Loading a pure data patch ( .pd file ) within a pure data patch ( .pd file )
HI!
Quick version:
My folder structure:
/mother-patch.pd ( main pure data patch first loaded and running... )
/patches/1/main.pd
/patches/2/main.pd
/patches/3/main.pd
...
How i could open /patches/1/main.pd triggered by some action in the mother-patch.pd?
How i could close /patches/1/main.pd triggered by some action in the mother-patch.pd?
Long read
I'm attempting to clone the Critter and Guitari organelle ( link ).
This instrument is basically a computer running libpd and running very cool pure data patches
You can read more about my project here ( link )
I have a mother pure data patch that it's first loaded when the device is on, this patch is doing some [send] and [receive] operations related to the knobs/keyboard/volume/led and it should be also managing the loading ( opening and closing ) of the child pure data patches ( mentioned above ). This child patches are receiving the actions from the mother patch.
If I open the mother patch and the child patches manually, everything works fine. But now I need to OPEN this CHILD PURE DATA patches with a object within the mother patch.
I've been testing [open] , for opening the main.pd of the child patches but it does not work.
I've been testing [pd] , for opening the main.pd of the child patches but it does not work.
I wouldn't like to modify the original organelle patches.
I wouldn't like to end up loading all the patches using [pd ...] and inserting a [switch] object inside every main.pd file in the patches in order to enable only the dsp of the desired patch.
It would be perfect If i could have a folder with all the patches and load them within the mother patch with some kind of object. And I would also want to be able to CLOSE the pure data patch and open another ( changing patches... )
Every little and big help woul be MUCH APRECIATED!
THANKS!!!!!!!
New to PD, need help with notes failing to turn off.
I've been working on my first major patch for the past few months. It's a synthesizer based heavily on the tutorial on flossmanuals.net. After finally creating all of the features I wanted I started to modify the patch to make the synthesizer polyphonic. The catch is that I want to control the patch using the Mad Catz Mustang midi guitar controller. This controller works perfectly fine with the polyphonic synth in the PD help browser as well as with other polyphonic synth patches I've found online, so I do not think the controller has any problem interacting with the [poly] object.. The problem is that when I use it with my patch, some notes fail to turn off. It seems to happen most often when I quickly slur from one note to another. I did not have this issue when using the monophonic version of my patch. The amplifier subpatch is definitely receiving noteoff messages, but for some reason, they do not cause the envelope to close.
I think part of the problem has to do with the way the controller sends messages. I use the controller in 'tap mode,' meaning a noteon is sent whenever a fret button is pressed and noteoffs are sent when fret buttons are released. However noteoffs are also sent whenever any fret button is pressed in order to turn off the "open string" (A note can be played without pressing a fret button by striking the string sensors, and the only way to turn it off is by playing a fretted note). This occurs whether or not the open string is playing and I think this may be messing with [poly]'s voice allocation. I'm tempted to just say that the controller can't be worked around, but since I know it works for other patches I'm going crazy trying to fix my patch.
I understand it would be hard to duplicate this behavior without having the controller, but as I said before it works like a dream with other patches. I have tried to imitate the polyphony of these patches as best as I can. I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting objects in every order imaginable and I've tried delaying on and off messages in case they were somehow arriving to the amplifier envelope out of order.
Attached is a simplified version of my polyph[full poly help.pd] onic patch. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could give it a quick look over just in case there's anything really obvious that I'm just missing.
Thanks so much and have a great day.
EDIT: Please ignore the errors about missing {receive~}s or {catch~}es. The {send~}s and {throw~}s are for some of the features that I removed from this version of the patch for simplicity's sake but I did not remove the {send~}s and {throw~}s.
Export to exe or dmg format
Eimer,
Pd and Pd-extended is free software and you may redistribute it, even in modified form, provided you follow the license terms (BSD and GPL).
If you are on OSX, it is very easy to create your own application with Pd-extended under the hood. Select menu-item 'file>>Make app from patch' or 'file>>Make app from folder'. What you get is a Pd-extended package with your patch as startup patch. The Pd window is minimized directly after startup, so at a first glance you don't notice it is Pd. But it is still fully functional with all Pd-extended libraries in it (120 MB!), and the possibility to edit patches and create new ones. With some extra tweaking, you can replace the Pd icon with an icon of your own make. The preferences file of this 'app' is within the app folder. If you included all necessary abstractions, and eventually your homebrew externals, you can distribute it as a stand alone app.
But probably you are not on OSX, otherwise you would have already seen this option. For Linux or Windows you could do something similar to the 'Make app' as described above, but do it by hand. You could write an executable tcl script to start Pd with your patch as startup patch, and eventually include other options in the script. (Pd uses Tk/tcl for graphics and other purposes, so it is included in every binary distribution of Pd-extended). The user can click that script to open your 'application'.
Disadvantages of distributing apps instead of patches are:
- you need to make separate distributions for every platform
- applications are large so you need ample download bandwidth on your server or host
- if Pd is obscured, you can't refer to Pd pages for support
All taken together, I see little advantage for distributing stand alone apps rather than Pd patches. If you want to make user-friendly distributions of your patches, you could organise them in a decent directory structure, where abstractions and other essential files are included in the search path by the [declare] object. For the user it is then a matter of installing a recent Pd(-extended) if they do not have it yet, and opening the main patch in your patches package. If all goes well, this is piece of cake, and on the other hand if they have troubles with soundcards etcetera, this is not something you could have prevented by supplying an app instead of a patch.
Katja
Open Kinect?
hey buscon,
here's a copy of a mail i sent a friend, and the corresponding patches.
you can see these patches being used here:
(original mail)
ok here's a simplified version of the patch i use. i've just modified the "mud" patch and haven't checked it all, so there are bugs and errors everywhere, but i guess you're just interested in the abs which receive and dispatch the data from kinect.
so the kinect is received by osceleton and what i get in pd is osc messages. basically it's x, y, and z coordinates for each point of the body. so you'll be interested in the patches "kinector" and "shooter".
KINECTOR:
- it translates the osc into data that the granular sampler "mud" can understand (0 to 1 linear).
- move the horizontal sliders to chose a user and a joint.
- toggle from "value" to "CC". in X Y and Z type a sending chanel number. in the granular patch, toggle from value to CC, so you can affect a receiving chanel number for each automatisable parameter.
- hit the "learn" buton and then cover with your body the area you wish to use. this sets minimums and maximum for each axis. if you want to calibrate the whole body at ounce first select "all_joints". hit the "learn" buton again to end calibration. body motion is now active.
- the toggle on the top right activates remote sound control for the "learn" function, for if you work alone. enable it, use the vertical slider to choose the gate for incoming volume. stand at your starting point, and clap or scream. calibrate, and clap again.
- if you toggle from "abs" to "rltv", instead of calibrating the movement of each joint in absolute space it will consider their relative distance to the torso joint. the advantage of this is one movement will have the same effect wherever you are positioned in the space.
- you save, open, and load presets as textfiles on your drive. you can save presets for the whole patch on the top right of the master patch.
SHOOTER:
- basically the same as kinector, but used for one-shots instead of continuous changes.
- chose a user, a joint, an axis, and a direction
- type a chanel cumber where it says CC
- in "time", type a time in miliseconds. everytime a joint passes a chosen point in space in a chosen direction, it will output a line from 0 to 1 in the chosen time.
- calibrate in the same way. you can use "all_joints" too bu there's a huge error somewhere so if you do first toggle to "value".
