Synth sequencer for touchscreens - works with PD synths or external MIDI synthesizers

From top to bottom:
Octave (4 octave range)
Note (black box in radio = play that 16th note, click twice to turn off step but keep note)
32nd notes
16th note triplets
Length (short medium long tie/slur)
Velocity

Features:
Display synth name and assign bg color
4 pattern memory - copy out pattern 1 button
Sequence the patterns - 1 2 3 4, 0 means don't play anything that measure
Changes made to a pattern will be initiated on each 8 bar phrase unless you hit Load!
Glide

Problems:
Frankly I just made some changes so that I could share it here.
In the test patch I'm getting a click on beat 1.
The clock might not play 16ths until you adjust the shuffle up and down.
The clock is silly...

Needs:
There's more room for data structures and the like.
Phrase/fill generator or generate variations based on pattern 1
Load pattern option/timer/warning
Use 2nd argument as 0 for audio, 1 for MIDI
Wouldn't hurt to be able to adjust the lengths - presently, short, medium, long, tie
STATE SAVING!!!! - this will likely be best implemented by saving the arrays to text files, then using a popup to select your preprogrammed sequence.

Try it:
Unzip it and move the files into your home folder (sorry, no declarepath) Open testingthis.pd and see if it works or something.

Best,
J.P.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/seqer.zip

Synth sequencer for touchscreens - works with PD synths or external MIDI synthesizers

From top to bottom:
Octave (4 octave range)
Note (black box in radio = play that 16th note, click twice to turn off step but keep note)
32nd notes
16th note triplets
Length (short medium long tie/slur)
Velocity

Features:
Display synth name and assign bg color
4 pattern memory - copy out pattern 1 button
Sequence the patterns - 1 2 3 4, 0 means don't play anything that measure
Changes made to a pattern will be initiated on each 8 bar phrase unless you hit Load!
Glide

Problems:
Frankly I just made some changes so that I could share it here.
In the test patch I'm getting a click on beat 1.
The clock might not play 16ths until you adjust the shuffle up and down.
The clock is silly...

Needs:
There's more room for data structures and the like.
Phrase/fill generator or generate variations based on pattern 1
Load pattern option/timer/warning
Use 2nd argument as 0 for audio, 1 for MIDI
Wouldn't hurt to be able to adjust the lengths - presently, short, medium, long, tie
STATE SAVING!!!! - this will likely be best implemented by saving the arrays to text files, then using a popup to select your preprogrammed sequence.

Try it:
Unzip it and move the files into your home folder (sorry, no declarepath) Open testingthis.pd and see if it works or something.

Best,
J.P.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/seqer.zip

It would be nice (and a lot of work) for the mods to select "finished" patches, abstractions, and externals and organize them in a neat list for newcomers to peruse, no discussion allowed but links to the thread that they are discussed in.

This occurred to me just now as I was searching for toxonic or saturno's beat slicing patch - the one I use was one of the first things I did in PD and I've been to stubborn to update it - then I realized that I wouldn't even know about toxonic and saturno's if I had not been on the forum years ago and recalled their projects.

Just a thought - not intended to be exclusive, just intended to help newcomers find inspiration.

• J.P.

Hi, I'm sure everyone knows that drawing in your own control curves is sketchy - personally I'm using a touch screen and the best luck I've had is putting a [grid] behind the array - even then it does not update consistently.

In general I'm hoping to find better solutions for the gui - I have no experience with computer programming so I feel that I should start with GEM data structures (is that even part of GEM...?) as deerell has mentioned under patch~/mousing arrays = frustrating.

I'll be going to work on this, now, and would just like to check in to see if there are any (new) amazing front-ends that anyone is aware of. In the long run I would like to implement the two pd instances -nogui/-nodsp trick using OSC to communicate - another thing I have no experience with. Then think about a "java" or "python" thingy.

Let me know if I'm heading in the right direction here. In the long run I would like to have 2 touchscreens plus one large monitor with excellent visual feedback and I'm thinking that anything but Tcl/TK is going to be best in terms of maintaining low latency (for VUs, arrays, etc). Oh, that'll mean I'll get a graphics card too

Best,
J.P.

From Windows XP, impressed by the guis created by katja & sonofsol, I move to my music machine booting UbuStu 64 on the -rt 2.6.33-4 kernel. Known issues with my onboard ATI Radeon graphics card - since I haven't used GEM, I haven't cared.

[gemwin] does not work. Cannot create const context, Bad request, peril, peril!

Boot on -preempt 2.6.32-3. [gemwin] works, not tested any further.

Shall I upgrade my graphics card sooner than I had planned or slog through fixing the driver? The drivers may not even be the problem - I have little understanding of kernel intricacies.

A fix so that I can keep my present kernel?

Switch to the best -preempt or a different hard real time kernel?

Thanks.

Well, I know that I can open a patch (in this case a simple sequencer) with a bang routed to pd internal message [; pd open sequencer.pd ../PD/(

...but I would very much like to close it with a bang as well - the bang would output first to cue up the pattern I've entered and then close the window as well.

DO NOT go querying on this, you won't find anything.

I'm open minded about a shell command if someone seconds my opinion that it may be the only way. I would prefer an internal message or object though.

Thanks,
J.P.

Hi everybody, I'm back from about a year off PD, I know it sounds terrible and it was...I'm hoping to get involved in the forum since I feel a little bit more confident and I'll still need lots of help.

I'm posting because I need to share something with people that will understand. I just discovered the Grid object (many thanks to the programmers) and I have been sitting on my computer like a kitten with a ball of yarn for the last ten minutes - because I have a 15 inch touch screen.

