Tag Archives: controller

Got a QuNeo

After some hemming and hawing I pulled the trigger on this today – very happy so far! The sliders are much less dodgy than I’d been warned by some people, very usable actually. I’m still fiddling with sensitivity and touch technique. Tip: if you want one of the vertical sliders zeroed, press and release right at the bottom instead of sliding down to that point.

I’ve been experimenting with mapping filter cutoff, the most obvious parameter, to one of the faders and found you can do a nice tremolo effect by rolling your finger back and forth across it. Edit: the finger roll technique works super well to adjust values in general, not just for vibrato. Nice smooth transitions. Set your finger vertically across the vertical sliders, horizontally across the horizontal ones, and roll, roll, roll your way to fitness. Edit 2: one of the cool things about the slider / faders is, the way the LEDs are staggered and use variable brightness gives you a more accurate than expected idea of what values they represent.Sorry for liveblogging – this is exciting!

Will def have to make a more minimal preset, then start bringing in more controllers as they become necessary or desirable, because my goodness does it sends a lot of stuff by default. The editor software is intelligent enough to select and alter a bunch of controls at a time which is nice. And it was easy to change a drum pad preset to use different banks with one of the up and down arrow pairs.

Build quality and overall feel are great. Plus by default it doesn’t have every single light lit up like in the pictures, so it’s easier on the eyes.

Next step is to figure out how to use the rotary controllers to set sample start and loop length in Loupe 2.

Mirage 1.9.6.1

Here is the new version of Mirage featuring OSC control mappings for the awesome Konkreet Performer iPad control surface.

Note: Mirage works just fine on its own without KP too, just map some MIDI controllers or use a mouse. A TouchOSC template will follow

Update: Download link now goes to version 1.9.6.1 which is the same as 1.9.6 except the Mirage instrument header is set to visible, making it easier to get into instrument properties and change the number of voices. It arguably looks “neater” with the header bar hidden but isn’t as noob-friendly.

This version is free for owners of previous versions. Download here – your existing password will open the archive.
The new version includes extensive feature enhancements and numerous bug fixes, and carefully thought out, tested and integrated Konkreet Performer mappings. Mirage snapshot recall will also recall node positions and transmit them to Performer on your iPad.
mirage 196 diagram
This time out the sample material is mostly one-shots to work in conjunction with the added pitch correction. Adding longer phrases and snippets of songs works well too but with the one-shots you can do something more deliberate and compose a part for a pre-existing track. I find with long phrases there are only a couple of note combinations that work well and what you come up with will have a mind of its own and suggest its own composition.There are a couple of trashed piano field recordings in here that rattle beautifully – nothing like hitting the harp directly on a piano that’s sat out in the weather for a few seasons.

To use Konkreet Performer with Mirage, set up a 4 node layout with visible node labels, activate trigger hold, and set inertia to 30. When touching and moving the central node, the other nodes will slowly track and follow, creating a sort of manual LFO that slowly snaps back to the snapshot’s original settings.
The Mirage package includes a separate translator ensemble that can be run in Reaktor standalone, parallel to a host using Mirage as a plugin, to translate Konkreet Performer’s native OSC signals to MIDI. Use MIDI Yoke on Windows or the IAC driver on Mac to reroute MIDI from the translator to your host.
Mirage is $15 and a license can be purchased here:Mirage Add to Cart

Or, save $$ and buy the sampler pack which includes Loupe and ParamDrum.

Any questions? Ask away!

First Lemur Template

All reety then, after buying Lemur for iPad the other day and sifting the PDF manual for the chunky bits, I spent a few hours today crafting my first Lemur template. It’s a hybrid OSC / MIDI creation that borrows the stock drum pads, adds a sustain latch, and also five bouncing balls with individually adjustable speeds, friction and scaling. 

The scaling turned out to be especially important, as setting the balls loose on their full range of travel then mapping them to Reaktor controls is a bit sloppy. So using the X and Y scale controls, you can specify a range of travel for whatever control you map them to. That way, you can specify that your filter cutoff stays within a useful range, or open it up to the full range of travel for crazy wildness.

The MultiBalls output both OSC and MIDI. The OSC signals look like /Multiball/X1 etc, and the MIDI CCs are in the range 17 to 26. There are X and Y lock toggles to make MIDI learn easier.

There are probably better ways to address the creation of variables and math formulas than what I’ve done here, but give me a break, this is my first try! If you’re a longtime Lemur demigod, I welcome your criticisms.

The HolyBallz template can be downloaded here. I’ll be adding templates more specific to my own ensembles soon.

The Freshmaker!

Here’s a fun new toy in the Reaktor library for you. It’s two recordable XY faders with IC send modules so you can send the controller info to another instrument in the ensemble. I’ve found it’s a great way to perk up a boring instrument without much effort and re-engineering. To demonstrate that, it’s wired up to control some of the knobs on an old FM synth from an earlier version of Reaktor. But of course, the whole point is to experiment and wire it up to whatever you please – maybe even something you’ve built yourself.

alternate download link

For my next tutorial, would you folks be interested in having this dissected and explained? There’s a lot going on under the hood in this one.