statistic drumming

davy · Post by **davy** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 6:25 pm

i don't know if anyone has posted this trick before since i'm pretty new to the forum, but here's an idea i had...

insert snare sound, kick sound, hi-hat sound,... as clips. insert a silence wav (= no sound) as a clip. give all clips some following chance and a following event.

now you have your machine drummer.

an example live set can be found at http://dropbox.davyvandenbremt.be/stochlivedrum.zip

you can get more predictable results if you use small rhythms (p.e. a beat of 3 16ths) and mengle these with silence clips.

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 10:22 pm

I use this same technique for programming lights.

Pan, tilt, gobo, gobo rotation, colour, and shutter on scanners can make some fantastic random patterns that I never would have thought of, and always sync to Live's tempo.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 8:44 am

Using a couple of velocity plugins you can do pseudo-random stuff with midi as well. It's good fun.

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:37 pm

I'm not out performing but I guess it would be cool to use a envelope follower for a recorded track and feed it back as CC, to activate lights, dim them etc.

// C

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 2:49 pm

Hi Conny

Using an envelope followed to create CC data for light brightness/pan/tilt sounds useful. What is the easiest way to implement that?

It would be cool if I could split an audio signal into, say, three frequency bands, and output the level of each band as CC data. Then I could automate brightness/pan/tilt to bass/mid/treble, for example, or video effects in Arkaos that also use CC data.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 3:29 pm

I would do it in Plogue Bidule, which has env followers, filters and CC creators to squeeze.

Maybe I'll give it a try.

// C

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 4:04 pm

I just downloaded Plogue... looks like French-Canadian Greek to me!

It may take me some time to get my head around it, but what I'd like to do is to take an audio clip in Live on the Powerbook, split it into three frequency bands, and generate three sets of CC data from those bands, which then gets sent via MIDI to the second Mac for use in lighting and video control.

Then, as the audio plays from the Powerbook, the CC data will sync the various lighting and video effects on the other Mac.

Too much to do... so little time!

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 4:35 pm

Don't worry, I'm getting at it but unfortunately got stuck with some sync problems between Live and Bidule.

// C

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 6:47 pm

Have a try with this:

http://bluemoose.greatnow.com/Bidule/CY ... C_2.bidule

No sync at the moment.
It's set up Windows style with Midi Yoke, but you can figure that out for the Mac's virtual midi ports.

Layout GUI (duoble click the ThreeBands2CC group) reveals:
* Settings for three band pass filters
* CC thinning (how often the CC sent is to be updated)
* Some gain for the three bands (after filtering)
* CC scaling for the three CC's out
* Block checkboxes, handy when assigning the CC's one by one in Live
* Attack/release for the three envelope followers

// C

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 7:01 pm

That's brilliant, Conny! Thanks for that.

I can't fully interpret it right now, but you've whetted my appetite for what Plogue can do.

Just what I needed... another program to learn on top of Live, Flash, Motion, Cinema, Arkaos and Dreamweaver!

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 7:06 pm

When you've done the Bidule basics, you got a very flexible VST host + audio/midi mangling thing at your fingertips.
Things that can't be routed in Live can be done in Bidule i.e.

// C

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 7:11 pm

May need a trip to Sweden for a lesson from a fellow 47 year old!

Thanks again.

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 7:29 pm

You're wellcome!

// C

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 8:57 pm

Conny

Tell me if this is what I can do with Plogue:

1. Audio clip plays on Powerbook through Ozonic to hardware mixer.

2. Same audio clip generates filtered MIDI CC data which is sent via MIDI to the second Mac to alter lighting/video parameters. The second Mac's MIDI out is plugged into a MIDI-DMX hardware converter, which converts 0-127 MIDI CC data in 0-255 DMX. Right now I'm tediously drawing CC curves. So, for example, the audio track sent to Plogue through a low-pass filter could generate CC data 0-127 to be send to a DMX par can, so the brightness would increase and flash in time with the bass in the clip. Or video in Arkaos could have a parameter altered by the same CC data so, for example, a video clip's RGB data could be modulated with the bass from the audio clip.

Where does Plogue fit in this scenario? Does it run as a Rewire slave on the Powerbook?

Sorry for the basic questions. The Plogue website online manual isn't much help.

conny · Post by **conny** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 9:37 pm

First of all I would suggest you registered in the Plogue forum.
It's friendly people over there and they'll answer your questions.

To your questions I would answer "yes" but I have no knowledge of the hardware and interfaces you mention.
Bidule runs in rewire mode but then you don't get an audio in (rewire standard says midi in, audio out only).
But Plogue has an extra Bidule VST bridge which let you use Bidule from a host as an audio/midi plugin:
http://www.plogue.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=915
Thats what I use, avoiding rewire restrictions.

As for describing what I did here recently:
An audio clip in Live goes to Bidule via the VST Bridge.
Bidule filters and produces three CC out from the amplitude envelope of the audio,
Live receives the CC's through midi yoke (on Mac you will probable have virtual midi ports already for this) controlling three different parameters in Operator.

If you like, I may repost your questions in the Bidule forum.

// C