Vintage Synth meets 21st Century Multi-Effects (and a live gig!)

Back in the 1970s, analogue monophonic synthesizers didn't often have on-board effects. In the 1980s, DCO-based polyphonic synths added chorus to try and make up for the single oscillator. When the DX7 ushered in digital synthesisers in 1983, that didn't have any effects either. It wasn't really until the late 1980s that effects started to appear, particularly on workstation keyboards like the M1. 

Aside: Mawhrin Skel et al

As I've mentioned before, I have a couple of vintage synths, and enough outboard gear to do quite a lot of transformative processing on their sounds. But going to a live 'showcase' gig at the Smokehouse in Ipswich, kind of gave me a different perspective on current live performance. When you have seven performers in 4 hours, you need to be pretty slick with changeovers, and the solution they used was to have tables for the early acts (I spotted a 404 Mk1 (maybe II), a Crave, a Model:Cycles (or Samples), an (original?) MS-20 and more), with the penultimate act, Girl in a Gale, having a Nord Stage Piano, looper and various other bits of gear set up at the back of the stage, and the headliner, Mawhrin Skel, using a custom multi-tier stand with laptop on top, Push 2 for control, and various other bits of gear.  

Compact, minimalistic, and easily transportable were definitely high on the priorities for the rigs that were being used, and it was a refreshing alternative to the H9000s, H9 Max, Big Sky, Empress Zoia and CXM1978s that you find in all of those flashy 'home' studio pictures on Instagram. Which got me thinking about the opposite of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS), which is something like Making The Most Of Budget Gear (MTMOBG - the acronym definitely isn't going to catch on!)... 

In fact, I was deep in thought about this when Girl in a Gale leaned over to me and revealed that ear plugs were available at the Bar. As it happens, I had actually bought my own ear defences: almost invisible and scarily hi-tech German ones that were totally essential at that amazingly loud Ableton Loop Concert in Berlin... But the sound at the Smokehouse was more constrained and controlled - I saw the sound engineer using a spectrum analyser on his phone, as well as an SPL meter. So, the usual low frequency 'physical' wobbles to remind you that music is visceral, and one of the early acts was intent on producing standing waves at about 70 Hz, but the PreSonus desk was coping very nicely, thank you.

An excellent gig, by the way... Mawhrin Skel was suitably sci-fi and enthusiastic, Girl in a Gale was a powerhouse of skilled invention, giving glimpses or sketches of music that left you wanting more, and overall, a varied 'selection box' of electronica. Venue and Music: Recommended.

The Opposite of Expensive...

But anyway, back to the opposite of expensive out-board gear... Some time ago, I started to look at something to process my Yamaha TX7 (the one where I replaced the LCD with a back-lit version ...), and started with thinking about something 'Multi', like an Eventide H9 or a MOD Devices MOD Duo, rather than a Sytrmon Big Sky, and then I realised that I was approaching this from totally the wrong direction. I was going to use a multi-effects pedal that was several times the original cost (and current value) of the synth - which seemed silly. So I happened across multi-effects designed for guitarists, and after realising that the top-end (the Line 6 Helix, Boss GT-1000, Headrush et al) was a money magnet, I deliberately looked at the opposite end - Amazon. (Well, Smile.amazon.co.uk, to help charity a bit). 

I've got a couple of pedal boards. The 'cheap and nasty' one has those 20 to 30 quid Behringer 'Boss' clone pedals on it, and is fine for live use and abuse. But I have learned that pedals boards, even with the considerable investment of crazily expensive switching/routing units, suffer from problems with recalling specific sounds. You can put the effects pedals in the right order, but what were the settings of all those knobs and switches? High-end pedals can use MIDI to store and recall presets, but that seems dangerously like a full-time job. 

It turns out that there is an alternative to the 'Pro' guitar multi-effects - for about 130 quid (150 Euros or dollars) you can get tiny little boxes that have built-in Expression/Volume pedals, colour LCD screens, and a couple of foot switches, and which do a very good job at providing quite a lot of the functionality of the 'around a grand, mate' 'Pro' multi-effects boxes. So, after a bit of research on YouTube (I hate the adverts!) I bought a Valeton GP-100 and connected the TX7 to it...

Okay, so there's a definite set of design decisions about the 99 Factory presets - and this is a 'Guitar' multi-effects (Actually, because of the 'Will be Mis-Used by Guitarists' design requirement, it is all-metal construction, and feels like it might survive live use quite well!). So there's a lot of fuzz, overdrive, saturation and just plain distortion, exactly as you would expect. But those 99 User presets and a computer editor (or the front panel controls) and you can concentrate on the Modulation, Delay and Reverb effects, plus a few extras that you might not be expecting: like a Ring Modulator, or a 4 Step Filter Sequencer. also, it turns out that having IR-modelled Amps and Cabs can give subtle tone variations, and you can load in your own .wavs for the Cabinet modelling, which opens up all sorts of experimentation. Oh, and you can arrange the effects in any order you like - so the Reverb does not need to be last in the chain... There's a looper built-in as well, and a Tuner. That's a lot for your money...

A couple of hours programming, and I had about fifty 'synth-oriented' presets that turned the TX7 into a host of alter-egos. One particularly nice sequence (the Arturia KeyStep is your friend) ended up as the sting/jingle for a corporate video I was working on... (I forgot to mention that it is also a class-compliant USB Stereo Audio Interface... which made recording it into my DAW a doddle...) Because every setting (and order of effects) is stored by the preset, then it just becomes a quick 'Paint By Numbers' 'Choose-a-Preset' procedure to turn a bland TX7 sound into something that sounds like it came from... well, from something else entirely. No need for trying to remember which pedals to switch in, and what the knob/switch settings were - you just select the preset. Simple - the sort of thing that even I could get right live!

