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
On 28-Jan-2005 18:09, Chris Wicklas wrote:
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. [...] 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.
Well, going the other way certainly works. That is, Ben has taught DB enough MIDI that I can hit record on my Roland VS1680 deck and, with a MIDI/USB interface to my iBook, DB starts playing in sync. Very handy when I want to tweak a drum part without changing the tempo.
In theory, it ought to be possible for DB to be taught to listen for a "play" MMC message from your unit and start playing. Ah, the SPD-S is some sort of sample trigger thing, no? Does it send MMC? I didn't know GarageBand could be controled via MIDI like that!
Anyway, it's been extremely useful for my MIDI-equipped unit to be able to take MMC orders from DB, and it would be pretty cool if one could alternatively configure it so DB would take MMC orders from the MIDI unit.
Cheers, Carl
Thanks for the reply. Yes, the Roland is a sampler. I can assign midi notes to each pad. That's how I can control what instruments get played in GarageBand. I'm not sure if it can send MMC. Is the start/stop command something that can be sent as a note? IE... Kick drum is note 35 on channel 10, can the start/stop be note x? Perhaps I need to dig deeper into my understanding of MIDI, which at this point is very shallow.
Chris
on 1/31/05 4:29 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson at cea@carlaz.com wrote:
On 28-Jan-2005 18:09, Chris Wicklas wrote:
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. [...] 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.
Well, going the other way certainly works. That is, Ben has taught DB enough MIDI that I can hit record on my Roland VS1680 deck and, with a MIDI/USB interface to my iBook, DB starts playing in sync. Very handy when I want to tweak a drum part without changing the tempo.
In theory, it ought to be possible for DB to be taught to listen for a "play" MMC message from your unit and start playing. Ah, the SPD-S is some sort of sample trigger thing, no? Does it send MMC? I didn't know GarageBand could be controled via MIDI like that!
Anyway, it's been extremely useful for my MIDI-equipped unit to be able to take MMC orders from DB, and it would be pretty cool if one could alternatively configure it so DB would take MMC orders from the MIDI unit.
Cheers, Carl
On 31-Jan-2005 21:49, Chris Wicklas wrote:
Thanks for the reply. Yes, the Roland is a sampler. I can assign midi notes to each pad. That's how I can control what instruments get played in GarageBand. I'm not sure if it can send MMC. Is the start/stop command something that can be sent as a note? IE... Kick drum is note 35 on channel 10, can the start/stop be note x? Perhaps I need to dig deeper into my understanding of MIDI, which at this point is very shallow.
Hmm, well, my own understanding of MIDI is also highly rudimentary! But I think that controlling what note is played is a slightly different thing than sending start/stop/etc. messages. The former is done through the likes of note-on and note-off messages, so that when you tap the bit of your sample trigger that is configured to say "play note 35 (kick drum) now", GarageBand knows to do just that.
Then there is also "MIDI Machine Control" which uses MIDI "System Exclusive messages" to send recording deck commands like "play", "stop", "punch in", "punch out", etc. This is how DB talks to my recording deck at present; that is, the recording deck is slaved to DB: when I hook my iBook to my deck via MIDI cables, press record+play on my deck to set it to record, and click the "play" button on DB, then DB sends an MMC "play" command, I think, to my deck -- which then acts as if I had pressed the "play" button and starts recording at the same time DB sends audio out through the audio port on my iBook, which is hooked into my deck via regular audio cables. Whew! :)
One might want to be able to configure the reverse possibility by which DB could be slaved to a deck (so that when you press play on the deck, DB starts playing), though that too would theoretically require a using a MIDI device that could do MMC. From your description, you have used your SPD-5 as a MIDI controller to play parts that GarageBand can record, which is a slightly different thing than sending MMC start/stop commands -- though I suppose DB could be given an option by which playing some user-specified MIDI note was interpreted as a "play" command?
Being able to plug a simple footswitch into one's Mac and use it to control DB would be cool ... I'm not sure what kinds of devices are available for that sort of thing though. Anyone?
DB
On 01 2 2005 at 8:22 am -0500, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
One might want to be able to configure the reverse possibility by which DB could be slaved to a deck (so that when you press play on the deck, DB starts playing)
That should already work actually.
though I suppose DB could be given an option by which playing some user-specified MIDI note was interpreted as a "play" command?
That's not a bad idea; I could see it being useful to be able to schedule playback of different sections, for example, by triggering them via keys on a regular MIDI keyboard controller. This is starting to get into the realm of real-time sequencing, which is slightly astray from DB's current main focus, but something worth keeping in my mind.
-ben
On 05-Feb-2005 02:35, Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 01 2 2005 at 8:22 am -0500, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
One might want to be able to configure the reverse possibility by which DB could be slaved to a deck (so that when you press play on the deck, DB starts playing)
That should already work actually.
Oh! I hadn't tried that, but I will now that I know it should work. I'll have to take a look at the settings ....
Cheers, Carl
Once Upon a Time, Ben wrote:
That's not a bad idea; I could see it being useful to be able to schedule playback of different sections, for example, by triggering them via keys on a regular MIDI keyboard controller. This is starting to get into the realm of real-time sequencing, which is slightly astray from DB's current main focus, but something worth keeping in my mind.
Not to drag DB away from it's main focus, but I was wondering again whether anyone was having much success in triggering live, on the fly sequencing from DB? I started wondering about this only because I've got a band rehersal that the drummer can't make, and though I can easily use Doggiebox to play back drums for songs on which I used DB to do the drums for the demo, I haven't got anything else more than basic boom-chick patterns that I can use. I though it would be cool if one could some rhythm and fill sections that could have, say, keyboard characters assigned to them. Then I could get, say, the singer to press a, a, a for verse pattern, then b for fill pattern, then over to c, c, c for chorus pattern etc. Dumb but easy :) Control from a Midi device would be more sensible, but yeah, any of this does get into the realm of realtime sequencing!
But weren't there some users who were using some Midi pedals to do something like this, or at least to control the tempo in a tap-tempo kind of arrangement?
Cheers, Carl
Ben,
Here are a couple of things I would find handy for future versions of DB
1) The ability to listen to drum sounds when replacing / changing kits. This will mean a better change over - I regularly create a pattern or two of "normal" rock beats and then try it out with other kits. It gets a bit tricky making actual replacements if you can't remember what the old and new sounds are like. A "sound" button in the dialog box would make things easier.
2) Some sort of MouseOver event to show the type of Drum selected in the Section area. If I'm changing a sound, it is handy to know what the current sound is - the icon is handy, but at times various drums share a common icon ( or similar). Also, many are not shown all the time ( ie when there are many variants of the drum.) It would be good to see that x drum is a snare (flam).
Anyone have similar thoughts? Nothing here seems to be a great deal breaker, but if they are easily added, it would add that little bit of gloss to the app.
Cheers
Charlie
Here's another random thought -- I can't remember whether it's been voiced before:
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. (The way to do this at present would be to make a section at a given tempo and then make copies in which you tweaked the tempos to be faster or slower -- this is workable, but you can end up with several copies of things that differ only in tempo.)
Cheers, Carl
Charlie wrote at 7:24 PM (+0800) on 7/11/05:
Here are a couple of things I would find handy for future versions of DB
These are great suggestions Charlie; thanks. Definitely adding them to the list.
-ben
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Ben Kennedy -
Carl Edlund Anderson -
Charlie -
Chris Wicklas