Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Feedback from Ableton Drum Rack to Lemur thru Osculator

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Feedback from Ableton Drum Rack to Lemur thru Osculator

    Hi, I have come to a little snag. I am using Lemur on my iPad, routing through oscillator, to Ableton to play a Drum Rack setup. Everything going into Ableton works great. Getting feedback out of Ableton to Lemur is the issue.
    Essentially what I want is to play a drum beat on Lemur, record it in Ableton, then see the pads light up on Lemur in sequence. Essentially what you can do with any Midi Finger Drum Controller with light feedback (i.e. Korg padKontrol, N.I. Maschine).
    What I have done so far is create a new midi track in Ableton that receives the midi coming out of the Drum Rack and then sends it back to Osculator, which then re-routes that to the Lemur. What I first expected was a continuous loop issue where Lemur sends midi data to Ableton, which then sends that eventually back to Lemur which causes the Lemur to Resend it to Ableton etc...... What happened instead was nothing. The Midi data coming from the new Midi Track in Ableton shows activity in Osculator, but Lemur sees nothing.
    Any Ideas?

    Thx

  • #2
    Hi Prokat99,

    (glad you found a solution to your previous problem).

    I've got to have a look at your issue by running a small experiment.
    I will keep you posted...

    Camille

    Comment


    • #3
      Hey Prokat99,

      Are you by any chance using MIDI Notes to control the drum rack?
      In OSCulator MIDI Notes are not mapped back to their origin.

      Could you try using MIDI CC to trigger each individual drum pad ?


      Best,
      Camille

      Comment


      • #4
        Hey Camille,

        I am using Midi notes to trigger the drum rack. Unfortunately, from everything I have found that is the only way. You can't actually midi map to the drum rack, just send MIDI notes that will only trigger the slot with the same MIDI note in the rack.

        I am not in front of my rig to test myself, but shouldn't the new track I created in ableton to receive the "drum rack" MIDI output be able to send that MIDI data to Osculator? Then from there could I reroute via OSC routing to trigger the drum pad light (and hopefully not retrigger the sample)?

        If not, is there any plans on having MIDI notes map back to their origin in a future update?

        I guess the last option would be to send the MIDI data out of the second "receiving" MIDI track in ableton to some sort of MIDI "changer" program to convert the note data to cc data. Then, if possible, I would need to tell the Pads on Lemur to send MIDI Notes, but receive/react to, MIDI CC.

        There must be a way right?
        Thanks for all your help.
        PK

        Comment


        • #5
          Yes, it is possible if you route manually the notes back.
          How many drum pads do you have?
          I can put together a small example project for you.
          Last edited by camille; 06-01-2013, 07:25 PM.

          Comment


          • #6
            Well, a lot actually. I have one live set for my entire performance which has 3 drum racks. Essentially I have 15 banks of 16 drum pads. So about 240....hehe. I know there are more efficient alternatives but I want every set of drum pads to have a different color (a color for every song). If you could do one example of 16 pads, that would be awesome. Again, thanks for your help. Osculator is one of the greatest apps I have ever used, but it is quite the beast to learn everything (I'm sure you know .

            Comment


            • #7
              I totally see what you mean

              If you could put the note number in the Lemur's pad, routing back could essentially become a single OSC Routing.
              In any case I will follow the simple approach and send you a bi-directional example for Lemur and 16 pads.

              Comment


              • #8
                Hey PK,

                I worked a bit on this issue and found a simple way to backmap automatically incoming notes to their original OSC events.

                There are two conditions for this:
                1. You must use the "MIDI Note" event.
                2. Once the /midi/note/1 event has been received, select the first argument (pitch) and choose Edit -> Demux to reveal the notes contained in this message. Then send notes again, and they will be backmapped properly.

                A couple of issues I've ran into:

                1. With Ableton I have been unable to easily send MIDI messages to both a Drum Rack and the MIDI Output (to OSCulator). To solve this, I created a MIDI track in which I put my recorded notes, set the output of this track to "OSCulator In", and set the other track (the one containing the Drum Rack) to receive MIDI from the previous MIDI track, and activate input monitoring.

                2. Because of energy saving, the iPhone and iPad are less responsive to external network requests, when there is no interaction on the screen. Which means that when the notes are sufficiently short, the Lemur or TouchOSC will not blink the corresponding button. This might or might not be an issue, the fix is to make the notes longer or to interact with the mobile device.

                I will send you a build by email for you to try.


                Best,
                Cam

                Comment


                • #9
                  Hey PK,
                  Have you been able to test the build I sent you?