Hiding the Truth...

I am considering putting the TX7 and the Valeton GP-100 inside a box (with suitable ventilation, of course) so that it isn't immediately obvious what is making that killer bass sound, or those ambient jangles. But regardless of pimping it up, it has been the bargain of the century. My only problem is that I have a feeling that at some stage, GAS is going to kick in and I'm going to end up upgrading... But they do say that:

Limitations are the Spur to Creativity...

So perhaps I should leave well alone, and leave my TX7V as my 'live' minimalistic secret weapon.

---

If you find my writing helpful, informative or entertaining, then please consider visiting this link:

Synthesizerwriter's Store (New 'Modular thinking' designs now available!)

Buy me a coffee (Encourage me to write more posts like this one!)

USB to 9V 'Pedal' Cable

Histories of Electronic Music often  concentrate on hardware, in an 'insider' code: TR-808, DX7, MPC, D-50, RC-505, EIV, etc., or on bands/perfortmers/artists, again very 'insider' in nature: NIN, Erasure, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Kraftwerk, Bassnectar, BT, Mili, Fluke, etc. Another possible method of categorisation might be recording technology, wire, tape, multi-track, portastudio, DAT, CD, mp3, SD card, etc. 

But there's one pivotal hardware technology that most people assign to the sidelines...

Power cables. Yep, those IEC mains leads, USB cables, the often-unloved wall-wart adapters and their captive leads, and... guitar pedal cables. At the risk of sounding like a movie trailer (remember going to the movies pre-lockdown?): 

In a world where data seems to be going wireless and enabled by lithium-ion batteries, distributing power to gear is still physical wires. 

Allegedly, the world nearly had wireless power via Nikolai Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower experiments funded by J.P.Morgan (yes, that J.P.Morgan!), and magnetic induction on the grand scale may now be impossible because of the way we have developed electronics, but applications like mobile phone charging are viable, albeit over very short distances. Instead, we have mains electricity, or batteries. Batteries are increasingly not the throw-away zinc-carbon et al cells, but rechargeable lithium-ion et al, and the current knowledge of physics suggests that there aren't any huge leaps in energy density - so significantly smaller/lighter batteries with huge power storage will require huge advances in physics. Lithium-ion batteries are increasingly used in power-banks that can power more than just phones, and USB has become a pretty ubiquitous delivery mechanism.

However, guitar pedals are different...

Unfortunately, guitar pedals come from an era of 9V batteries made up of stacks of six 1.5 Volt cells: PP9s as they were called before the modern obsession with renaming battery sizes every few years started, which sounds a bit like the way that USB connectors and video connectors get changed every few years. But modern pedals often no longer have any provision for a removable 9V battery, instead a centre-negative 2.1mm barrel connector provides the DC power. - from the mains! But that DC power is 9V, not the 5 Volts that you get from USB...

Up until very recently, that was the end of the story. Pedals were 9V, (not USB!) and you used a wall-wart power supply to convert mains to 9V DC, with daisy-chained connectors for pedal boards (or better, but more expensive: isolated outputs). However, the last decade has seen a lot of advances in Power Converter chips, and they have got smaller and lighter... To the point where you can put them into connector plugs. So it is now possible to convert the 5 Volts that you get from a USB charger to 9V with what appears to be just a cable.

A Deluge of Ideas

It was the Synthstrom Deluge FAQs that reminded me about USB-to-9V cables. The Deluge groovebox is quite unusual because it can work of an internal lithium-ion battery (Yep, it really is very close to the 'Novation Circuit on steroids, or Circuit 2' that many people have wanted for some time...). I've got a small 'classic' Boss BCB-30 pedal board that is mains powered, plus several pedals (An OWL, a Poly Digit and various other 'boutique' pedals that might get put onto a board eventually (none of which have 9V batteries!). But power has always been the problem, and it goes well beyond the usual 'serious' pedal board design advice:

'Don't daisy-chain one adaptor: Use a power supply with multiple isolated outputs.'   

Synthstrom Audible suggest that one way to power the Deluge is to use a lithium-ion USB power-bank with a USB-to-9V cable to do the voltage conversion. So I ordered a couple of cables from Songbird FX...

BirdCords from Songbird FX

Here's what I got: two bags (everything is in bags these days!) with the ubiquitous stickers! What looks like a cable with a 2.1mm barrel connector on one end, and a USB plug on the other end, is the USB-to-9V converter cable. It can provide a peak of 1 Amp, which means that as long as your USB power-bank (or USB charger/mains adaptor) can provide enough current, then you can power quite demanding devices. I tried my Deluge, and with my usual 'LEDs almost at lowest brightness' setting, the current consumption was just over 300mA, and with full LED brightness, it went up to around 425mA. The Default 'full brightness' LEDs on the Deluge is very bright, by the way:

The Deluge can be very bright!

I powered the Deluge through the USB-to-9V cable for just under an hour in an ambient temperature of 25 degrees Centigrade, and the plug only got slightly warm, so it looks like there's no problem with providing about half an amp continuously. 

The cable is disarmingly small and light - the plug isn't a big heavy blob at all! I then tried it with a pedal, captured here in an 'action' shot:

As you can see, the 9V connector is plugged into a pedal, and I'm just about to power it via the USB connector. Stunning cinematography, eh?

I'm very pleased with my BirdCords. They are small, neat, do what they say, and are useful gadgets to have around for emergencies, as well as a perfect way to reduce the proliferation of different mains adaptors. 10/10 from me.

