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

[JiggSaw]

^^^
Wonder if the Chord Prism will have an intro price to motive me/us to buy it.

I agree. I actually watched the videos today and am interested in it. But even though it's just a rebrand and not a completely new product, I still feel it's a little expensive for what it does.

[David]

Live 10 Suite free for 90 days, NO RESTRICTIONS:

Ableton isn’t playing around. Live 10 Suite is the most comprehensive version of the DAW, and now you can try it for free for 90 days. The Suite features Ableton’s entire collection of instruments, including Wavetable, Operator, Sampler, Poli, and Analog. Effects plug-ins like the new Echo are also included, as is Max for Live, including the new CV Tools.
All in all, Ableton Live 10 Suite comes with 13 instruments, 56 audio effects and 17 MIDI effects. That’s a lot of content to get creative and make some tracks while you’re self-isolating. And of course, you can also use any compatible plug-ins that you already own. Other than the 90-day limit, the demo version doesn’t have any restrictions—you can save projects and export them as audio files without limitations.

https://www.ableton.com/en/live/

[SirkusPi]

Would anyone care to review and compare Captain Plugins and Orb Producer?

Sure.

Captain Plugins works perfectly fine on my Mac (OSX Mojave) and up-to-date Logic.

When I tried Orb Producer last night, on the other hand, I immediately ran into a significant bug in both the AU instrument version and the VST version, which I ran through Blue Cat's Patchwork MidiFX plugin. (NOTE: there is no Orb Composer MidiFX AU. The AU is a regular instrument, which plays a built-in synth.)

I could set up the OrbChords plugin OK, but when I then added the OrbBass plugin, it caused the OrbChords to run in quarter time. In other words, although the whole point of the plugins is supposed to be coordination between the four, there are timing coordination issues the render them unusable.

I'm not such a bitter, jaded person that I'm swearing them off forever; I'll give the OrbProducer Suite demo another try when (if?) they fix this fundamental bug. But it certainly did not make a good first impression that they released it with such a fundamental issue.

Too bad it has this bug.
Hope when it is fixed it would be great to get a feature and workflow or whatever comparison or review.

OrbProducer was so buggy that it was unusable (in Logic on my system at least) when it first came out. Now there's an update that purports to fix the issue... but the promotional launch discount has expired. In other words, the launch discount was only good until they came out with a version (and demo) that might work (I haven't tried it so can't say).

In the current climate, I haven't bought any music software for a month (unusually for me), and it doesn't take much at all to convince me to simply move on from even demoing / considering a product. This developer behavior makes this an easy skip altogether.

[fairlyclose]

Live 10 Suite free for 90 days, NO RESTRICTIONS:

Ableton isn’t playing around. Live 10 Suite is the most comprehensive version of the DAW, and now you can try it for free for 90 days. The Suite features Ableton’s entire collection of instruments, including Wavetable, Operator, Sampler, Poli, and Analog. Effects plug-ins like the new Echo are also included, as is Max for Live, including the new CV Tools.
All in all, Ableton Live 10 Suite comes with 13 instruments, 56 audio effects and 17 MIDI effects. That’s a lot of content to get creative and make some tracks while you’re self-isolating. And of course, you can also use any compatible plug-ins that you already own. Other than the 90-day limit, the demo version doesn’t have any restrictions—you can save projects and export them as audio files without limitations.

https://www.ableton.com/en/live/

thanks David I will give this a solid look. Max4Live is very appealing

[Ploki]

OrbProducer was so buggy that it was unusable (in Logic on my system at least) when it first came out. Now there's an update that purports to fix the issue... but the promotional launch discount has expired. In other words, the launch discount was only good until they came out with a version (and demo) that might work (I haven't tried it so can't say).

In the current climate, I haven't bought any music software for a month (unusually for me), and it doesn't take much at all to convince me to simply move on from even demoing / considering a product. This developer behavior makes this an easy skip altogether.

yeah i agree. having an "introductory price" for a non-working product and not extending it after finally releasing a working product made me lose absolutely all interest in it.

[dopet]

Hi All!

You folks are my my best friends and you don't even know it! I am a huge fan/collector of these types of devices and I own and use quite a few of the favorites listed in this thread. I am thrilled to know that there are others like me out there.

I do write more 'traditional' music as opposed to 'algorithmic', but I do use the tools to get ideas for tracks or to break up the 'ole writers block.