If anyone is interested in getting a touch screen I recommend it, though now I have to go through all my old patches to make buttons larger.

I spent a total of $115 on an Elo 1545L touchscreen and have it running *fairly* accurately on Ubuntu Studio. It's inaccurate at the edges of the screen.

While the Elo drivers should work for Windows (not XP x64 though...) (and Mac?) I could not compile them under Linux (probably because it's AMD64?...I may have been missing some dependencies, this is one of the first things I did with Linux)

so I used a program called xinput_calibrator by Tias (and co) that did a good job. The program will apply the calibrations and then output a line that you insert into your .xinitrc file. Only problem here is that I had to change Grub to "text" startup so that I get a plain login, type "startx", and it reads the script, bypassing GDM. You can make GDM read the script but I'm a Linux noob and can't be bothered.

Anyway, Grid + touchscreen = huge kaoss pad (TM) for a fraction of the price. Or drum pad, I'm finding that it is responsive enough to play sixteenth notes at a moderate tempo.

If you have any questions about touchscreens there's a 50% chance that I'll give you worthwhile information and a 100% chance I'll tell you to get Elo (because they are cheap and I haven't used any others.)

Funny thing about Elo is that the touch system works out of the box, but it inverts X and Y. A couple cleverly placed mirrors might do the trick.

Don't get one if you are dead set on using XP x64. Elo has very good docs even for discontinued items.

Happy parametering!

• J.P.

So I'm running on 1.33GHz Powerbook G4, OS X 10.3.9 Panther.

Is Panther why Jack is worse than portaudio or am I simply configuring Jack poorly?

I don't need Jack to do any funny business...I simply need it to route audio from pure data out dac 1 2 and dac 5 6 to my firebox (soundcard) and then to the amp. (I also have inputs on ADC 1-4). So I don't need any virtual ins outs whatnot - the only time I got it working I did have to setup "routing" so that "puredata out0" is connected to "firebox out1" etc... Should I mess with the buffer? I also unchecked everything in preferences/ jack router because I was pissed - maybe I should leave some of those checked? But I do not need the router - at all - I can't run another app anyway with what PD is doing.

With portaudio I run a 100ms buffer in puredata - with Jack, it all went to hell, but I'm really hoping to get down to 50ms so that I'm not a f'in 16th note behind.

That said, I'm going to get a PC when I'm not poor...yeah right, I live in the States...20% unemployment...before the riots and looting start (maybe I should wait it out actually). Anyway, I'll start a thread for dream computers but I'm pretty single-minded right now:

3GHz processor
1GHz front-side bus (or one of those fancy new things that's faster than FSB if I can afford it.) FYI, my G4 has 133MHz FSB...ewww.

Load Debian.

Load Puredata.

Also, is there any way to put priority to audio above the GUI? - I'm running close to 10 16-step sequencers and other graphics that give me info, but I don't need them to run well - I wish there was a separate graphics buffer.

Okay, so this things works; I say that first cause when you open it up your palm will probably hit your forehead.

The idea is that there is only one metro for the clock and that it is sending out different streams. So you run the clock (after adjusting shuffle and tempo - move shuffle up to 5 and back down to 0) and then anywhere else in your patch you can:

[r this] ; outputs a stream (at 16th note intervals) 0, 1, 2, 3,....15

[r this96] ; outputs a stream (at 96th note intervals) 0, 1, 2, 3,.....95

[r these] ; outputs a stream (at eight-note intervals) 0, 1, .....31 (4 bars instead of one, controlled by the "phrase buttons 1bar, 2bar or 4bar.)

Some of the others are used by the ACID patch previously posted...the way I setup 16th-note triplets and 32nd-notes is messy, but you could get it to work for you. I think they are and ...

There are some graphics to lag your computer whenever 4-bar, 8-bar, 16-bar periods have elapsed.

You can also:

[r bang4] or [r bang8] which gives you bangs on important phrases.

It also has a built in stutter (unfortunately using another metro.) It stutters the clock output - works pretty well but it's a damn mess. It's under [pd keyboard] because I use a MIDI controller for it. If you can figure it out, more power to you - basically, if you have a MIDI controller you should be able to get it working - it uses thirteen keys C -> C Pressing any of these keys should give you some rhythm, like repeat count 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, unless you also hold down the lower C which would give you 5, 6, 5, 6 or the D which would give you 5, 6, 7, 5, 6, 7...there's other stuff too.

If you're trying to get the ACID to work, don't worry, it should do it just fine, all the sends and receives are there. Put both files in your PD folder, open a new patch, and make an object [ACID4u] and [Clock4u] and they should be talking to each other.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/clock4u.pd

Hello,
This is what I have been using to control my Paia Fatman which is just a simple analog synth with two sawtooth oscillators. It is very nice to have digital control over analog sound - best of both. It would take some exploring for you to figure the stuff, and I doubt that many folks will have identical equipment.

The feature I'm most proud of is the gui for rhythmic control - you may program in 16 steps, 24 steps, or 32 steps, or all at once.

This is why you need a 96-count master clock which I'll post after this (it should be under abstractions but oh well.)

So feel free to rip off my GUI layout for whatever you need it for - I know it's a pain in the ass setting up all the sends (which I did lazily anyway.) There are also some random-material manipulators that are half badass...find the "fatphraser" subpatch. The idea is that you put in an acid line and it generates variations to create a convincing 4-bar phrase...different each time of course.

There is some small help info - look at [pd readtables] for a better idea of what you're dealing with in terms of data juggling.

And remember - this will not make any sound - it is simply sending MIDI information out of your computer to an external MIDI device. You could rig it to a soft-synth.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/ACID4u.pd