Mobile

Okay, so the Deluge already has a battery inside, but there's lots of gear that doesn't! And none of my boutique pedals have batteries inside! So having USB-to-9V cables means that I can remove my dependence on mains power, by using power banks, which is great for live performance - especially unreliable mains power.  Even if mains power is available, then having just USB adapters/chargers means that I have more interchangeability in case something goes wrong... Losing power mid-set isn't my favourite experience: the thumps and clicks in the audio are bad, but having a laptop still powered up when your synths, drum machine and effects are all rebooting to an unknown state is pure stress and embarrassment. 

So my aspirational mobile rig would have a high power (20,000 mAh or more) USB power bank to power USB-powered gear, with USB-to-9V cables powering my pedal board. But my 'ideal' mobile rig would be to have two power banks with auto-switching between them... I'm trying to find something that does this...

Links

Songbird FX - BirdCords, including the USB-to-9V cable featured here.

https://synthstrom.com/product/deluge/ - The Synthstrom Audible Deluge web-page...

http://n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery - Info about lithium-ion batteries...

---

If you find my writing helpful, informative or entertaining, then please consider visiting this link:

Buy me a coffee

Synthesizerwriter's Store (New 'Modular thinking' designs now available!)

Frozen Echoes - a sneak peak inside my M4L development pipeline...

I'm going to break my usual routine this time. Instead of a finished MaxForLive device, I'm posting an early prototype so that you get to see something before I have smoothed any rough edges.

For a long time, I've been fascinated by syncopation, and so the '3' and '5' buttons in Ableton Live's Ping Pong Delay have always been my defaults. Whilst working on my re-inagining of that device, I realised that the extended 'Freeze' buttons that I had added could also be pushed further - into territory that my AUDhexECHO partly covers, but with a different, more rhythmic, more performance-oriented slant. The result is a 'Plus' version of AUDpiPOde, but there's a lot of extras in that 'Plus'! (I also removed the input filtering, but I think the additions make up for that!)

AUDpiPOdePLUS

Here's the basic device: AUDpiPOde split into two separate channels, and without the common time and feedback controls - so just an echo effect.

The left half of each to the channel panels is just taken from AUDpiPOde, and in this mode, you get two different delay times for each channel, so the ping-pong echoes just bounce back and forth in stereo, as you would expect - but because the time delays are different, the timing is more... interesting.

The two buttons marked 'Free' mean that the two channels are separate. If you click on the one above the 'ms' time setting in the Right channel then it changes to 'Anti', which indicates that the two time delays work in opposition. So the time delay for one channel goes up as the other channel goes down.

So 1750 ms in the Left channel equates to 2250 ms in the Right channel, and notice that the time delay adjuster is greyed out in the Right channel - using the 'Anti' button just makes syncopated echoes easier to set up for 120 ppm (at the moment), but it is a good starting point for the next stage.

The panel on the far right contains common controls, including 7 'performance' controls. The largest three are just common versions of the three 'Freeze' buttons: Freeze (Ping), Freeze (Ping and Pong) and Freeze (Pong), where 'Ping' is a 'same channel' echo, and 'Pong' is an 'other channel' echo. The Dry/Wet rotary control controls the mix between the straight-through audio and the processed audio, and the 'MakeUp' slider/indicator is only active when 'freezing' is happening. The final four buttons are connected to the 'freeze' loop processing...

The right half of each of the channel panels contains two processors: a limiter; and a frequency shifter. These two audio processing effects are not inside the feedback loop that is associated with the 'Feedback' rotary control. Instead they are inside what I will call the 'freeze' loop - because this echo effect breaks two of the 'rules' that people often apply to echo units:

1. 100% feedback will cause the delay to oscillate, which is generally considered to be bad.
2. Don't put any audio processing in the feedback loop, because it will affect the feedback and might cause it to exceed 100%, in which case the first rule applies.

Luckily, inside the 'freeze' loop, things are slightly different, and this design has 100% feedback plus audio processing, and it is much harder to get it to oscillate than you might expect. In fact, the freeze loop is specifically designed to avoid the usual runaway feedback, although nothing is perfect! When the 'freeze' mode is selected, the input is switched from the audio input to the output of the freeze loop processing, so the delay is looped around itself, and only outputs audio signals. The Dry/Wet balance control shifts the all 'Wet' when 'freeze' mode is active, so that only the frozen audio is output.

One of the major changes between the plain and the 'Plus' versions of AUDpiPOde is hidden away in the Max code, and it is the audio switching. The Plus version fades in and out smoothly between audio signals, whereas the plain version just switches immediately. The freeze mode only works when the transitions in and out are as smooth as possible, and the fades help to minimise them. This design does to use cross-fades - I'm still trying to get my head around a way to do this, and it remains one of those 'one day I will figure it out' aspects of my programming.

And so to 'freeze' mode:

The selected button is 'P' , which is 'Freeze Pong', so the output goes round each delay in series, and with the 'Anti' time delay setting, this means that the audio will be delayed by 1000 ms, then 3000 ms, the 1000 ms, etc. The frozen output is thus 4 seconds (4000 ms) long in total, and so it repeats every 4 seconds. And because it is frozen, it can repeat indefinitely - although if you activate the Limiter or Frequency Shifters then this isn't true! (because they alter the audio) And when you want to stop the repeats of the frozen echoes, then you just click the 'P' button again and the Dry/Wet control will return to the previous setting, smoothly restoring the echo effect as before the freeze was activated.

So the performance process goes like this:
1. Set up the echo timings in 'Anti', so that the echoes stay in sync (or alternatively, you could just abandon sync!)
2. Click on one of the three 'Freeze' buttons.
3. Let the frozen echoes repeat...
4. Click on the highlighted 'Freeze' button to return to echo mode.

Things to fix

There's quite a lot of extra text needed here to describe the operation of the Limiter and Frequency Shifter effects. The timings in the time delay selection tabs aren't in the right order! I need to fix this. Also, there's that cross-fade that has so far defeated me! (Which means that the frozen echo loop is not quite perfect...) Finally, I'm wondering if I should put filtering inside the 'freeze' loop, which might be quite interesting...

