What's on your Black Friday radar?

[havran]

And yet you are seem to be unaware that the new Montage M 8X generates Polyphonic aftertouch which can be used with MPE. Something your older Montage 8 can't do. You also seem ignorant to the fact that using Cubase and HALion7 you can do all kinds of things with MPE and use the new Montage M8x to play and build sequences with it

9aazr2.jpg

[havran]

I wonder if the IvyBirds/MPE/"You seem to be ignorant" digression could be split off into its own thread (inasmuch as IvyBirds seems to have been unaware that that might have been more appropriate, albeit without the personal surmises).

[havran]

RE: the original topic -- I think this might fall under instruments: I only have Reason 10, which is the version just before they introduced the Reason Rack VST plugin, so a Reason upgrade is one thing I'm considering.

An upgrade to Nexus5 is also tempting.

[dayjob]

Very interested in Forever 89 Visco.

https://forever89.studio/

well, that's nice. black friday sale is on

This looks fantastic for sound design! While I don’t personally need drum plugins, has anyone tried using it with non-percussive material? How well does it handle longer samples?

the demo is unrestricted. you should try it to see if it meets your needs in some way. it does interesting things.

Yes, that’s exactly what I did. I just finished a 30-minute demo session, testing all kinds of sample mangling I’m interested in, and it’s definitely not performing well for what I had in mind.

there's some dependencies on naming and stuff. so, if you're in the snare blob and load a file named BD or Kick it doesn't do what a lot of people expect it to do. i've tried it with lot's of different files with different names and abbreviations and gotten some cool stuff that i like but figuring out how the engine/analysis works is helpful for getting good results. the devs went into a bit on the discord. it's something they should do a video about. it's definitely made for short sounds but i put some weird percussion things in there and am happy w/the results. i'll be using it a lot i think.

[DCrown]

I have noticed over the years that one gets the best deals on spring sale, so bf is not that exciting to me.

[havran]

I have noticed over the years that one gets the best deals on spring sale, so bf is not that exciting to me.

Yeah, that makes sense, because in the Northern Hemisphere some people might feel more creative in the darker or dimmer months during calendar Winter (whether or not they feel shut in and bored out of their minds), whereas maybe the reverse would be -- if not necessarily true -- then maybe at least plausible for people in the Southern Hemisphere.

[musicproducerdee]

For this Black Friday, I wish I could buy money at half off.

Get $300 just for $150, only till 1st December.

That would be nice.

[stoopicus]

For this Black Friday, I wish I could buy money at half off.

Get $300 just for $150, only till 1st December.

That would be nice.

Don’t worry, someone on KVR will have an opposing viewpoint.

[aMUSEd]

For this Black Friday, I wish I could buy money at half off.

Get $300 just for $150, only till 1st December.

That would be nice.

It's called Bitcoin

[ghettosynth]

Expressive E got my attention with hardware on BF, 30% off of Osmose...refurbished...discount relative from new price.

Oh well, I guess that can wait.

[cryophonik]

Don’t worry, someone on KVR will have an opposing viewpoint.

Hold my beer…

For this Black Friday, I wish I could buy money at half off.

Get $300 just for $150, only till 1st December.

That would be nice.

Why would you want to do that?! Everybody knows that a real artist can do more with $150 and this plugin than you could do with $300!

[IvyBirds]

And yet you are seem to be unaware that the new Montage M 8X generates Polyphonic aftertouch which can be used with MPE. Something your older Montage 8 can't do. You also seem ignorant to the fact that using Cubase and HALion7 you can do all kinds of things with MPE and use the new Montage M8x to play and build sequences with it

9aazr2.jpg

There are 128 available notes to play in the MIDI spec. Yet pretty much every controller only has 88 keys or less. Does that mean you are not playing music if you don't engage all 128 available notes in your compositions? Or does that mean you are not you are not playing a MIDI keyboard if you only have 88 keys or less on your controller? Of course not

There are 128 possible CC controls available in the MIDI spec. Yet many controllers only have the controls to utilize a few dozen at most, and most synth patches also only utilize a few dozen at most. Does that mean that unless you are using all 128 patches in every patch you are not utilizing MIDI CC in your productions? Of course not

The MIDI spec also includes extensions. The MIDI extension for MPE allows for each keypress to send completely independent pitch bend and CC data in addition to standard note on/off and velocity messages. By using a separate MIDI channel for each subsequent note, the pitch bend/CC values associated with one note do not affect the next. Since all you are doing for MPE is generating per note MIDI CC Values on separate channels, it doesn't matter how many you generate or how they are generated

All you are doing is sending CC values along with note on and off values and velocity data for each note

How you generate that CC value is up to you. You can use a keyboard with Polyphonic Aftertouch to generate those CC values and you are using MPE. Just like you are utilizing standard Chanel MIDI CCs if you only use a few knobs on your controller

There are of course a few nonstandard MIDI controllers that allow for multiple ways to generate per note MIDI CC data besides just poly aftertouch and if you want to utilize them fantastic.

