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I just thought I'd update everyone on my conversion
to MAX/MSP. It has taken an interesting turn lately.
Metamorphosis Phase I - "First Taste of MAX/MSP" Several months ago, I had created a VST host with MAX/MSP, which worked
great and basically allowed me to host all of the VSTs that I was hosting in
Chainer, and Energy XT before that. These VSTs included Mobius (for looping),
Reaktor, and several of my own MAX/MSP patches (not VSTs). Great system. I
was also able to control Mobius and Reaktor with my Behringer FCB, as they were
communicating directly with the controller and not via MIDI settings or wiring
in MAX/MSP. That was convenient.
Metamorphosis Phase II - "Back to the Comfort Zone"
A few months after the above transition, I became disgruntled with the
difficulty I was experiencing controlling my VST (not Mobius
or Reaktor) parameters in MAX/MSP. MAX/MSP allows this sort of thing
with its VST object and some MIDI objects/wiring, but the learning curve was
just too high for me at the time, to revise my host code with all the MIDI
related wiring and objects to get my Behringer FCB to communicate with my VSTs
via MIDI in MAX/MSP.
So, I went back to Chainer (my original system), and converted my MAX/MSP patches to VSTs that I could use them. Metamorphosis Phase III - "The Final Leap"
A few more months past. At this time, I have a change of feeling with
the complexity of my VST host and system. I had over 40 VST programs in Chainer,
and they became a creative burden. Sometimes, one can just have too much, and
this became distracting for me. I felt that I was placing too much emphasis on
my cool VST sounds and not the music making aspect.
So I had an epiphany and decided that I was going back to MAX/MSP and
dropping ALL of my VSTs (all $1200 worth), and using only Reaktor (as a VST
inside MAX), and my own MAX/MSP patches. Oh, what a relief. Jeff Kaiser even
helped me add the necessary MIDI code and wiring to control my MAX/MSP patches
with the Behringer FCB.
However, I struggled several months with controlling Reaktor with my MIDI
controller. Since I activated MIDI in MAX/MSP, it highjacked the MIDI port and
made direct communication between the Reaktor VST and my Behringer impossible.
After several months, resolved that issue, and now I can control all my effect
parameters in Reaktor, while inside MAX/MSP. Beautiful.
So, you might be wondering now, this being a loop based discussion forum,
what happened to Mobius? Well, after several discussions with Jeff Kaiser and
thinking about what features I really used in Mobius, and what was important to
me as a musician, I switch to Kaiser's MAX/MSP looper construction kit...the
"Kaiser Looper". The kit is exactly that. You can take it and then build
on it, add buttons, features, more looping tracks, etc. This is what I ended up
with to suit my needs:
4 separate stereo looping tracks with the following:
- Record (no overdub)
- Play
- Reset
- Reverse
- Half speed
- Double speed
- Half Speed/Reverse
- Forward
- Stop
- Variable speed (forward and backward) controlled via a knob
- Track volume
- Track pan
All the above are controlled with my Behringer FCB, via a MIDI program
change or one of my two expression pedals.
You'll note that there are a lot of looper features not in the list above,
which many people expect in a sophisticated looper. The missing
features are indeed the case, though I would argue that the sophistication
is relative. Personally, I am able to get by with features I listed, and they
meet 99% of my creative needs. Some of the cool features that I used in Mobius,
EDPs, or Looperative (such as multiply, substitution, scripting, etc), were
nice, but I found that most of the time they were not necessary to express
myself...and in some cases, as with too many VST, distracted me from the music
composition aspect of my own personal performance style and philosophy.
Long story short, I feel a sense of relief with my new system. It is
streamlined, and now I can focus on the fun part, which is creating my own
custom MAX patches (for example, a MAX patch that emulates the old Roland
GR300 guitar synth).
In any event, you can find out more about Kaiser's looper construction kit
here (Jeff will be adding an updated version later):
My gear setup here, including screen shot of my MAX system:
Cheers,
Kris
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Krispen Hartung www.krispenhartung.com / www.myspace.com/krispenhartung info@krispenhartung.com / 1.208.724.5603 Discography - http://www.krispenhartung.com/catalogue.htm CD Baby Discography: http://cdbaby.com/all/khartung |