Anyway. Enjoy!

Getting AUDpiPOdePLUS 0v03

You can download AUDpiPOdePLUS 0v03 for free from MaxForLive.com.

Here are the instructions for what to do with the .amxd file that you download from MaxforLive.com:

     https://synthesizerwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/where-do-i-put-downloaded-amxd.html

(In Live 10, you can also just double-click on the .amxd file, but this puts the device in the same folder as all of the factory devices...)

Oh, yes, and sometimes last-minute fixes do get added, which is why sometimes the blog post is behind the version number of MaxForLive.com...

Modular Equivalents

In terms of basic modular equivalents, then AUDpiPOdePLUS would require two delays, two limiters, two frequency shifters, some utility switches, and two mixers, giving a total of about 9 ME.

Buy me a coffee

Quick Transpose Customised For Live Performance Usage

This is 'Quick Transpose' customised for live performance, and so it joins the 'series' of devices that arose from me publishing my personal utility to ease my programming of Racks in Ableton Live:

Quick Transpose - my original 'make it easier' personal utility

Quick Transpose BW - with added counter

Quick Transpose Audio BW - audio instead of MIDI, and more 'live performance' oriented

Quick Transpose itself was criticised very effectively and persistently in one of the Facebook 'synthesiser' groups because it could be replaced by keyboard shortcuts for the factory 'Pitch' device. Yes, I acknowledge that this is indeed the case, but I'm a mouse clicker, not a keyboard shortcut user, and I almost always prefer to use a single mouse click to mode-changing combinations of mouse clicks to set the focus, followed by keyboard shortcuts to do the action. Different folks, different strokes.

However, brucewayne247 commented on maxforlive.com that what was also needed was what I now call 'Counter' mode, where mouse clicks advance a counter that does the transpose (and this added 'BW' to the name), and JapanLoveStar took this further by requesting via this blog that I should make everything MIDI-mappable, especially a few buttons that I had over-looked (so adding 'JLS'). Somewhere in there, there was also a request for an 'audio' version instead of just MIDI, and before I knew it, I had a series of devices that had strayed some distance from the original 'Make Rack programming easy' goal!

Quick Transpose perf JLS

Previously, when a device gets optimised for live performance, I have added a 'perf' to the end, and so that's where the 'Quick Transpose perf JLS' name comes from. This time the customisation is quite interesting because it moves away from the usual tight timing and synchronisation of DAWs in live performance, into a space where the timing is user-driven instead. I've never been very good with looping, especially not live, and hugely admire those people who have mastered them (see below), so I had to cast my mind back to when I used to do stage lighting. The result is a 'scene' based sequencer that take the output of the counter and makes it available as transposition, plus two additional other tracks that are mappable to parameters inside Ableton Live. For musical use, then I have replaced the words 'scene' with 'section', because that's the closest word I can think of for part of a song, and I'm happy for better suggestions to turn up!

The far left side of 'QT perf JLS' (as I'm going to abbreviate it herein) has the counter from the 'BW' version, but with the added 'zero' button in between the '+' and '-' buttons to clear the count quickly with a single mouse click. I also changed the 'ANO' button so that it not only flushes hanging MIDI notes, but it also sends the basic 'All Notes Off' MIDI message as well. Everything to the right is new, and reflects my new insight into this way of performing courtesy of BW and JLS. 

The most obvious part is the 'section' sequencer, which is a repurposed 'step' sequencer, and yes, the screenshot is out of date because it still has 'step' shown - the current version on maxforlive.com has a few cosmetic changes that I made after going from 'dev' to published, and so the graphics here aren't totally in sync. Versions 0.01 and 0.02 were never published because I had a little bit of development hell, but that's another story. There are three tracks: Transpose, as you expected, and C3 is the 'centre' zero, 'no transpose' pitch setting - if you press the 'X' red button on the 'Transpose' track then this resets the current sequence (there are 16 'songs', set by the big number selector) to all C3s. The 'Value1' and 'Value2' tracks are the other two, and they can only be mapped to other Ableton Live parameters using the little 'Map' buttons on the far right.

The grid is always 'live' for editing, and so when you select a track, then moving the mouse around in the grid part will edit the values of the sliders for Value1 and Value2 - for the Transpose track then you have to click in a grid cell to add or remove a pitch entry. The 'Fold' button works just like the same button in the Ableton Live piano roll window, and makes it easier to view pitch sequences with narrow ranges as well as edit within a restricted set of already-chosen values. You can always add the Ableton Live factory device called 'Scale' after 'QT perf JLS' if you want to constrain the pitches.

Immediately on the left side of the grid are the main user control buttons, and these are very similar to the '+' and '-' buttons in the counter, except that '>' moves the sequencer one step to the right, and '<' moves the sequencer one step to the left. (Interestingly, using the characters '>' and '<' in the maxforlive.com description caused me some problems, because the web-site detects them as 'HTML', and you aren't allowed to use HTML in the description field...) Anyway, as you go across the grid, then the middle purple box shows the transpose value, and so the buttons work in much the same way as the counter immediately to their left. Above the buttons, there is a tiny 'show/hide' button that allows the whole of the remaining right hand part of the device to be hidden (or revealed again!) so that you only have the main buttons visible. The idea here is that you spend time setting up the grid with the transpose and other values that you want, and then in live performance, all you want to do is advance through the sections by clicking on the upper '>' button, or maybe the middle hidden 'go to step 1' purple button. (I'm kind of assuming here that most people will start on 'no transpose' in the first section...)

