Tag Archives: controllerism

Ghost Shift 1.1 with Konkreet Performer mappings

When I released Ghost Shift I didn’t have live control in mind other than mapping a MIDI fader to the mix control. However, the recent update of Konkreet Performer got me thinking, and I realized there was an easy way to map Performer parameters to the individual delay taps in Ghost Shift. Here’s how that turned out:

Here’s how it works: you set your number of delay taps – I find three works well – in the Ghost Shift instrument properties. The node visualizer instrument is voice-slaved to Ghost Shift so its number of nodes / voices should auto adjust. If it doesn’t, turn Reaktor’s audio engine off and on again.

Make sure Reaktor is set up to receive OSC from Konkreet Performer on your iPad. Here are the setting screens inside Performer, showing which parameters and settings I’ve used:

Notice that every node parameter is active, from angle and length to X and Y. We’re going whole hawg here, using every part but the oink. Also activate the ribbon, which controls the mix of dry and wet signal.

So how does one obtain this marvelous and endlessly entertaining Ghost Shift device? Click here:

Add to Cart

It’s free! Enjoy!

Konkreet Performer update!

A new version of Konkreet Performer appeared over the weekend with a couple of great improvements. Number one, there’s now a way to resize the touch areas – a larger touch area around each node makes aiming easier, which is great especially in the frenzied spurts of creativity this control surface inspires.

Secondly, there’s now a setting to make the angle parameter “discontinuous”. Previously, the angle of a node from the center increased from left to right whether the node was above or below the center node. That way, the value would never jump from one to zero but always smoothly increase to one and back to zero as you orbited the node around the center.

That’s great in one way, if you don’t want that jump, but it doesn’t allow the angle from centre parameter to distinguish between values above and values below the centre node. With discontinuity activated, every angle in the 360 degree circle is unique; the values above range from zero to 0.5 and the values below, as you continue clockwise, go from 0.5 to 1 and right at the end they jump from 1 back to zero.

This is going to be terrific for my Chroma and Mirage instruments, which send their values back to Konkreet Performer on snap change, to place the Performer nodes according to the settings of the current snapshot; now, I can guarantee that the placement on snap change will be the same every time.

Discontinuity will also allow for much higher resolution control of the angle parameter, as you wind around it to change a value in your Reaktor ensembles or other destinations. I’ll post some examples for you later this week.

(incidentally, there will be free updates of Chroma and Mirage this fall!)

Update: looks like there’s a bug with node angle when Konkreet receives OSC. This won’t be a problem for most users, who are only sending from Konkreet to their musical devices and not receiving values in Konkreet to update the node positions. The Konkreet devs are aware of the problem and a fix is coming.

@peterdines Your article just triggered the dawning realisation that we forgot to test OSC In with node angle discontinuous! Damn!
ā€” KonkreetLabs (@konkreetlabs) August 12, 2013

@peterdines guess there’ll be a v2.1.1 fix for OSC In soon… šŸ˜‰ #KnewIForgotSomething
ā€” KonkreetLabs (@konkreetlabs) August 12, 2013

UPDATE: and now, the update is updated with a fix for OSC receive in discontinuous angle mode! I was testing this and experimenting with it last night. The cool thing is, now you can calculate polar to rectangular coordinates using discontinuous mode, because every node position is unique – which not only makes it better for recalling node position from Reaktor snaps, but for visualizing node position on the screen. I’m in the process of updating the Konkreet translator / visualizer accordingly.

TB Midi Stuff

One iOS control surface that’s getting too little love in my poll on the left is TB MIDI Stuff.

It sends and receives OSC and MIDI, including NRPN, so you can do 14 bit high resolution MIDI. It even does bi-directional Sysex. The editor is built in so there’s no need to edit your layout on a computer then sync – add, delete and modify controls and pages right on your device. There are some built in control surfaces like a standard keyboard (with arp!) and an MPC type drum pad and many other editable templates.

Get it here for only $4.99 – daaaaamn that’s cheap – and I guarantee you will find uses for it. It’s worth that coffee-and-muffin price just for the default keyboard and MPC and the Wicki-Hayden templates, to say nothing of the custom templates you can put together quickly and easily. Oh, did I mention there are built in scales and customizable scales you can play from ribbons and other objects? Well, there are. It’s a Swiss army knife of MIDI features for a toothpick price.

Finally, here’s a video of one of the 1.x versions of TB MIDI Stuff (2.0 was recently released)