- same as kinector for the rest.
ok here you go. i don't know how much you know pd, so that's why i explained as much as i could. these patches are absolutely not clean, they're my first ideas since i got the kinect, and i'm working on more to have one tight patch in the end (including speed detection, movement prevision to compensate latency, etc ... ).
ok hope this helps.
if you have trouble using the "mud" patch let me know. if you are going to use the patch, please let me know and make sure you mention it's mine.
cheers
salut
gab
DJ/VJ scratching system
First my story: (you can skip down to END OF STORY if you want)
Ever since I saw Mike Relm go to town with a DVDJ, I've wanted a system where I could scratch and cue video. However, I haven't wanted to spend the $2500 for a DVDJ. As I was researching, I found a number of different systems. I am not a DJ by trade, so to get a system like Traktor or Serrato with their video modules plus turntables plus hardware plus a DJ mixer, soon everything gets really expensive. But in looking around, I found the Ms.Pinky system and after a little bit, I found a USB turntable on Woot for $60. So I bought it. It was marketed as a DJ turntable, but I knew that it wasn't really serious since it had a belt drive, but it came with a slip-pad and the USB connection meant that I wouldn't need a preamp. And so I spend the $100 on the Ms.Pinky vinyl plus software license (now only $80). This worked decently, but I had a lot of trouble really getting it totally on point. The relative mode worked well, but sometimes would skip if I scratched too vigorously. The absolute mode I couldn't get to work at all. After reading a little more, I came to the conclusion that my signal from vinyl to computer just wasn't strong enough, so I would need maybe a new needle or maybe a different turntable and I didn't really want to spend the money experimenting. I think that the Ms. Pinky system is probably a very good system with the right equipment, but I don't do this professionally, so I don't want to spend the loot on a system.
Earlier, before I bought Ms.Pinky (about two years ago), I had also looked around for a cheap MIDI USB DJ controller and not found one. Well, about a month ago, I saw the ION Discover DJ controller was on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $50. They sold out before I could get one, but Vann's was selling it for $70, so I decided that that was good enough and bought one. I had planned to try to use it with Ms. Pinky since you can hook up MIDI controllers to it. But it turns out that you can hook up MIDI controllers to every control except the turntable, so that was a no go. If I had Max/MSP/Jitter, I could have changed that, but that's also way expensive. So, how should I scratch? My controller came with DJ'ing software and there's also some freeware, like Mixxx, but none of this has video support. So I look around and find Pure Data and GEM.
And I see lots of questions about scratching, how to do it. And there are even some tutorials and small patches out there, but as I look at them, none of them are quite what I'm looking for. The YouTube tutorial is really problematic because it's no good at all for scratching a song. It can create a scratching sound for a small sample, but it's taking the turntable's speed and using that as the position in the sample. If you did that with a longer song, it wouldn't even sound like a scratch. And then there are some which do work right, but none of them keep track of where you are in the playback. So, whenever you start scratching, you're starting from the beginning of the song or the middle.
So, I looked at all this and I said, "Hey, I can do this. I've got my spring break coming up. Looking at how easy PD looks and how much other good (if imperfect) work other people have done, I bet that I could build a good system for audio and video scratching within a week." And, I have.
END OF STORY
So that's what I'm presenting to you, my free audio and video scratching system in Pure Data (Pd-extended, really). I use the name DJ Lease Def, so it's the Lease Def DJ system. It's not quite perfect because it loads its samples into tables using soundfiler which means that it has a huge delay when you load a new file during which the whole thing goes silent. I am unhappy about this, but unsure how to fix it. Otherwise, it's pretty nifty. Anyway, rather than be one big patch, it relies on a system of patches which work with each other. Each of the different parts will come in several versions and you can choose which one you want to use and load up the different parts and they should work together correctly. Right now, for most of the parts there's only one version, but I'll be adding others later.
There's a more detailed instruction manual in the .zip file, but the summary is that you load:
the engine (only one version right now): loads the files, does the actual signal processing and playback
one control patch (three versions to choose from currently, two GUI versions and a MIDI version specific to the Ion Discover DJ): is used to do most of the controlling of the engine other than loading files such as scratching, fading, adjusting volume, etc.
zero or one cueing patch (one version, optional): manages the controls for jumping around to different points in songs
zero or one net patch (one version: video playback): does some sort of add-on. Will probably most commonly be used for video. The net patches have to run in a separate instance of Pd-extended and they listen for signals from the engine via local UDP packets. This is set-up this way because when the audio and video tried to run in the same instance, I would get periodic little pops, clicks, and other unsmoothnesses. The audio part renders 1000 times per second for maximum fidelity, but the video part only renders like 30 or 60 times per second. Pure Data is not quite smooth enough to handle this in a clever real-time multithreading manner to ensure that they both always get their time slices. But you put them in separate processes, it all works fine.