On the right hand side of the grid there are the 'Song' selector (big, 1 of 16 numbered songs), the 'current section' indicator which is now echoed in the minimised tab view, the section lengths (2 section to 16), the tracks control buttons, and finally, three rather cryptic buttons that are alternatives to the '>' and '<' buttons. '|<>|' moves back and forwards across the grid, repeating the first step and the last twice, whilst '<>" moves back and forth across the grid with only one output of the first and last step. The 'R' button move across the grid randomly. All of these 'movement' buttons can be controlled by mouse clicks, or by assigning them to MIDI controller buttons.

Workflow

The workflow for using 'QT perf JLS' goes something like this:
1. Click the little round 'show/hide' button to reveal the expanded view.
2. Set the song number (1-16)
3. Decide how many sections you have in your song/piece-of-music. (<16!)
4. Set the section count to the nearest larger number.
5. Choose the Transpose track and fill in the transpose values for each section (C3=no transpose)
6. Map the 'Value' tracks to two other parameters (volume, filter cut-off, chorus, reverb, etc.)
7. Set the values for each section for the two Value tracks.
8. Reset the sequencer to section (step) 1. (The transpose and value settings should now happen!)
9. Click the little round 'show/hide' button to hide the expanded view.
10. Start the performance.
11. Click on the '>' to advance to the next section. Click on'<' if you change your mind an want to keep playing in the previous section!
12. Click on the middle button (the transpose value in the purple box) to return to section 1 and end the performance. (You could also use '3rd Hand' to help automate the volume fader...)

Masters of looping - a personal selection...

Elise Trouw

D0vydas

Rheyne

Nastya Maslova

Getting Quick Transpose perf JLS

You can download Quick Transpose perf JLS for free from MaxForLive.com.

(The links above should now be fixed!)

Here are the instructions for what to do with the .amxd file that you download from MaxforLive.com:

     https://synthesizerwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/where-do-i-put-downloaded-amxd.html

(In Live 10, you can also just double-click on the .amxd file, but this puts the device in the same folder as all of the factory devices...)

Modular Equivalents

In terms of modular equivalents, then reproducing this functionality in my modulars was pretty straight-forward. It is just a couple of 8 step sequencers chained together and some patch cables - so 2ME altogether, plus maybe one or two extra ME for the random selection (which depends on how 'basic' the step sequencer is...).

Buy me a coffee

Dj On Button - a MaxForLive live performance device for Ableton Live

When I added the two round black buttons to 'Quick Transpose Audio BW', I thought that they were an interesting way of providing a live performance element, and that set me thinking...

So here's the result of taking the idea and making it more generic. I call it: 'DJ On Button', because it emulates the effects On/Off buttons that you see on DJ Mixers for ad-hoc live insertion of effects into audio. But rather than add it to lots of audio devices, I took the Max code from 'Quick Transpose Audio BW' and made a general-purpose mapper that turns clicks into parameter settings. The basic 'DJ On Button' device has three buttons, but with 'hide/show' buttons that enable 1, 2 or 3 of them to be shown, depending on your application.

                

To use this utility, all you do is click on the 'Map' button, then choose the Live parameter that you want to control, then adjust the 'Min' and 'Max' rotary controls to give you the parameter values you want. Then when you click on the big round black 'On' button, the 'Max' value will be sent to that parameter. When you stop clicking, then the 'Min' value will be sent. That's all there is to it!

In live performance, you pre-assign parameters, and then just click on the buttons at the appropriate time - just like you would on a DJ mixer. It's a bit like the toggle buttons in the classic Ableton 'EQ3' audio effect, but turned into momentary action buttons instead.

Here's a video showing 'DJ On Button' in use.

Getting DJ_On_Button_mr_0v01

You can download DJ On Button mr_0v01 for free from MaxForLive.com.

(The links above should now be fixed!)

Here are the instructions for what to do with the .amxd file that you download from MaxforLive.com:

     https://synthesizerwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/where-do-i-put-downloaded-amxd.html

(In Live 10, you can also just double-click on the .amxd file, but this puts the device in the same folder as all of the factory devices...)

Modular Equivalents

In terms of modular equivalents, then reproducing this functionality in my modulars required nothing more than a momentary switch and a utility module, giving 2 ME.

Buy me a coffee

An audio version of the 'Quick Transpose BW' MaxForLive device for Ableton Live...

One of the questions about QuickTranspose BW was: 'Does it transpose MIDI or Audio?'. The answer was 'MIDI', but this set me thinking, and so here's a quick test of what happens when you put the enhanced (maybe 'over the top') user interface of 'Quick Transpose BW' over an audio-domain pitch shifter.

Above is a screenshot of what the result looks like. The left-hand side is 'Quick Transpose BW' just moved into a MaxForLive Audio device instead of a MIDI device, but the right-hand side isn't just a bolted-on pitch shifter, because when I played with the draft version, I got inspired. So those two big black 'DJ' effect 'ON' buttons are intended for live performance use (or you can map an LFO (etc.) to control them (etc.), and provide mouse-gated Detune (which is a chorus effect that you can just gate in and out, or the same sort of gating, but for a transposition. The idea is that you choose a transpose value, then press the 'Set button (and the value will appear in the purple box), and then you revert back to no transposition (all zeroes across the middle), but clicking on the 'On' button gates that transpose on and off. So that's two liver performance buttons... Oh, and the 'Glide' button lets you set how long the pitch transposition takes, so you can do all sorts of sweeps and drops on whatever audio you are processing. Overall I had great fun making this cross-dimensional variant!

Here's a video (updated) showing two LFOs mapped to the Octave buttons and the 'DJ' detune trigger button... For some reason, you need to choose '480p' to get better quality video playback than the default blocky '144p'... The source material is just a synth arpeggio, and there are no effects other than 'Quick Transpose Audio BW' - which just goes to show what you can do with a pitch shifter and 2 LFOs.