                  Best,
                  Cam

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by camille View Post
                    Hey PK,
                    Have you been able to test the build I sent you?

                    Best,
                    Cam
                    I have not had a chance yet. I spent all day yesterday scouring the manual for a better understanding of OSC messages. I also spent time understanding how to link the iPod and iPad directly without any mediating software. I will work on the light feedback issue tonight. Again, I am very appreciative of all your help. It would have taken me so long to do this on my own.

                    I'll get back to you later tonight or tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

                    PK

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Man, I have spent the past three hours trying to figure this out. I looked at your examples and tried to tweak my project to match it. I have everything figured out I believe except I cannot get the OSC Routing back from Ableton to work. What I mean is, I triggered the pad on Lemur, located the OSC message coming into to Osculator, assigned that to the MIDI CC for the appropriate drum rack cell. I set up the extra channel in Ableton. I received and located the Midi note returning from Ableton to OSC. I then did the Demux to locate the individual pitch of the pad I am triggering. From there, I try to assign the "trigger" line of that pitch to an OSC routing, which is the default and in which the iPad's (lemur) IP address has been written.
                      I remember when I had a successful routing in an earlier project the "value" line of the target filled with a bunch of data/symbols. When I do it now, it just remains a lonely default symbol.
                      Not sure exactly what's up but I believe the only issue I am having is successful communication from OSCulator back to the Lemur. I don't understand as I have quadruple checked the Lemur/iPad's IP address and seem to be receiving data from the iPad alright.
                      What could I be missing?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Hi PK,

                        The problem does not come from the target IP.
                        In what you are trying to achieve, you don't need to create or assign any OSC Routing.

                        My example uses notes to trigger a drum sample, not MIDI CCs.
                        With a note you don't need to do any mapping on the Ableton Live side, whereas with CC you will have to "map" them with Live's user interface.

                        Also, the process of backmapping (which is routing back the messages from the target device, Live, to the controller, Lemur) is something that is automatic. You don't need to do all this configuration, the only required step is just to demux the /midi/note/1 message. Once this is done, and if you use MIDI Notes to trigger the pad, then backmappings are created automatically.

                        Maybe you should try the example by just changing the default target IP address to your Lemur's, and see how it works. Then delete the /midi/note/1 message, play drums, and demur it. Then play drums again and see what happens.

                        Best,
                        Cam
                        Last edited by camille; 06-09-2013, 12:39 PM.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Here is exactly what I have done:
                          I downloaded all four files you gave me. I opened up the Ableton Live file, and the Drum Rack -> 808 Drum Rack (Lemur) file in OSCulator too. I don't have/can't find a template for Lemur called Drum Rack or anything so I used the Drum Pad in the "iPad Studio Combo". I then start playing the Pads and everything seems to work great. I record a line in Ableton and it feeds back to the Lemur, seems good.
                          With the goal of understanding I try what you suggested and delete the midi/note/1 line (which has in the value field the "default" sign and a whole bunch of text reffering to the drumpad and such and when triggered, displays green).
                          I then play the lemur again to get the midi not again which works fine. I then unscroll to reveal the Pitch, velocity and trigger lines. I select Pitch, then demux (Edit->demux) it. From there I start playing the pads again and it populates below with all the notes. However, there is no data (osc routing, default etc.....) in the trigger line below each note and the "enable" box is only yellow and not green like it was earlier. It seems this is where you say it should auto map back. Nothing ever seems to happen for me so I manually select "OSC routing" and then point that to the Default target, which only displays the default symbol, nothing else like before.
                          I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. Should I be using a different template? If so, could you send me that one?

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            You have to use the build I have sent you previously, using the "official" release will not work as expected ;-)

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Something I just realized..

                              I tried repeating the whole process from scratch again. After everything was ready I tried recording a drum line in Ableton again. Here is where I realized that only some of the pads were working. When I checked OSCulator, I saw that the original "drum rack-> 808 Drum Rack (Lemur).oscd file you sent did not have those particular pads already setup. Now that they have joined in, their "trigger" lines are empty (no OSC routing nor "defaul - /Drumpads/x .....etc). When I manually assign them to OSC routing value= default symbol, nothing happens.
                              It seems that the "auto-mapping" that occurs for your system will in fact work on my setup (I am referring to this OSC routing in the value field, "default symbol" -> /Drumpads/x : f:bref /Drumpads/x [0], f:bref /Drum......) but when I delete the /midi/note/1 and then re-obtain it, then demux it, I do not get any auto mapping. If I try to map it manually, I only get the "default symbol" in the target and nothing happens.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X