All About MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE)

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Niowiad wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:05 pm I love the Sensel Morph and I was actually thinking of getting a 2nd one to extend the octave range.
Actually I wish there was a 4 or 5 octave version available :)
If you use my LinnStruMini innovators design without the overlay you get 5 octaves on one Sensel... I love the touch of it a lot.
https://forum.sensel.com/t/my-6th-tunin ... t-mini/853
Main problem though unsolved since years, I can‘t set it to devide the range by 13, the octave slides only go to 12...
The other problem: bluetooth Midi doesn‘t work (hanging notes all over the place)
After three years waiting for fixes I gave up on it. I have to live with what it is. The best move for Sensel would be to at least open source the unity based editor, then I could at least fix the octave problem...
The other thing is, without knowing I ordered an innovators overlay and its useless, as I can‘t edit the no overlay setting independently there is zero use for it. I should have gotten a different one...
Please make the innovators overlay useful by allowing to load a different design to it than the no overlay... It could be even possible to turn the innovators overlay around and get another design, as the magnet will have a different layout that way...

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udk wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:33 pm Hi there,
First: Sorry for my bad Englisch ...
I wonder why no one spends effort on optimizing realism with existing breath Controllers like Yamaha WX7 and physical modelling of woodwind or brass emulating software. For me this is the first place where MPE has been foregotten or is never used as it could be, or isn‘t it? Thank you for hints on this special subtopic!
Best regards
Udk
Just get a breath and bite controller from Tecontrol. It won‘t do polyphonic expression though, but gets you into all this breath expression... High price tag though...

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udk wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:33 pm Hi there,
First: Sorry for my bad Englisch ...
I wonder why no one spends effort on optimizing realism with existing breath Controllers like Yamaha WX7 and physical modelling of woodwind or brass emulating software. For me this is the first place where MPE has been foregotten or is never used as it could be, or isn‘t it? Thank you for hints on this special subtopic!
Best regards
Udk
If this is something that you are interested I would highly recommend checking out Bitwig Grid. I played a WX7 for decades before it died and I found that the issue with using wind instruments with synths was always a difficulty in properly attenuating the controls.... getting the pitch bend properly scaled and getting the sensitivity well set, likewise with the breath, and getting the synth to recognize a note-off reliably when the breath stopped -- these were almost impossible to do with synths that were not designed and pre-calibrated for EWI control. A saxophone (once you learn how to play) has a very natural and well-tuned response to breath and bite... just plugging a wind controller into a synth results in very hard to control and (I think) unmusical and irritating results. Something like Bitwig Grid, or VCV Rack or Voltage Modulator will allow you to construct a mono instrument where you can very precisely control all the value scaling, thresholds, smoothing and the like so that you can play much more musically and comfortably --- that's what is needed for EWI imo.

MPE actually has very little to do with this -- the P is for polyphonic and EWI is (almost always) mono.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2020 6:24 pm
Niowiad wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:05 pm I love the Sensel Morph and I was actually thinking of getting a 2nd one to extend the octave range.
Actually I wish there was a 4 or 5 octave version available :)
If you use my LinnStruMini innovators design without the overlay you get 5 octaves on one Sensel... I love the touch of it a lot.
https://forum.sensel.com/t/my-6th-tunin ... t-mini/853
Main problem though unsolved since years, I can‘t set it to devide the range by 13, the octave slides only go to 12...
The other problem: bluetooth Midi doesn‘t work (hanging notes all over the place)
After three years waiting for fixes I gave up on it. I have to live with what it is. The best move for Sensel would be to at least open source the unity based editor, then I could at least fix the octave problem...
The other thing is, without knowing I ordered an innovators overlay and its useless, as I can‘t edit the no overlay setting independently there is zero use for it. I should have gotten a different one...
Please make the innovators overlay useful by allowing to load a different design to it than the no overlay... It could be even possible to turn the innovators overlay around and get another design, as the magnet will have a different layout that way...
As anyone made one of those that uses the vertical offsets of a 4th like the linnstrument?
Edit: found this one https://forum.sensel.com/t/12x6-linnstr ... rid/639/29

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With regards to MPE FX, there is one that I know of - Crusher-X. It's an effect VST that is mpe compatible. So I guess it creates a different audio fx stream for every voice? Not sure how that works.

Some synths that have some nice poly fx are falcon and Repro-5 (just distortion), which are mpe compatible. Once rapid gets mpe that will be cool because it has a nice selection of effects per voice (near the filter stage).

One trick that I like with the duplication of instruments approach is that you can modulate effects in the chain per voice, which is hugely different to modulating effects that are global. I don't even understand why synths like the synth squad synths allow modulation of effects from envelopes and stuff when this really doesn't work if it's not per voice. But anyways Omnisphere is cool with the duplication of parts because you can modulate the effects with mpe expressions and they are indpendent. So a reverb or delay or whatever could be modulated differently for every voice. Same for Kontakt and Bitwig racks but I find Omnisphere to be the only one that I like to use that method because it's so easy to tweak and copy the parts to all the rest.