Getting Quick_Transpose_Audio_0v01

You can download Quick_Transpose Audio_0v01 for free from MaxForLive.com.

Here are the instructions for what to do with the .amxd file that you download from MaxforLive.com:

     https://synthesizerwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/where-do-i-put-downloaded-amxd.html

(In Live 10, you can also just double-click on the .amxd file, but this puts the device in the same folder as all of the factory devices...)

Modular Equivalents

In terms of modular equivalents, then reproducing this functionality in my modulars required a pitch shifter, and whilst the Bose module was a part of some old classic modulars, it isn't exactly a 'basic' module in these 'interesting' times. So I'm temporarily extending my definition of 'basic' to encompass a pitch shifter, and then it requires just a couple of utility processing and button modules. Overall, the core is about 3 ME. I can't recall having ever seen a live modular performance using this kind of effect (although performers like Caterina Barbieri are imho, remarkably accomplished!), but I'm sure that the Interweb will provide lots of examples that I overlooked.

Buy me a coffee

A Bank of Max For Live Oscillators - revisited

When I created BankOSCmr0v01, I thought that it was quite a neat, simple multi-oscillator sound generator, and so I released it into the wild...

After a bug report, followed by careful investigations by myself, Ableton and Cycling'74, it looks like  we could not reliably generate the problem, and so I went back to playing with it and seeing where this took me - which is where it started to get really interesting...

The problem with large numbers of oscillators is always one of control. Additive synthesis suffers from this because there are lots of harmonics that you need to control. BankOSCmr has 32 oscillators, and so suffers from similar problems, although I was determined not to do a traditional 'separate envelope for each oscillator' and I was equally focussed on not going anywhere near the standard FFT-based 'draw a response' approach either - the beauty of having 32 separate oscillators with a few Hertz resolution across the audio band is that you have a very different audio palette to FFT-based generators. (Plus I have already done a couple of those!)

BankOSCmr0v03f

So I played around with logical extensions of what I already had, and this rapidly expanded into the control method that is in BankOSC0v03f. The main new additions are the Freq and Volume 'damping' controls, and these affect the way that the density of the oscillator frequencies and volumes are affected by the scanning across the oscillators. Low values of damping create thick clusters of frequencies, whilst high values of damping give more open, thin whips of frequencies. I also added a timed 'Update' function, which resets the frequencies and volumes of the oscillators to random values, just to add a bit of variety in how the oscillators can be controlled. You can also click on the 'New' (at the top of the Van De Graaf) to force a new set of random values for the oscillators.

And it was great fun. The additions allow a lot more control over the sound pallete that BankOSCmr could create, and widened the possible sounds as well. In fact, it felt like you could almost use it for performance as it was, and so I put it through 3rd hand, the automatic volume fader, and just played around for 12 minutes or so, capturing it on video.

The result is available on YouTube.

The (Updated) video demo of BankOSCmr0v03f was recorded live, and the only effect is Zynaptiq's superb free SubSpace plug-in to add a bit of spatial variety (If I could afford it, then I would be using their astonishingly wonderful Adaptiverb instead, which I fell in love with at NAMM, and which comes incredibly highly recommended by me!). 3rd Hand is just an automatic volume control. In more skilled hands than mine, then the demo would be better, and there's a few warts in the audio (this is version 0v03 remember!), but this was my first time putting everything together of a live video demo... and now I have added better text commentary...

So what's going on in the demo? Well, the Update time is set to just under 15 seconds, so there's a bit of timed underpinning in the background for much of the time, although I do turn it off, and then back on again, just to show how this is simple to do. Then I just explore the various controls. High and Low set the range of frequencies generated by the 32 oscillators, whilst the Time sets how long it takes for each oscillator to change frequency, so you can go from very quick jumps, to very slow glides. Freq and Volume control the damping, and the Run control sets how quickly the scan runs across the oscillators. Fill has two functions: above 0.1s it just generates ramp functions, whilst below that it generates random values. The ramps allow the generation of some very cool Shepard tones, as you can hear in the middle part of the demo. The random values can give some astonishing bell-like timbres, again in the middle of the demo. At the end, I break with convention, and keep altering things as the fade out progresses. One of my more commercial songs introduced a blistering lead solo just after half way through the final fade, just so that anyone who was listening got the feeling that there was more - kind of the reverse of Roxy Music's intro to Virginia Plain (Sound of lots of people looking this up on iTunes and Spotify...).

What intrigues me is that there are lots of videos on the Interweb that show people playing Modular synths live and 'DAW-less', whilst I haven't been able to find very many that show an Ableton Live plug-in being played live, sans any sequencing or pre-recorded backing. Well, now there is one. Enjoy!

Getting BankOSCmr0v03f

You can download BankOSCmr0v03f for free from MaxForLive.com.

Here are the instructions for what to do with the .amxd file that you download from MaxforLive.com:

     https://synthesizerwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/where-do-i-put-downloaded-amxd.html

(In Live 10, you can also just double-click on the .amxd file, but this puts the device in the same folder as all of the factory devices...)

Adaptiverb...

Adaptiverb is incredibly highly recommended, and comes from Zynaptiq.

Modular Equivalents

In terms of modular equivalents, then reproducing this functionality in my modulars either involved 32 VCOs and four 8-step sequencers, or advanced oscillators banks or sequencers that I can't count as 'basic' modules, so I would rate this version as being about 46 ME (or 12ME if bank oscillators are allowed, or 8ME with fancy sequencers!).

Buy me a coffee

Slow fades in live performance...