Here is a link to soundcloud which has a few of my tracks (i think some more recent ones are absent...) so you can get a context for where I am coming from.

https://soundcloud.com/thesoundden_us

I am always happy to share any tips or tricks if there are any questions. I have been pretty fortunate that this quarantine has not affected my job (nor my wifes, really) so we are still working full time from home and helping two kids with their continued school work. We are quite busy actually, but I will gladly make any videos to show how I use these tools.

Take care!

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
Hey, Nice music!
Which midi tools are you using?

[dopet]

Hiya!

Well, depends on the song really... for example, Broadstreet started with a chord track using the J74 Progressive Max4Live device (i love all J74 Max4Live stuff. Own it all.....) From there i used Nora to put together all the piano patterns. The acoustic gtr parts are ample sound martin using the built in strumming engine. The electric guitars are played by me, but on this track they are samples...real guitar, i think .... the gibson les paul one.

Forlorn was also chord notes and midi out of J74 Progressive. The pad just followed the basic chords from J74. The solo viola was played using Feel Your Sound Melodic Flow (though i would probably use the new Chord Prism nowadays as melodic flow takes like 3 tracks to set up in ableton live! They both offer a 'dynamic scale' setting that changes in response to the chords.)

Circle of Fate was put together using only Feel Your Sound Sundog Studio. I did 'custom' create the chords to encompass scale notes I would want to use as melodic pieces between chord changes. I don't recall all the details on that one as I was experimenting with how far I could use it outside its intended use. The only bits not using sundog were the drums.

So on and so forth. They are all usually a mix of these things plus me playing in parts.

I just picked up the Orb composer suite (i have captain chords, etc as well) and I have a new 'modern synthwave' track I just started. I will be putting up the little snippet (i only have the main chords, drums and bass so far....)onto soundcloud today as I have a call out on Facebook to my tech savvy friends to do some online collaboration and wanted to give a taste of the track. It uses both captain products and orb prducer suite at the same time. I just went with whatever plugs gave me the best result at the time.

[David]

I will gladly make any videos to show how I use these tools.

That's very generous; I'd love to see some video!

[ztrauq]

I will gladly make any videos to show how I use these tools.

That's very generous; I'd love to see some video!

I'd also be quite interested, always want to learn more about how to do new and different stuff with MIDI plugins

[dopet]

Hi,

Just noticed that Reason has a 30 day free trial. Am I late to the party on that one? Anyhow, downloaded last night and will load it up. Spent some time looking thru the midi tools you can buy.... I'm not sure how many add to what I already have? I do like the looks of that quad arp, generator thing.... I love the fact they made their rack. Only if it were years earlier I would have been on board for sure.

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
I almost bought he Reason Intro for $50 over the holidays because it included the Rack. The midi Players look interesting but cost more than I was willing to spend. If offered again i may buy it.

[dopet]

Well, I can say within minutes of loading up the trial of the quad note generator my kids jumped to the computer to lay down beats. They are 6 & 8. How long do those trial periods last for the rack extensions? I don’t know if $170 for reason intro plus this one rack thing is worth it, but it’s fun for now...

[dopet]

So, I really like the quad note generator from Reason. As mentioned, I'm not sure if anything Reason has to offer at the moment gives me anything really new or different to me at this point. (i may rethink this if the intro one drops down in price on a nice sale!) I do like the idea of having the reason connectivity inside a rack inside Ableton though.....

I digress.... I thought about if i could get the same functionality as the quad note generator inside ableton live. I'm not super smart or savvy, so i couldnt find a way using the native tools. I did recall that i owned Blue Cat's Patchwork and that Feel Your Sound showed a demo of how to make Chord Potion work with 'multi channel midi out' in Ableton using patchwork as well. Without getting into too much detail at the moment, i was able to get a similar setup using Patchwork. I had 2-3 HY sequencers driving a synth bass sound. I also threw Riffer in there as well and it worked.

Basically I was able to duplicate some (if not all) the functionality, however the reason device is classy, snazzy, fun and easy to use. If I already owned reason and just had to shell out 70 bux, i would... quickly. The patchwork 'work around' is really clunky in comparison. There are a lot of windows you need to jump back and forth on and detailed settings needed to be made in each arp/sequencer used. I think using Patchwork with Riffer gave a similar result in that they both can be used to continuously generate new material (i had to 'lock' quite a few of the notes down in Riffer to make sure it wasn't a complete random mess everytime it regenerated itself). The quad note generator made things like this super simple....

Anyhow, there are some quick thoughts on the subject. I have the project saved as the bass line was pretty snazzy (from both methods). I also added drums and a pad sound and may develop it further.

[Kalamata Kid]

never mind