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Does Linnstrument come with factory software that can remap pitches etc (like in Launchpad where you can create custom scales, midi CC buttons etc)?

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anomandaris1 wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 4:13 pm Does Linnstrument come with factory software that can remap pitches etc (like in Launchpad where you can create custom scales, midi CC buttons etc)?
It comes with Bitwig 8-track. Bitwig has the micro-pitch module which can do that...
In general its up to the synth you play to deliver microtonal control. If its the DAW as in Bitwig, the synth needs to be MPE compatible unless you play mono...

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Tj Shredder wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2020 8:15 pm
anomandaris1 wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 4:13 pm Does Linnstrument come with factory software that can remap pitches etc (like in Launchpad where you can create custom scales, midi CC buttons etc)?
It comes with Bitwig 8-track. Bitwig has the micro-pitch module which can do that...
In general its up to the synth you play to deliver microtonal control. If its the DAW as in Bitwig, the synth needs to be MPE compatible unless you play mono...
Well, Bitwig's micropitch has nothing to do with what I was asking. By remapping I mean instead of "X" (where X is one of midi notes 0 to 127, which are usually associated with 12 equal pitch classes ) you get "Y" (where Y is 0-127 plus/minus whatever value you programmed ) or CC messages when you trigger a pad that is programmed with such action . (Micropitch in Bitwig detunes 12 equal or can give 12 notes out of non-octave tuning as a "hack" for getting non-12 equal temperaments, because everything will repeat at the 12th note "pseudo octave" that you specified.)

Launchpad comes with utility software that lets you to change the way its grid works - for example any button can be changed to trigger a sustain pedal etc or any piano roll note of your liking (so, you can create custom scale on each row or column, if you like, or layout where rows/colums, notes repeat in any arbitrary interval and this has nothing to do with tuning).
Here is the official video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUJ2WnlC_WU

With other words - can you reprogram with factory software the layout of Linnstrument, so you can get custom mappings of scales that can be used let's say for melodic runs or various isomorphic keyboards (for let's say microtonal scales on the bigger Linnstrument. which has enough keys even for microtonal layouts) or for triggering midi CC messages?

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Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2020 6:38 pm
udk wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:33 pm Hi there,
First: Sorry for my bad Englisch ...
I wonder why no one spends effort on optimizing realism with existing breath Controllers like Yamaha WX7 and physical modelling of woodwind or brass emulating software. For me this is the first place where MPE has been foregotten or is never used as it could be, or isn‘t it? Thank you for hints on this special subtopic!
Best regards
Udk
Just get a breath and bite controller from Tecontrol. It won‘t do polyphonic expression though, but gets you into all this breath expression... High price tag though...
I have a TEControl BBC. It’s amazing, especially when used to control Respiro. It is exactly that innovation in realism of virtual wind instruments. I highly recommend that pair!
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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anomandaris1 wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:19 pm With other words - can you reprogram with factory software the layout of Linnstrument, so you can get custom mappings of scales that can be used let's say for melodic runs or various isomorphic keyboards (for let's say microtonal scales on the bigger Linnstrument. which has enough keys even for microtonal layouts) or for triggering midi CC messages?
There is no software editor for the LinnStrument. All the settings are modified directly from the unit itself.

That said, the firmware is open source, so you could theoretically modify it any way you want.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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deastman wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:51 pm
There is no software editor for the LinnStrument. All the settings are modified directly from the unit itself.

That said, the firmware is open source, so you could theoretically modify it any way you want.
Well, it's not for me then, I am not a programmer.

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anomandaris1 wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:46 am
deastman wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:51 pm
There is no software editor for the LinnStrument. All the settings are modified directly from the unit itself.

That said, the firmware is open source, so you could theoretically modify it any way you want.
Well, it's not for me then, I am not a programmer.
If, I assume, you would be using the LinnStrument to play software synths, there are hundreds of tools for remapping MIDI data. I’m sure you could find something that would meet your needs without hacking the LinnStrument firmware. Or maybe you don’t want to deal with that, in which case I’m sure there will be some other controller which is a better fit.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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deastman wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:05 am
anomandaris1 wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:46 am
deastman wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:51 pm
There is no software editor for the LinnStrument. All the settings are modified directly from the unit itself.

That said, the firmware is open source, so you could theoretically modify it any way you want.
Well, it's not for me then, I am not a programmer.
If, I assume, you would be using the LinnStrument to play software synths, there are hundreds of tools for remapping MIDI data. I’m sure you could find something that would meet your needs without hacking the LinnStrument firmware. Or maybe you don’t want to deal with that, in which case I’m sure there will be some other controller which is a better fit.
"hundreds of tools for remapping midi data"? I think every DAW has one these today, but they are all pretty basic. Let's say you don't want pitch classes to repeat every 12 notes - these DAW tools will fail. Only making custom tool in something like Max can probably do the job, but I doubt I will learn coding such stuff anytime soon.

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https://youtu.be/iSW08E1XaI8

bitwigs micro pitch support (which uses MPE, so on topic!) is pretty cool and i would consider better than remapping a controller. check out the video.

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=R ... playnext=1

another even more interesting video on BWS micropitch

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