3rd Hand was inspired by a ‘drone’ concert that I attended. The opening ‘build’ took about 10 minutes, and was astonishingly effective - there’s something about a big sound that starts out quiet and gradually gets louder and louder! So I wondered how to do this in Ableton Live, and 3rd Hand is the result…

3rd Hand is a timed volume control. You press the ‘Up’ button and the volume goes up. You press the ‘Down’ button and the volume goes down. If you change your mind, then pressing the button again reverses the direction! You can set the time that it takes to go from silence to full volume from a few seconds to over 45 minutes. Yep, three quarters (fourths) of an hour. (For people who like to really let something build at its own pace…)

Because 3rd Hand is a volume control, then the first control, labelled ‘Output’ is a… volume control. It lets you set the maximum output, and has quite a lot of gain for maximum flexibility. Just set the Up time to a short time and press the ‘Up’ button, and wait until you get to the 100% ’Maximum volume’ level, and then adjust the Output control to the loudest you want to reach. 3rd Hand alters the volume of anything that you pass through it, so you should put it at the end of your effects processing chain.

The Up and Down time controls have a big range. Note that they don't have normal parameters shown underneath - instead the parameters are shown ABOVE the rotary controls. You can see this by altering the rotary controls - The Minutes and Seconds should change. If nothing seems to be happening when you press the Up/Down button, then make sure that the ‘M’ setting isn’t several minutes… The bug reports that I got from the beta versions were mostly along the lines of: ‘Doesn’t work. No output.’, followed by ‘Ah, I see!’ later on when they found that ‘M’ means minutes (and ’S’ means seconds).

There are four states. Starting from zero volume, they are:

Zero Volume. 
Ready to Fade up. Press the 'Up' button to start fading upwards from zero.

Fading Up. 

Note that the button has changed to 'Down', so you can press this at any time to abort the fade up, and 3rd Hand will fade the volume back to zero again. If you don't press the 'Down' button, then the fade up will just continue upwards.

Maximum Volume. 
The fade will slow down and stop as it gets to 100%. Note that the 'Down' button is still available, so you can fade down now if you want, or leave it at Maximum volume for as long as you like... You can think of the Max volume state as 'Ready to Fade Down'...

Fading Down.
The fade down gradually slows as it gets near zero volume. Note that as soon as the fade downwards starts, the button changes to 'Up, so that you can abort the fade down (if you pressed the button by mistake, foe instance) at any time.

 When the fade down is complete, we are back in the 'Zero Volume' state, where we started.

And that's mostly it. 3rd Hand is probably the most sophisticated simple device you have seen, but it is intended to do it properly, reliably and flexibly.

Because just changing the volume is a bit limited, the remainder of the device is a standard parameter mapping controller. You use the big ‘Map’ button to choose a parameter in Live that you want to control, and the you adjust the ‘Depth’ to set how much effect it will have on the parameter, with maybe some Offset added. You can invert the way the parameter follows the volume change - Normal tracks the volume, Invert goes the opposite way. So, for example, you could start out with lots of revert and gradually remove it as the volume grows, or pan from one sid to the other, or add chorus/echo as the volume rises… Whatever works in context - I'm sure you can find something awesome to control as the volume builds...

3rd Hand is meant to be used in live performance - in the above example, it is being used to control the output of BankOSCmr 0v02, which kind of fits the 'drone' genre I mentioned right at the start of this blog post. You could use it otherwise, of course. (One immediate thought is to have one 3rd Hand on several tracks and to use them to bring stuff in and out slowly.) Anyway, enjoy big slow builds!

Getting 3rd Handperf_a_mr0v01

You can download 3rdHandperf_a_mr0v01 for free from MaxForLive.com.

Here are the instructions for what to do with the .amxd file that you download from MaxforLive.com:

https://synthesizerwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/where-do-i-put-downloaded-amxd.html

Modular Equivalents

In terms of modular equivalents, then reproducing this simple functionality in my modulars involved 2 VCAs and an Envelope Generator, plus a Button trigger, and a Utility voltage processor, so I would rate this version as being about 5 ME.

Buy me a coffee

sFreez_mr - 4-phase LFO looped sample live performance tool in M4L for Ableton Live

When I programmed gFreez_mr, I was exploring granular synthesis, and so an 'atmospheric sound generator' was a logical way to use the results of my experimentation. sFreez_mr takes the underlying  'live performance' framework of gFreez_mr, and turns it into a sound generator based on looped samples. So the way you work with both M4L plug-ins is the same, but the sound sources are different. Maybe in the future I will make a hybrid of the two...

So this blog entry is a rambling user manual for sFreez_mr...

sFreez_mr 

sFreez_mr allows the simultaneous playback of up to four separate samples in a way that is designed for live performance, but it can also be used in the studio as well. Instead of manually mixing between the sound samples, it uses a four-phase LFO with variable 'overlap waveforms' to control how the mixing happens. A simple sine wave just mixes between three sounds at any one time, whilst other waveforms can mix between pairs or even all four. (My original plan was to make the phase shits between the four LFO outputs user-controlled, but this required three controls, and actually, there weren't that many useful sets of settings, so (unusually for me) I went for the classic audio plug-in design approach of 'less controls is better').

There's a clear design decision here. DJs normally mix between and process (with effects) two main sources of sounds (vinyl, CDs, decks, sample players... (insert your favoured technology here)), and fly in additional sounds from other sources - and they do this live. This treats the sound sources as components in a music instrument that works at the level of samples of audio, and there's enough abstraction from the one detail (down at the sample level) to allow them to 'play' those samples expressively in a performance that has structure and connects at an emotional level. sFreez_mr removes just the mixing part and automates it, leaving the performer/DJ free to work with 4 separate sources of sound at once - and actually, by changing the LFO rate or using the On/LFO/Mute buttons, the mixing is controllable too. So you can think of the 4-phse LFO as a 'helper' that enables the assembly of more sound sources into a live performance by reducing the loading on the performer/DJ. I'm expecting great things from talented performers /DJs when they start to get the hang of what sFreez_mr lets you do...

