Studio 6 + 1, Trigger sequencer for midi controllers, prerelease

will this work with linnstrument in some way?

I got the basics working in TouchOSC.

image

The last column is always lit, and the lights have trouble to follow 120BPM quarter notes, but it works.

Only thing that worked was using buttons set up as Touch, not Toggle, with these settings:

image

TouchOSC files are zipped XML so rather than set 64 of them by hand with the terrible editor UI I just edited the XML:

<midi var="x1" type="1" channel="1" data1="1" data2f="0" data2t="127" sysex="" />
<midi var="x2" type="1" channel="1" data1="2" data2f="0" data2t="127" sysex="" />
<midi var="x3" type="1" channel="1" data1="3" data2f="0" data2t="127" sysex="" />
<midi var="x4" type="1" channel="1" data1="4" data2f="0" data2t="127" sysex="" />
<!-- etc... -->        
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WOW! I’ve got no luck with touchosc today. I think you use toggle buttons right? But the buttons inside the sequencer are momentary. So the notes mode solves the issue right? Thanks for that entry. gonna try it soon. EDIT: whoops, didn’t see you mentioned Touch buttons in your post, sorry

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Here’s the .touchosc template I made. I only added the grid for testing, but the rest of the controls are trivial to add.

https://aria.dog/upload/2020/08/VCV-Iverson.touchosc

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I am unsure about the use, but would be keen to find out if anyone has tried it.

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I have not looked at SysEx messages for a long time, and I feel your pain in V1, maybe V2 will help. I feel a dedicated module for the Akai fire would be a good addition to VCV Rack, it does seem logical, and as the controller is reasonably priced and is a good bridge between the virtual and the physical.

A scripting language may be possible as @Aria_Salvatrice has embedded JS into a plugin : Experimenting with QuickJS in my plugin outside of VCV-Prototype

I am open to collaborating in any form, feel free to DM me.

Nice work with the touchOsc, that’s one of the advantages of this community, members using your creations in ways not originally considered. I may not have considered this, but the use with touchOsc could be common, as I would assume most rack users would also own a tablet that can be used as a controller.

Thanks

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Going that route, please note that I have done the bare minimum to make it work for my use case, because QJS isn’t documented in detail. I only used it because it was necessary to load recent Typescript modules. My implementation is limited to evaluating strings and reading the contents of variables, using JSON for interchange. You also need to copy my Makefile verbatim and pull @jerrysv’s QJS fork for it to work in the library.

You’d have a much better time embedding Lua or Duktape if you don’t specifically need it to be modern JS.

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Iverson in now in the library: https://library.vcvrack.com/StudioSixPlusOne/Iverson

This update includes: improved controller feedback, improved midi mapping, midi mappings shown during unlearn, added mappings kindly provided by @hexdump and @TroubledMind

Additional support for external controllers shall be ongoing.

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thanks! anyway I’ve got a lot of issues with lauchpad classic. I just do manual grid mapping then take a clock and see some glitches and slow signals in GUI and CV too. I think it relates to some midi feedback implementation of this sequencer. If you need somekind of log just tell me and I will do. Cheers!

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Artem, did you every try the lauchpad classic with any of the previous releases? The reason I ask is, I increased the rate the date was sent to the external controllers for the release version. If the older versions works better with the classic, I will add an option to the context menu to allow for a slower midi feedback.

Oh I see. This is why I’m getting flashing scene buttons in some cases. But no I didn’t try previous version, could you point me to the right link? Also is it possible to get color coding like in the module? Because I only got red buttons on the launchpad

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iirc the color coding (i.e. values which have to be sent) are different for the launchpad than for the akais - i think it was in some link i posted above … but maybe it is not related …

update: here is the link again https://www.partsnotincluded.com/how-to-control-the-leds-on-a-novation-launchkey-mini-ii/

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https://github.com/StudioSixPlusOne/rack-modules/releases/tag/RC1.1.1.3c

Was the last beta build. You are able to load your key mapping as a preset.

I still need to look at the led colours for the launchpads, these should be included in the next release.

Ok tested that. No more gui lags. But at 4ppqn clock lauchpad starts missing every second tick, so it lit only on odd buttons 1,3 etc. At 8ppqn it starts doing some random madness :slight_smile:

Having a read of the original lauchpad programmers reference it states "Launchpad uses a low-speed version of USB. " , and a line stating feedback updates taking some 200 ms. This is not the case with the newer generations of controller.

I shall add options to select feedback rate, but like you have noted, the tradeoff is steps being skipped by the led’s on the controller, this sub-optimal but I feel a fair compromise to allow use of older devices.

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Yes this is more important when buggy work flow. Looking forward for the new version!

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just to give some feedback regarding my akai apc key 25 - with it iverson runs very well and without any lag now, but i guess it uses the same hardware as your apc mini …

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i just did a little experiment with a linux laptop and a sonaremin connected via local ethernet (no wifi): i ran vcvrack and jack on both and used the net functionality of jack to link both via audio and midi. i connected my akai apc key 25 controller to the laptop, routed the midi from there via jack over ethernet to the sonaremin where i was running iverson with the controller (via jack over ethernet from the laptop) used as input and output … and even in this setup everything was working fine and i did not notice any lag between button presses or the sound and the lights on the controller … audio was routed via jack over ethernet from the sonaremin back to the laptop and had an ok latency with a buffer size of 256 in jack … just to make it even a bit more complex i ran a clkd on the laptop and routed it the same way as input to the iverson on the sonaremin and despite of all the problems people mention regarding transporting a clock via midi even that was running very nicely … all in all with this there is a lot flexibility to combine multiple devices and the controller does not even have to be on the same machine as iverson and still works very nicely :slight_smile:

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I have not yet used Jack via ethernet, but it appears to open all sorts possibilities. The next release has had some optimization on the midi feedback due to an issue that arose on windows, greatly reducing the amount of MIDI traffic.

Thanks for all the feedback :slight_smile: