Am thinking about having a crack at putting together a template for maschine and am wondering if I could script “focusing”?
Eg, if i map an encoder (if relative encoders are supported?) to instrument volume can this serve as a control for all instruments, affecting only the selected instrument?
I’m trying to create a similar application, that will have to do different things when different effect devices exist on current track, but as of yet I am still to try and understand the big picture of how Duplex’ Applications, Controllers, and Mappings correlate. (just like how perhaps the Overtune code is a mystery to other programmers, little less complex though)
I think the XY Pad Application is a starting point to understanding this sort of programming with Duplex.
If I have anything concrete I’ll let you know!
Hey muckleby,
currently, Duplex doesn’t have any application that control instruments (well, not that I know of).
The focusing, however, is just one problem that the application would need to solve. The larger challenge would be how to control the volume of said instrument?
I mean, all is fine if you are just using a plain sample, but it could get nasty if you were using dozens. If you had this thing mapped to a rotary dial, Renoise could easily receive dozens of messages per second, each of which would iterate through dozens of samples. I suspect that response time could become an issue.
So, instead of building a full-blown “Instruments” application for Duplex I would encourage you study a couple of different workflows, it might just be that they could offer the very same thing.
First of all, trackers have this concept of a pool of instruments. That’s pretty unique stuff - most DAWs will have instruments assigned to a track.
If you’re willing to give up this flexibility, you could try thinking about / naming each track after the instrument it contains - one instrument per track can actually be pretty liberating. Especially in the context of live performance - the less stuff to think about, the better.
Relevant to this is the “auto-capture instrument” option in Renoise, it will allow you to jump from track, automatically selecting the instrument (I personally prefer manual capture via Alt+Return, though).
My point is: once you start naming tracks after their instrument, the Mixer suddenly becomes an instrument mixer, too.
And yes, the Duplex Mixer can be configured as a single-track instance which follow the focused track in Renoise.
PS: I’d be happy to help with the Maschine layout. You could do a sketch of the layout you want and PM me.
Indeed the XY Pad, Repeater and Hydra applications are all extending a base class called ‘RoamingDSP’.
That class is doing things in a pretty specific way, allowing you to ‘tag’ matching devices - give them a special name - so the application is able to pick up the right device, the next the song is loaded.
If you like the way that the XYPad application can attach itself to devices, obviously yes then this is a good starting point.
Also, RoamingDSP makes use of the Automation class, making it trivial to implement parameter recording.
Yep 1 instrument per track is a smart way of working and is usually my approach (wasn’t around in the 4tracks only days!)
I was hoping instrument volume would be accessible because by extension so would instrument tune etc, but the problem you bring up is definitely a bit of a thorny issue.
the roaming DSP class business seems like an interesting route but a little over my head really, I’m not sure i could get involved there!
so ill probably stick to a simple mixer for now haha.
although one thing I’d really like to do is have designated buttons to jump to a specific track - like buttons 1 to 8 to jump directly to the corresponding track, this would work great with autocapture. is this doable?
very much appreciate yr offer of assistance danoise! I will definitely glean what I can and run with it