Doggiebox July 2005

doggiebox@lists.zygoat.ca

8 participants
12 discussions

(no subject)
by Sion Morris 01 Nov '05

01 Nov '05

Nice song Mike. I'd echo what Carl said - I think you can dispose of your vocalist - your voice is in fact great! You remind me a bit of Michael Stipe. Its particularly good when the harmonies come in. Seriously, you should be singing as well as playing. I banged this on my mp3 player this evening, set to 'repeat' and had it on a loop for ages and can't really find any fault. Its the best example yet of a believable 'real drummer' sound - that technique of slight speedup works really well. I'll be looking again at the nskit - it has a great 'clean studio sound. Any chance you could send the drum db over for me to look at for tips? Cheers Sion Morris Liverpool www.cinnamondesign.co.uk/music/music.html ------------------------------------------- > http://webpages.charter.net/mcarlyle/sounds/comealive-01.mp3 > > My singer didn't show up so I gave it a go myself. I don't know if > I'll be doing much more of this kind of singing. I'm going through the > "I hate my voice" thing. > > The drums are all Doggiebox using nskit v.7. I really like the polish > and natural feel of this kit. I need to tone the toms down a little > bit, but one thing at a time. This is an example of "pushing the > tempo" during the chorus to make the thing feel a little more human. > > I had posted this before, but at the time it had no vocals and was > fairly bare bones. This is an all new version using my new gear (MXL > 990 mic, M-Audio monitors, Tascam US-122 interface, Fender Pro > Junior... the list goes on.

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Window help again
by Mike Listrom 23 Jul '05

23 Jul '05

> >> Is there any way to have control over the sizes of the drum kit >> window, the sections window and the playlist window? I find on longer >> songs or large drum kits I cannot see as much as I would like. >> > > Have you tried dragging the split-view bar which lies immediately > above > the transport controls? You should see a little indentation, midway > across. Click near there and drag. By doing this and resizing the > window, you will be able to make the sections and playlist tables as > large as you want. The drum kit list won't get any wider > currently, but > you can at least make it indefinitely taller. > > Thank you for pointing this out. Is there any way to control width? >> Also the header columns in the sections area are easily disturbed by >> user input, such as dragging a header, which will cause undesirable >> effects. >> > > Can you elaborate on this? What kind of "undesirable effects" do > you get? > > -ben > I accidently clicked and dragged on the column header. I was able to achieve this as well. I don't think I can reset things from here.

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Build 1E11 with lots of little fixes
by Ben Kennedy 22 Jul '05

22 Jul '05

Hi all, After being sidetracked earlier this month with music festivals and other things, as well as taking awhile to get Tiger up and running on my dev machine and everything building again properly, a new beta is finally ready! <http://www.doggiebox.com/distribution/Doggiebox-1E11.tbz> includes the following changes and improvements: ? Fixed a couple of long-standing bugs related to changing drum kits: previously, the pattern editor would not be visually refreshed with the new kit icons, and the previous kit's keyboard shortcuts would illogically remain in force. These are now fixed (thanks Chris). ? Fixed a bug with drum keyboard shorcuts where two variants of the same drum type but with different shortcuts could not be selected immediately one after another (thanks Chris and Dan). ? Fixed a bug where tempo markings were sometimes not behaving properly when trying to set or modify them via the inspector (thanks Charlie). ? Fixed a bug where the assigned tempo would sometimes drift when repeatedly inserting new bars, if the bars were in a compound time signature (thanks Håkon). ? Added a method by which to override the default beat denomination in which the tempo is specified, as was possible in earlier versions of Doggiebox. To change the tempo basis for the selected bar(s), right- click on the note icon next to the bpm field in the inspector and choose a new note value from the pop-up menu. ? Fixed a bug where extra bars (or the entire song) could become spuriously selected while making a selection with the mouse (thanks Mike). ? New sections are now created containing a new empty bar, rather than nothing as before (thanks Charlie). ? Numeric values for MIDI properties (channel, note, velocity) in the drum kit editor are now directly editable (thanks Carl). ? Rebuilt under Tiger 10.4.2; minimum required system is Panther 10.3.9. Next up, I hope to work on fixing the copy and paste mess with respect to bars, beats and song structure. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca

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Window help.
by Mike Listrom 21 Jul '05

21 Jul '05

Hello, I am a fellow who likes to push the limits of d. I am saying this so you can have bias if you were to make my comments into a persona or something like that. Is there any way to have control over the sizes of the drum kit window, the sections window and the playlist window? I find on longer songs or large drum kits I cannot see as much as I would like. Also the header columns in the sections area are easily disturbed by user input, such as dragging a header, which will cause undesirable effects. The column header dragging functionality would be more useful I feel if it was a re-sizable window, with space for longer notes and such. Perhaps its just an unnecessary feature. Regards, mike listrom

2 1

MIDI Interaction with Roland SPD-S
by Chris Wicklas 21 Jul '05

21 Jul '05

Hi Everybody, I have read through past posts and haven¹t been able to find an answer to my question. I¹m curious to know if there is a way for me have a Roland SPD-S control the start/stop of patterns in DB. I am just a beginner when it comes to MIDI, so forgive me if this is a simple question. Let me explain. I am using DB as a click to play along with live. I created sections for each of my band¹s songs. Each section consists of a 1 bar phrase that loops with the song¹s tempo... In essence, a database of songs and tempos. When we play live, I create a playlist to mirror our set list of the songs from the sections list. I can then easily start/stop the click for each song by hitting the space bar on my Powerbook and then the down arrow to move on to the next song. This works pretty well, but it would work even better if I could figure out a way to control the start/stop, or maybe even the moving on to the next pattern from the Roland via a foot switch or extra pad. Is this possible? Or is there a way to connect a foot switch directly to the Powerbook which would do the same thing? The Roland is currently connected to a 1ghz Titanium Powerbook via a USB to MIDI controller. I can succussfully use the Roland to record drum parts in GarageBand, so I know the connection works. I haven¹t tried it in DB yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Chris -- "If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses." - Steven Wright Visit me on the web -- http://www.thedrummist.com

4 9

Some beta observations
by Michael Carlyle 21 Jul '05

21 Jul '05

I've been writing and recording again, which means my DB activity has spiked a little bit. As a result, I've noticed a few things that I may have missed before. I may have missed a discussion about these things, or they may have been changed already. Not sure. The following are observations and are, by no means critique of the app. 1) I notice that the inspector is now the only way to insert bars. There is no longer the ability to insert multiple bars. If I want to add 16 bars, I have to click "insert bar" 16 times. Why would I want to insert 16 blank bars?... see below... 2) Copied bars do not want to paste into new sections. In order to paste copied bars, I first have to provide the correct number of blank bars to paste into. Since I can't add multiples in a single operation (see above) it is an awkward GUI point. 3) When making a selection that reaches to the end of the section, DB has a tendency to want to "wrap around" to the top. This is frustrating, since great care must be taken to end your selection at precisely the right point. I think DB should know that I've reached the end of the bar and should stop selecting no matter how far I continue to move my mouse. I got a lot done this weekend. I hope to share another song with you all fairly soon. ----------------------------------- Mike Carlyle Wilbraham, Massachusetts USA

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Re: Carl's tempo idea
by Sterling Beckwith 17 Jul '05

17 Jul '05

> IMO, it would be cool to assign tempo at the level of the playlist, > rather than the individual section. That way you could use the same > pattern in two places within a given playlist, but assign different > tempos to them. But what happens if your pattern itself includes several tempo changes? It seems the only way would be to attach to each item in the playlist a "reference pulse multiplier factor", defaulting at 1.00, which could then be tweaked and used to speed up or slow down ALL the tempi in that pattern ONLY, on playback ONLY. Tampering with the constant reference pulse could be risky, even so. Would its usefulness outweigh the well-known dangers of adding yet another "cool feature", I wonder?? -Sterling

2 1

Follow up from Mike
by Mike Listrom 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

About the a-synchronous thing I was talking about: I know that doggiebox does this very well. My idea would not be beneficial.

1 0

Listrom's suggested improvements
by Sterling Beckwith 13 Jul '05

13 Jul '05

> I would like the ability to keep a pattern playing whilst modifying > the drum pattern, or another section real-time, and then having those > changes effect the current audio at the user's will. It seems this > would entail improvements to the sections/playlist functionality. Sounds like fun, but would it be worth the effort? "At the user's will" does, I think, give away what the problem would be: SOMEONE does indeed have to decide! The trick would be for the system to know reliably which version to play at any given moment, while changes were being made on the fly. Personally, I think a composing-oriented system should NOT be so fluid. Better to be sure that what is played will be just what you specified; then (after saving that version) make your changes, audition those specific changes as often as you need to, and only then register further changes if desired. A composer has to learn eventually how things will sound BEFORE hearing them played. Adjusting to ongoing changes while playing in real time seems to require too much smarts on the part of the system, not enough from the composer. > The only window that I could see being a floater is > the transport. A major advantage of floating windows is that they release maximum screen real estate for the composition itself. A stable interface with everything in easy reach is always nice to have. But the more you box in the notation grid with other permanent fixtures, the less room there is likely to be to view the part of the composition you are currently working on. So here as elsewhere, there's tradeoffs to be made...

1 0

Some other changes.
by Mike Listrom 12 Jul '05

12 Jul '05

Along with the a-synchronous topic that was brought up by Charlie, I would like the ability to keep a pattern playing wilst modifying the drum pattern, or another section real-time, and then having those changes effect the current audio at the user's will. It seems this would entail improvements to the sections/playlist functionality. I would also like to see the pallets and various functionality encapsulated in collapsable windows such as Omni Group's omniGraffle. Otherwise, the velocity controls should be incorporated into the single window. The only window that I could see being a floater is the transport.

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Doggiebox July 2005