So, anyway, it's real scratching beginning exactly where you were in playing the song and when you stop scratching it picks up just where you left off, you can set and jump to cue points, and it does video which will follow right along with both the scratching and cuing. So I'm pretty proud of it. The downsides are that you have to separate the audio and video files, that the audio has to be uncompressed aiff or wav (and that loading a new file pauses everything for like 10 seconds), that for really smooth video when you're scratching or playing backwards you have to encode it with a codec with no inter-frame encoding such as MJPEG, which results in bigger video files (but the playback scratches perfectly as a result).
So anyway, check it out, let me know what you think. If you have any questions or feedback please share. If anyone wants to build control patches for other MIDI hardware, please do and share them with me. I'd be glad to include them in the download. The different patches communicate using send and receive with a standard set of symbols. I've included documentation about what the expected symbols and values are. Also, if anyone wants me to write patches for some piece of hardware that you have, if you can give me one, I'll be glad to do it.
Keith Irwin (DJ Lease Def)
PdLive!
Thanks C.!
The amazing jazzdrumbox patch is from Andy, many of the patches here come from forums and posts from users.
The drummachine is actually mine so thanks
There is so many patch because it's a collection (even if some patches are very close to each others, maybe I'll make a selection later)
- the CTL patches deal with data ( for instance : midi seq, midi automations, or fiddle and bonk analyse to track signal and send midi notes and vel)
- Fx are fx
- S patches are instruments to be played with midi keyboard, or with ctl patches.
- z patches are used in other patches and can be used to create new ones.
Instruments patches are meant to be browsed with your classic browser, and I wanted them to be opened in a new pd window. But I guess I could add a menus to the main mixer patch to open synth, ctl patches and fx
The workflow 'should' be to first select your sounds/instruments select the audio bus then they are caught in the main window and that's were the patching begins with effects and controls. The main limitation is that I only have 5 audio buses for now, but I should add some more later on, a signal router may come in handy at that time .
Different ways of Implementing Delay Loops
Ta Toxonic - I'll take a look at the patch tonight. Good of you to take the time. Apologies if I've misunderstood though, but I think what you're describing is not quite what I mean: The pitch shift is separated out from the delay time - you're running a pitch shift effect into a separate delay line, which is not going to give the same effect. The delay time will not shorten as the pitch rises. I'll take a look at your patch tonight though as I may have misunderstood what you're getting at.
Maelstorm - thanks also. I understand why the pitch changes on a delay pedal. The pitchshifter patch was a bit of a red herring - though of course it's the same principle. The difference between what you're (both, I think) talking about and what I'm talking about is the way that the pitch changes.
Assuming a stable C tone playing into the delay:
With the standard simple PD delay set up, if you move the read point of a vd~ then you get a glissando as it accellerates, a constant pitch change as it moves at constant speed. So if you turn the knob to change the delay time in the middle of a tone you start with a constant pitch (C), then get a rise of pitch, then it levels out at a new pitch (as you turn then stop turning the knob),
_
___/
If you feed back into the delay, the glissando is repeated as the read speed changed while the write speed was constant:
_ _ _ _
/ |/ |/ |/ |
The effect I'm looking to emulate on the other hand is more akin to changing the speed of a phasor~ reading an array - the pitch change is not a blip, but a stable interval's transposition - eg: you turn the knob, the pitch of the repeats rise by a given interval and stays at that pitch as it repeats (now more quickly):
______
___/
If you play a constant C tone, then speed up the delay until it is a major third higher, you get a major third diad (until the delay dies away), rather than a C tone with a repeating squiggle overlaid.