But the idea that unless you are doing so, you are not using MPE is just ignorant on many levels, just like the idea that unless you are using a keyboard with 128 keys you are not using a MIDI keyboard would be ignorant, just like the idea that unless your controller has 128 knobs to adjust 128 MIDI CCs and you have all 128 values going at once you are not using MIDI CCs is ignorant

But prove me wrong, the MIDI standard includes channel aftertouch for MIDI keyboards as a method to generate CCs

The majority of MIDI Controller Keyboards and Hardware Synths do not include Channel Aftertouch. Make the argument that unless your controller has Channel Aftertouch that it's just not a MIDI controller

The reality is that the moment a piece of hardware generates any data of any kind, data that is MPE based per note data, it's a MPE enabled device

But again prove me wrong

[Gamma-UT]

Does Plasmonic ever go on sale? It's been on my wish list ever since it came out....I kind of missed the boat on this one.
https://rhizomatic.fr/

A search through my emails shows a sale at the end of December last year and one in June: $/€50 off on both occasions. 50% looks unlikely in the near term, but it looks like a good chance Brian will do another 50-bucks-off sale by the end of the year.

[Gamma-UT]

...
The reality is that the moment a piece of hardware generates any data of any kind, data that is MPE based per note data, it's a MPE enabled device

But again prove me wrong

Poly-AT messages are different to the MIDI CCs used by MPE: each one is associated with a MIDI key number and has the same format as a MIDI key-on message, just a different status byte. Poly-AT just happens to achieve the same end as an MPE Z signal, but that uses regular channel-aftertouch messages which are not linked to keys, just the channel associated with a particular MIDI key-on event.

In principle, you can mash your arms on a keyboard and get individual aftertouch messages for each note whereas MPE will top out at 15 because it runs out of channels.

[IvyBirds]

...
The reality is that the moment a piece of hardware generates any data of any kind, data that is MPE based per note data, it's a MPE enabled device

But again prove me wrong

Poly-AT messages are different to the MIDI CCs used by MPE: each one is associated with a MIDI key number and has the same format as a MIDI key-on message, just a different status byte. Poly-AT just happens to achieve the same end as an MPE Z signal, but that uses regular channel-aftertouch messages which are not linked to keys, just the channel associated with a particular MIDI key-on event.

In principle, you can mash your arms on a keyboard and get individual aftertouch messages for each note whereas MPE will top out at 15 because it runs out of channels.

Wow you have figured out that MPE has limitations, in particular how in MPE Channel 1 is reserved for global parameters: parameters that will affect all notes. This leaves 15 channels available. That means that you could play 15 notes at once, all with their own string of data.

So if you have a keyboard controller that has PolyAT you can decide how you want to use that data in your MIDI stream. Either approach is after all just standard MIDI data and CCs.

You will notice I have repeatedly talked about using a DAW in my case Cubase Pro 14, along with a MPE capable plugin in this case since we are talking about using MPE with the DX7 sound engine I referred to HALion7 which in FM Zone can apply any MPE data you want to modulate the DX7 engine

So I can play using Poly AT and then send MPE data to the plugin using Cubase.

I don't need to use ANY keyboard in reality to use MPE, I can just draw it in with a mouse it I want to

The main issue here is far to many people become MPE zealots and want to define what MPE is and does based on what they want to do

The reality is that MPE is just MIDI 1.0 and all it's doing is assigning CC values to note on messages. Each bite is using a different MIDI channel. To use the actual MPE specification no controller is needed, you can use any sequencer to do MPE that supports it

I use MIDI polyphonic expressions a lot in my FM sound design. If I want to I can use MPE with the exact engine and sound if the original DX7 using Plogue Ops7 which is usually on sale for Black Friday

However if you are going to actually use MPE to modulate various FM synth properties FM-X inside of HALion7 is a far better choice as you have FAR more options to modulate as you play it sequence with FM-X over the 40+ year old DX7 engine

But obviously it's not about using MPE with Synthesizers in hardware or software to generate sounds, for the zealots it comes down to controllers, you have to have a controller and play live, God forbid you use a sequencer or a DAW to generate and use CC data on a per note basis using MPE. If you do that you are a heretic who should be burned at the stake or something.

Fortunately MIDI 2.0 eliminates the need for any of this