Bidule for audio to midi in Live - notes and CC

[conny]

An ongoing project.

You may transfer audio to midi notes and/or CC controller messages.

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

// C

[Per Boysen]

transfer audio to midi notes and/or CC controller messages.

Very cool! Is this a patch you have made? (downloading now... )

The othe day I tried Melodyne 3 for crating midi out of audio. It worked out fine. But I wish it was possible to do in real-time, to a real-time audio input.

[hambone1]

Conny... you're determined to keep me awake at night... again....

Can you explain how this works?

Thanks... I think!

[conny]

I you like you could do a new download, I just removed some unneeded clutter in the GUI.
And Per, I like the Melodyne midi transform too. One of the best I've found so far.
Mine is far from that in terms of precision etc. And mine is monophonic. To have overlaping notes out, you have to use two instances of Bidule with different settings, which can only be done with the lastest (0.9 or 0.9001) releases.

So don't expect too much.
The CC production is quite good, though.
I post some instruxes when time comes.

// C

[conny]

Example is using the latest Bidule VST.
If you don't have that, you'll have to do all midi routing through virtual channels.
OK, an setup in Live:



I'm using Midi Yoke 4 here as transmitter for external CC # 15.
The CC produced from the audio in track 1 through Bidule is here returned to control the panning of track 2, while the actual midi notes produced from audio into Bidule are fed directly into track 2 also from the Bidule VST.
Track 1 is holding the audio that gets to Bidule and produces midi notes and CC.

This Bidule can produce midi notes and/or midi CC from an audio input.
The midi out is monophonic.

The Bidule layout looks like this:

Not much.
All logic is inside the EnvToMidi group. It uses FFT to determine pitch of audio and an envelope follower to track the audio volume, which is used to create CC levels and midi note velocity.

And the GUI:


Midi note part:
1 - Relation between Low thresh and Gain determines at what audio level midi notes are produced (not sure, should remake...)
2 - Three band pass filters shapes the signal before it gets into the FFT pitch module (the data for volumes are not filtered, maybe they should be).
3 - Microtonal: If checked, midi notes are microtonal.
CC Part:
4 - CC # - the CC number produced from the volume data
5 - Gain - levels the signal after the envelope follower
6 - Attack/Release set the slopes for the CC data according to the audio. Higher values mean that CC changes are smoother.
7 - Invert. If checked, high audio signal will produce low CC values ("ducking" if used for an compressor)
8 - Quantize/CC Sync: Output of CC changes will be quantized to beat. Be aware: If not used, there may be lot of CC produced that may choke the system... And check that the Bidule group is synced to the host.
9 - CC Scale: Adjust the CC values to fit the slider etc it is targeted to. This has an direct relation to the CC Gain factor also.

//C

[conny]

G W Bush sample through Bidule, triggering a SFZ afro drum patch and CC used to panning:

http://bluemoose.greatnow.com/Live/Examples/PB/ex.mp3

// C

[hambone1]

Got it!

Experimenting using it to generate lighting and video patterns from various audio tracks in the scene. It works great, but there is considerable delay. It doesn't matter, though, as I already pass the audio to a visualizer and the MIDI to the lights and video 250ms earlier than to the PA for the same reason.

Thanks!

[conny]

Hi -
Is the delay both for notes and CC?
Turning the attack all down may speed up the CC response.
And are you using quantize for CC and are the group synced to the host?

I have been thinking about separating the note creation from the CC into two different groups. That may speed up the processing when only one is needed.

Fun to know you are actually trying it!

// C

[conny]

Yea, I see a delay with notes now.
And unfortunately the delay seems to vary a bit.
I'm using a simple Operator sound as source, recording both the original and the Bidule produced midi from Op's sound and there are small differences between the midi lines.
Shocking for me was that the produced ones were in tune with the original (almost, every third or forth is a half tone higher...)

// C

[conny]

Update:
Added a fixed note option to make it more like KTDrumtrigger, if that is what one wants.

// C

[Eddee]

I'm trying to get this working on my laptop (winxp sp2 asio4all)
without succes.
Since the plogue application is still in demo mode I can not use a vst and because I don't use a mac i Can not use "jack tools" to route the sound to Plogue.

Is there anyone out there who can help me a little on this one?

I have a failback scenario which is Blue cat Dpeak meter pro, It works pretty good, but it is a little strange in generating cc messages..

[conny]

Oops.
Seems you have to buy it (it's *only* 75$).
Sorry, tried to think of a way to help but it did not snap.

// C

[Eddee]

Thanks Conny for the reply, No Bidule integration in the demo version.
That's ok.
First finish the plogue tutorials, then I will probably buy Plogue. It's a wonderful piece of enginering.

[Kodama]

Hey Conny, I tried this on OS X with the newest Live/Bidule and it spits out CC#'s but no notes?

[conny]

I guess you have tried to adjust the low thresh, gains and filters?
Have you checked by adding a midi monitor to the left output from the EnvToMidi module to see if the problem might be the communication between Bidule and Live?

// C