Now this wouldn't be one of my M4L creations if it didn't have LFO-controlled panning, and here four separate LFOs are used to animate the four LFO-controlled samples components into a constantly shifting atmospheric sound. sFreez_mr is particularly good for slowly evolving background sounds, and it has a number of functions that are specifically designed for live use.

Let's look in detail at each of the sections that make up sFreez_mr:

Sample Players

There are four looped sample players, which can be 'Load'ed with AIFFs (or WAVs), or you can drag and drop samples onto the four waveform displays. The four samples are each colour-coded: red, yellow, green and blue. Each sample player waveform display has several sections: there's the central waveform display, the sample name on top of that, and two rows of buttons (above and below). That's a lot of functionality in a small space!

Left-most are four big 'Load' buttons that allow direct loading of samples. On gFreez_mr, these were the record or 'capture' buttons for grabbing the source material for the granular players, and I did consider  having the same functionality here, but eventually went for providing dedicated buttons AND drag & drop. These buttons cycle at the rate set by the 4-phase LFO, so you can always see which sample track is not currently in the mix. When the button is bright, then the LFO has set that tracks fader to off or very low, and so you can make changes to that track without being heard. So when the button goes bright, that is when you replace the sample (or drop a new sample in the waveform display - one technique is to grab the sample and hover over the waveform display, waiting for the button to light up!).

The top row of little buttons transpose the sample, whilst the lower row of buttons stretch or shrink it. The range of transposition is limited, so I made some decisions about the available settings, and so you get fifths purely for usability (a future version might allow these to be customisable). The centre setting is the 'no transposition, real time' setting, and either side of this the sounds get more and more altered. In the centre default, then you get a mildly conventional sample playing device that operates in what many people would class as 'DJ' territory, whilst away from the centre, you get more atmospheric and experimental sounds - but I encourage everyone to break through any barriers, recommendations or preconceptions of use. I debated for quite a while if I need a Play button, and eventually decided to leave it in, (although for me it stays on all the time, and so need not be there, but I wanted to leave the control there for other performance styles...). The 'Play' button is the rounded edge button next to the 'chevron' forward (to the right) or reverse (to the left) buttons. You can use the chevron buttons to change the sync of samples by reversing for a time and then going back to forwards. I use this for rhythmic samples where I want to change timing relationships , and I do it when the 'Load' button is bright so that the next time that sample track gets back into the mix it is different.

Track controls

The next three buttons are linked and only one can be selected at any time for each coloured sample 'track': On (the sample plays all the time), LFO (the sample volume is modulated by the 4-phase LFO), or Mute (the sample audio is muted). These buttons fade the sound quite quickly, and so shouldn't cause too much audio hassle (like zipper noise), but they are intended to be 'played' live, so don't just dismiss them as being used in setup (especially since 'setup' can be happening live during a performance, not just beforehand).

The thin buttons in the middle are 'group' controls that affect all four sample tracks simultaneously - once again, this is intended for live performance use - so you can quickly stop everything happening by muting all four small tracks, or alternatively, you can blast all four tracks full on by using the 'On' button. Normally, the 'LFO' middle position is where the buttons will be set, and having a single button that restores this can be very useful. On you have learned this user interface, then you may find yourself wishing that other button-based UIs had similar shortcuts...

The final part of the track controls are the LFO displays, which show the 4-phase LFO as four colour-coded virtual faders. Left is off, no coloured bar) and right is full volume (full coloured bar) - just listen to a single track to get your head around this (press the thin central 'Mute' button, then the 'LFO' button for the sample track that you want to audition...). Remember that when the fader bar vanishes, then the 'Load' light will be bright, and you can make changes to that sample track without being heard in the output mix. In performance, your head needs to be in sync with the 'Load' buttons or the LFO fader displays.

Mixer

The next section is kind of a 'mixer', but very specific to what is needed in this context.

First, there's a display of the audio level for each sample, which helps you keep track of what is playing, and which can be very useful to all you if a track is playing a slow continuous sound, or a bouncy rhythmic sound. I'm never sure if this display should be part of the previous 'track control' section, or if it should be included in the mixer...

Then there are trims for volume for each sample track, and then the Pan LFO controls; frequency and phase. To fix the pan position in the stereo image, you low it right down and use the phase to set where you wan the pan position to be. Note that the phase does NOT map directly to L and R (i.e. All the way left on the has control is not necessarily hard Left panning) - watch the little pan display blob to see where the actual position is in the stereo image.

4-phase LFO

The 4-phase LFO has a rate control that is how you interact with the LFO, but the main number that is shown is how long it takes for a complete cycle (in seconds). The wo things are inversely related - the 'how long' display number is, again, designed for use in live performance. The LFO has additional 'waveforms' that set how the samples are faded in and out, and so I suspect that 'transfer function' is a more accurate description. Anyway, try the new waveforms out: they allow you to vary the number of samples that are mixed at any time. Each waveform gives a different 'feel' to that way that the sample tracks get cyclically mixed together.

Finally, the 'Makeup' control adjusts the overall output volume, whilst the 'Mute' button and 'Gain' control are inherited from gFreez_mr, and allow you to monitor the input audio - which adds to the live performance possibilities...

Practice

sFreez_mr is intended to be a live performance tool that can also be used in the studio. To get the most out of any tool when performing live, you will need to have spent time learning how to use it effectively. Also, don't forget that this is 'work in progress'...

sFreez_mr can be downloaded for free from MaxForLive.com

SoundCloud demo1 - wind
SoundCloud demo2 - rain
SoundCloud demo3 - seq
SoundCloud demo4 - loop
SoundCloud demo5 - fx
SoundCloud demo6 - fx2
SoundCloud demo7 - drum
SoundCloud demo8 - drum