The effect is the same as you get by speeding up a tape loop delay (though the pedal I'm trying to imitate is a digital delay) which is why I think the rate of the write and read heads are being increased by the same amount.
[edit, just tried to make this clearer and removed a couple of errors]
Kids these days and their sampling devices
Thanks, glad you liked it. As for a breakdown of what's going on, I'll have to describe it verbally because all of my PD work is currently on a computer that needs a reinstall of windows (ugh)
The patch is a collection of sample manipulators, each linked to a key on the computer keyboard. The sample playback rates are determined based on a master BPM and a duration in beats. As with most sample manips, you can window part of the sample, play it backwards, what have you. There's no pitch-steady transposition so changing the duration or BPM will shift the pitch as well. Each sample can be played once through, as a loop, or looping only as long as the key is pressed down.
In badluck, for example, it starts off with several long horn samples that are each set to a duration that puts their pitches at perfect-fourth intervals. Drums that come in later are snippets of a couple of drum loops my friend recorded, the first coming in a minute or so before the second, which is offset by a beat (creating an interesting compound rhythm). The squeaky woman-vocal samples later on in the song are the result of tweaking the sampling window to force various pitches.
Sample Player
Frank told me to make this tutorial to figure out
http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/attachments/20070528/967bc319/attachment-0001.bin
Thanks for his help.
If anybody has the same problem. Here is the message he wrote me:
> I have some newbie questions about Pd. I wanted to write a Patch
> which is based on this one (maybe):
> http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-643-sample-player
> The mentioned Sample Player has 2 Sliders which control the Start-/
> End-Loop position which is the exact thing what i was looking for.Attached is a slightly different sampler, actually not a sampler
itself, but a tutorial on how to build your own sampler.> What i want to do:
> I want to make a patch, a sample player. When i press a button i want
> to loop the actual sample position according to the key i have pressed.
>
> I give you an example. I load a loop which is 120 BPM fast. I set
> somewhere my tempo. When i press "a" it starts looping 1/4th at the
> actual play position.
>
> For this sort of thing. The Sample Player seems to be perfect. But
> now there are the difficulties.
>
> - How can i set the tempo right? I figured out how to calculate the
> tempo for any note length.If you work through attached tutorial, maybe some of the neccessary
calculations (as: duration(smps) => duration(msec) etc.) become clearer.> - How can i get my keyboard entries into the software?
Use the [keyname] or [key] objects.
> - And lust but not least. How can i get the Patch to act how i would
> like.Just build it! If you get stuck, try to make a patch that illustrates
where you got stuck and send it here.You may want to start with empty subpatches, that divide your
problem/approach into smaller problems/steps. Like first do a
completely empty patch and put some empty subpatches in there:[pd load_file]
[pd get_duration_in_msec]
[pd convert_duration_to_BPM]
[pd get_keypresses]
[pd play_sample]
or similar. Then give your subpatches inlets and outlets and connect
them in order. And last fill in these subpatches with the real patches
one by one, always checking if every subpatch does what it should do.> I know...dumb question you know too.
It's not a dumb question at all. While playing samples isn't exactly
magic, it's also not trivial to do, especially for the first time.
Announce: mmm-0.1.0-eden
hi forum.
we proudly announce the first public release of our compact composer
for pd, mmm.
grab it at http://netpd.org/mmm-0.1.0.zip
mmm is best described in it's faq, see below. don't expect too much
yet, there is still a lot to be done. comments, bugreports, cash, are
welcome.
have fun with it!
christopher charles & enrique erne
faq for mmm-0.1.0 - eden
what is mmm?
mmm is a pd patch collection aimed at providing a studiolike(?),
streamlined, dynamic interface for making synthetic music.
screenshots?
http://www.netpd.org/mmm.png
ymmv depending on your operating system. we put some effort in
detecting the operating system and setting the fontsize according to
it, but quirky xorg or dpi settings might screw things up again.
where can i get it?
