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

[David]

Yeow! Great ideas for using a specific DAW (Bitwig) as a real-time MIDI input performance device!

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
interesting!
Too bad I do not have Bitwig.

On your best DAW's for midi see:
viewtopic.php?t=445626&start=15
You may want to add Cubase to your list.

I hope Colin will add some of the midi Cubase features in Architect.
Yes I have made this FR to Colin.

[Eauson]

Yeow! Great ideas for using a specific DAW (Bitwig) as a real-time MIDI input performance device!

You can do this in reaper, it’s one of my favourite things over the last couple of years, one of the reasons I haven’t purchased any additional midi fx & you can do chords if you wish, & it can work extremely well with drums aussi, most of my soundcloud tracks use this

[David]

^^^
Yes, I'm sure there are multiple ways to be more creative with pretty much any DAW and MIDI input:) And I'd love to see in more detail just how you did this in Reaper!

Altho I must say personally that my extended efforts to come to grips with Reaper after so much intriguing reading and watching were basically a huge disappointment, as I didn't gel with it at ALL, and gave up after weeks of trial-ing.

[David]

^^^
interesting!
Too bad I do not have Bitwig.

I've had it for a few years, but rarely use it, so far; Max 4 Live has been taking up all my available energy for the last year or so. This video is one of the most inspiring ideas for me about how cool the grid can be with MIDI.

I'm sure quite similar magic can be worked with other DAWs and apps, though, now that the idea is out there. Thanks so much for contacting Colin; he should see this video too! I do wish things were moving a bit faster on that app:(

On your best DAW's for midi see:
viewtopic.php?t=445626&start=15
You may want to add Cubase to your list.

Go ahead and add it to a new copy; I know next to nothing about Cubase, and have to put a stop to adding yet MORE DAWs to my groaning collection!

I hope Colin will add some of the midi Cubase features in Architect.
Yes I have made this FR to Colin.

[Kalamata Kid]

Yeow! Great ideas for using a specific DAW (Bitwig) as a real-time MIDI input performance device!

You can do this in reaper, it’s one of my favourite things over the last couple of years, one of the reasons I haven’t purchased any additional midi fx & you can do chords if you wish, & it can work extremely well with drums aussi, most of my soundcloud tracks use this

Do you have a link for further info?

Gotta say Bitwig does this in an elegant way.

Looking at Hollyhock for similar:
https://www.brainmodular.com/manuals/hh ... e/patching
https://www.brainmodular.com/

[fairlyclose]

Had a look at opusmodus and seems to be yet another coding environment. Probably excellent but I remember and was lightly involved in live coding waay back with impromptu and not keen on those systems for myself. For others they can be great, just not my cup of tea.

[ThomasHelzle]

I think once Bitwig adds either a dedicated Midi Grid or implements full Midi capabilities in the existing ones, it will be hard to beat for direct mangling. The Grid is so cleverly thought out and deals with many of the issues that modular systems bring so elegantly, it should be bliss for Midi.

Architect is way less musical/elegant and way more nerdy and yeah, moves at a glacial pace...
Not sure if it ever will become what I had hoped it would.

For me the main thing is though, that Bitwig is so extremely flexible with devices and order. Not needing several tracks to have several midi plugins in a row. Hybrid tracks. The ability to have an audio plugin first, then an audio to midi plugin, then some midi plugins for further processing and finally a tool like Prism FX using both the midi and the audio in the track...
Even beats many modular systems for me, since this all is somehow still easier to digest in a musical sense than nodes.

Let's hope a Midi Grid is something we'll see soon!

Cheers,

Tom

[David]

Had a look at opusmodus and seems to be yet another coding environment. Probably excellent but I remember and was lightly involved in live coding waay back with impromptu and not keen on those systems for myself. For others they can be great, just not my cup of tea.

You're right, it is that. I thought I was totally done with that myself, since I tried Symbolic Composer way back in the 20th century and it did nothing but frustrate, as I'm no sort of a coder.

But a friend re-inspired me last year and I got a good cross-grade deal on it, and it has proved both VERY demanding to learn, but also quite easy to get going with just using the many very well documented examples and pasting in different values once you get what's doing what to create variations, extend/shorten, etc., etc. So with just that sort of exposure, it becomes clear how literally endless the possibilities are for both simple and very complex algorithmically created MIDI files, and how far beyond any other existing MIDI-generating tool it is, both power- and flexibility-wise. I'm very glad to have it, but it's certainly a specialist's tool, AND a very costly and demanding one.

[David]

Let's hope a Midi Grid [in Bitwig] is something we'll see soon!

Ditto to that! Seems like Bitwig is the most likely outfit to get that sort of thing done elegantly and powerfully—AND affordably. (Compared to OpusModus, anyway!)

Hollyhock always sounds great until I actually try it again, then it's just still way too all over the place and fiddly to feel useable, for me, anyway. Too bad, as it always sounds like just my cup of tea:)

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
Yes I had a hard time with Hollyhock. Too bad as it is visually attractive. I am hoping thought that the Hollyhock modular environment will be soon offered as a plugin just like Mulab offers Mux as a plugin. BTW soon to be released is Mulab 9 and hope that Mux has some similar midi features to the Bitwig grid. Mux is available IIRC $75.

[psynical]

I wonder if there would ever be some way to port Max over to Bitwig?

#maxforbitwig

[Kalamata Kid]

max4bitwig
max4StudioOne
max4Cubase
max4FLStudio
Max4Reaper
Yea!
Or make Max a VST

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, Hollyhook I had to give up on too.
After Bitwig came out, I realised that the theoretical gains of Hollyhock were eradicated by many of it's underlying design decisions for me and with Bitwig it was the other way around (again, for me personally), many of it's theoretical shortcomings were alleviated by the clever underlying design, even in version 1.0 where many others found it lacking this and that.
Same with Mulab/Mux. Just didn't really do it for me.

Now that Ableton owns Cycling 74, I can't imagine them being very keen on porting Max to other software, especially Bitwig

The latest instrument "Polymer" in Bitwig 3.3 looks like a first step towards an Interface-Builder for the Grid (you can select various elements on the device and in the background, it builds a Grid structure for you), so I can't see them being much interested in Max inside Bitwig either, when they are working towards something of their own that already packs optimised on-the-fly compiling for the current target machine and other clever stuff.

But you can always use the standalone Max via Midi or OSC together with Bitwig, although dedicated M4L devices probably don't work that way.

I used to fiddle around with every DAW under the sun, now it's Bitwig 99.5% of the time, Live is sold, Hollyhock I no longer update or use, Mux neither, Reaper 5 I start a couple of times a year for ambisonics with the ATK, Sonar is uninstalled, Plogue Bidule I use only for some very special cases as a VST, Cubase is gone from my system thankfully...
Feels pretty good

Cheers,

Tom

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
Great post.
In my post I was dreaming and not expecting my dream max4bitwig and max4StudioOne etc. to come true. Gotta say Hollyhock 4 looks so promising, modular, multi-touch, is a VST that can host VST's, includes many modules! Was it primarily workflow issues with Hollyhock?

Edit: "is a VST that can host VST" is not true. Hollyhock only runs only as a stand-alone but is can host VST's.