So, I just went and bought the Pro version of Automap 3, after reading that it can send keystroke commands. I figured this would be pretty useful, since Renoise doesn’t support the standard transport controls, so I could instead map controls myself to send keystrokes and control things like starting & stopping playback, moving around patterns, etc.
However, I just can’t get it to work! The best I’ve managed so far is to get keystrokes sent to a VSTi, but Renoise itself never seems to receive anything. Am I doing anything wrong here? Is it possible to do what I’m attempting? I’d really like to be able to control renoise functions from my Remote SL, gets a bit annoying having to switch between qwerty and midi keyboards!
A little update… I have also got some keystrokes to be accepted by some text input parts of the renoise interface. For example, I can map buttons on the Remote SL to “q”, “w”, “e”, etc… and then use the remote to do things like naming tracks in patterns… Not exactly useful, but it’s a step closer! It kind of feels like renoise filters out the keystrokes for most uses though, so no keyboard shortcuts seem to work. If anyone know how or if this can be done, please let me know! And if it is currently impossible, would it be something that could be added to renoise in the future? Feels like it’s so close to working, it can’t be that hard to add!
I’ve been working on a patch that sends keystrokes from max/msp to quake, a problem i ran into was that using bome’s midi translator you could do this, but mainly the keystrokes would work in windows but apparently not in the game (although, they worked in the console of the game, but not as controls). So apparently from what i’ve read this was because some keystrokes can be “direct input”, which is what the game recognises. I think you may be experiencing something similar with renoise, in so far as if physically pressing the keystroke works but the controller triggering that key doesn’t, it sounds like the same issue.
Apart from asking for Automap to implement direct input keystrokes, you could try using something like AutoHotKey. AHK, I think will take your fake keystrokes and convert them to real ones. At least the system I was using was Max/msp > Bome’s midi translator > AHK > Quake, and this worked okay, although it was massively convoluted.
The setup I’m using now is a max/msp with an mxj object someone wrote on the c74 forum which enables you to send true keystrokes. This works brilliantly, but of course you’d need max/msp…
Btw. how is the new Automap software generally? I’ve got a Nocturn and I can’t say i’ve been overly impressed with the Automap, it annoys me that the controller won’t just default to sending midi data without me having to have the Automap software running and configured for normal midi. It also doesn’t seem to hold my settings properly to just send normal midi data on a certain channel. I don’t suppose the update would improve this anyway, and I certainly don’t think I should pay for it!
Yeah, after digging around some more on the forum I found the previous threads discussing this… Like you said, it sounds like Renoise is using direct input for most keyboard control, which is why it’s not reacting. I also started testing out some ideas with Bome’s midi translator, but that doesn’t send direct input keystrokes either. Well, from their forum it sounds like they have it working now, but not in a public release. I’ll get on to the Bome guys and see what the latest is there, and also hassle novation, see if there’s any chance of this being added.
Only had Automap 3 Pro for less than a day, so can’t really comment on the new features yet… as usual, half of it doesn’t apply to people using non standard composition tools like Renoise, and it’s hard to sometimes know where the issue is, with automap or renoise. The only reason I went Pro with it was for the keystroke sending, and that doesn’t really work the way I would like. I do love the idea behind Automap though, and the latest version does seem a little more polished than before. For Renoise users though, I would say stick with just the free version for now.
Would really love for Renoise to show a bit more love for control surfaces though… this has become such a big area in computer music production over the last few years, and it’s a shame that we don’t get the best out of it all at the minute.
Will let you know how I get on with Novation and Bome…
As far as bome goes, there’s been people on that forum asking for this feature ages ago. I don’t think the program is getting updated much tbh, the posts which said this feature was in the pipeline are really old.
Like I said though, if you use autohotkey to mediate the automap keystrokes, you may be able to get AHK to listen to the automap keystrokes and send them out as direct input keystrokes.
Another thing you could think about (i don’t know if this is possible with automap) is to use spare mouse buttons or joystick buttons. You may find these respond differently to keystrokes, although i’m not sure how helpful it’d be in renoise. If you look at autohotkey though, you could for example get it to move the mouse to a set co-ordinate and click a button. If you have automap trigger autohotkey to do that, you might be able to get it to do what you want, albeit in a workaround type way…
Thanks for the tip there with AutoHotKey! I’ve now got this working like you suggested, by having Automap send keystrokes to AutoHotKey, which then resends them in a Renoise friendly way. It’s not exactly perfect, I’m getting problems with ctrl and alt keys sticking, but hopefully I can iron out those issues. I kind of feel a bit better about having bought Automap Pro for the keystrokes feature, as it at least means I don’t have the extra step of going through Bome. I’ve contacted Novation to see if they could add support for Direct Input keystrokes - will post here again if I get a response.
Good to hear you’ve got it working… hopefully novation will add direct keystrokes… if they do i think its a massive plus for the software, a lot of people seem interested in this
Just wanted to add an update to this thread to say that I’ve been talking to Novation about these issues, and they now have sending keystrokes working in renoise! Not sure when the next update will be made available, but this will definitely make Automap 3 Pro a bit more attractive for renoise users.
I do love the idea behind Automap though, and the latest version does seem a little more polished than before. For Renoise users though, I would say stick with just the free version for now.