we currently host the mmm at http://netpd.org/mmm-0.1.0.zip ,
alternatively, you can grab netpd, enter the chat, and if either of
the authors is online, download it directly through netpd and start
rocking.
what does "mmm" stand for?
mmm was originally just the working title, but we came to like it
somehow. the original meaning is "music making machine" but you can
substitute every m for whatever you want. so "massive multiplayer
music" is okay with us, too.
what is the inspiration?
having worked on/with the bagoftricks (lots inconsistently coloured
gop-patches to be connected freely) and netpd (lots of
inconsistent-looking windows to clutter up the screen), we came to
mock up an clean, dynamic interface in which modules don't bring their
own gop or open their own window, but log onto the interface that's
provided for them by the motherpatch. all modules sharing the same
interface made it easy for them to share the same sequencer and
arranger.
what are the dependencies?
mmm should work with pd-0.39 and zexy installed. iemlib is important
for many synth and effects patches, and there's even set of gem
modules you can chain if you want.
is it actually usable?
no. this 0.1.0 release is rather a tech demo and a taste of things to
potentially come. you can crunch some acid loops out of it already,
but don't sell your protools studio equipment to start working with
mmm on monday.
how does it work?
mmm's interface (mmmmain.pd) is divided into 3 parts: there is the
module/channel view, where you can chain up synths and effects on 8
different channels. select an empty field on a channel, and then use
the scrollbox on the left to select a patch and open it. when clicking
on a patch you loaded up in the module view, the 2nd view comes into
play: from there you control the patch's sliders on the left, right of
it is the stepsequencer for each of the slider (means everything is
sequencable!). yet you won't hear anything until you did the following
2 things: press play in the uppermost row of mmmmain, and set up the
arranger to play the stepsequence. the arranger is not module-based,
but controls all modules of a channel are grouped in the arranger. for
now, you can only select pattern 01 or nothing to play in the
arranger. so set up a loop for the first pattern (loopstart:0,
looplength:1) set the first field on the channel you got your patch on
in the arranger to p01 and start making some noise.
does it work online?
yes. mmm is compatible to netpd and will automatically log on to
netpd's server if you have the netpd chat open. you can also download
the whole mmm package through netpd. feel free to jam around the
world.
what's not working yet / what is planned?
as for now, there is no support for samples whatsoever, it isn't
planned to support them soon. further, there is no hard disk recorder
available yet, but it is planned. the arranger/sequencer combo is very
crippled at the moment, only supporting 1 16-step-pattern to choose
from and 1 page of 16 patterns in the arranger. this will change
rather soon. next there are plans for luxury editing functions,
especially in the sequencer like copy, paste, random pattern,
interpolation and so on. plans exist for full keyboard control, but
this will be worked on not too soon. the module roster is far from
being complete yet, more is to come.
can i save my stuff?
should be possible with the buttons above the channels. don't rely on
the result though, this is still 0.1.0
can i add my own modules?
modules are not to hard to write, but for now, the list of selectable
modules is hardcoded. look at all the 4m-* patches in the patches
folder to see how they are ticking. contact us for adding your patch
to the mmm or try to figure out yourself how it works
what's the license?
mmm is licensed under the gnu lgpl. if you think this is a too useful
product to be free of charge, please consider donating the amount of
money you would've paid for it (or the amount of money you got from
selling your protools equipment on monday) to a trust of your choice.
who are the authors?
mmm is developed by enrique erne (eni, swiss, pd{at}mild.ch) and
christopher charles (syntax_tn, germany, chr.m.charles{at}gmail.com).
we can be contacted via email, irc (#dataflow) or directly in the
netpd chat. several patches within mmm are based upon netpd versions
of them, check netpd for the original authors. mmm shares some of it's
netcode with netpd, by roman haefeli.
disclaimer.
we cannot give you any guarantees on using mmm, not even that you
have fun. it should be relatively harmless, but don't come crying to
us if mmm accidently hijacks your *mule and downloads david hasslehoff
recordings to your computer.
eofaq