I gave up on it.
The Easine IIRC an earlier version is available as a VST but it is 32 bit.
I gave up on it also.
Now with what seems to be a midi revival and the Reaktor midi modules you review I will now go in that direction.

So I am disappointing that HH did not rise to my occasion and too bad there is no M4L VST available.
But I will survive and hopefully prosper with all the new midi toys.

[bharris22]

I don't believe the shading of the lanes themselves have any meaning other than to break things up visually.

I just heard from Venomode about this, who advised that "The different shades are the velocity - the darker the note, the quieter. They also go slightly transparent when you reduce the chance for that note."

I misread your question. I didn't think you were asking about the notes/triggers themselves. I thought you were asking about the shading of each lane. My bad.

No worries - thanks for your response anyway .

[fairlyclose]

I don't recall any previous mention of the latest addition to Toybox, the Reaktor Blocks collection with lots of sequencing modules. The newest one is a quite remarkable Piano Roll Block, pretty much a classic DAW-type piano roll interface at minimum, but with a wide range of rather stunning and unique new features as a result of being part of a modular environment, and having a lot of interesting inputs, plus of course a lot of intriguing modules to patch into it. There's a very good basic demo of it doing surprising things here with no extra inputs:



And if you like what you see there (I did! ), there's quite a bit more to see starting around 1:10:00 in the livestream from the builder, here, all about adding other blocks to drive the piano roll:



It's a stream—and clearly a long one—and unedited, but I sat up quite a few times with excitement at what I was seeing, esp starting around 1:17:08 and 1:26:35…

[I know you can save/share these YT time-links somehow; anybody got a link to where that's explained? Thanks!]

THIS is closest thing I've seen yet to matching the sort of fantasies I had when I first heard of Architect, fwiw.

I don't think he ever shows it, but it's very easy to add a MIDI Out block to this or any other Reaktor device that creates MIDI data, for hooking up other plugins inside a DAW or from stand-alone with a MIDI loopback device.

Not seeing a lot there that I cant achieve in Riffer using automation eg jumping around and playing/looping segments of the sequence - but of course if someone likes that blocks type of interface then all to the good

[David]

You mean AudioModern Riffer? (I seem to recall there's another device called Riffer, too—maybe that's the sequencer inside Ample Guitars…? Something else?). Anyway, I'd love to see what you're referring to if that is the device. I've looked at it a few times but don't see any modulatable parameters for moving notes around in any sort of similar way, using eg. LFOs, oscillators, etc. It seems a very powerful randomizer, sure, but I'm struggling to see it as comparable to a modular piano roll. Please enlighten:)!

[fairlyclose]

You mean AudioModern Riffer? (I seem to recall there's another device called Riffer, too—maybe that's the sequencer inside Ample Guitars…? Something else?). Anyway, I'd love to see what you're referring to if that is the device. I've looked at it a few times but don't see any modulatable parameters for moving notes around in any sort of similar way, using eg. LFOs, oscillators, etc. It seems a very powerful randomizer, sure, but I'm struggling to see it as comparable to a modular piano roll. Please enlighten:)!

Yes, audiomodern riffer has heaps of cc mappings. If the manual is online you can have a look at what is offered. You have to use an external cc modulator, like midishaper for example. I have noticed here on kvr that quite a few people arent really aware how powerful riffer is. I think people expected a sort of auto melody generator, but it is way more interesting than that

[David]

Cool—got any demos or links to this level of use?

[greenmind72]

For those interested: ChordPrism seems to be available again on ADSR at $30 (50% discount). It was showing as "Out of stock" earlier.

[enCiphered]

How can digital downloads get out of stock? This is just common marketing strategy, nothing more. And licenses can also be generated endlessly.

[fairlyclose]

Cool—got any demos or links to this level of use?

here is a quick demo of modulating speed, pitch, loop start and end points but keeping all but a few notes relations unchanged - this is a very quick hack as demo of some of the things I mentioned -with a bit of effort one can make this suit a wide range of musics
Two instances playing sounddust dulcitone 1990 (i think)

https://greghooper2.bandcamp.com/track/ ... omate-demo

[Kalamata Kid]

It seems that the Toybox Piano Roll is only available in the Synth Bundle
https://www.toyboxaudio.com/pages/synth-pack-details
on sale $65 - 25% = $48.75
Tempting

As for Riffer I may get the iOS version and hope that it has the same features as the VST version.
VST for $55, iOS for $6.99.

I still prefer chord generators over note generators.

Edit: from Audiomodern: "Riffer is identical in both platforms with the exception of MIDI drag feature which is only available on Desktop version due to certain iOS limitations."
I assume they mean Riffer 2.