[PD] midi synch strategy

[David Powers]

I thought of using PD as a slave myself this morning ... but how might
one do it the other way around? Can PD be master? Or is that
impossible?

Unfortunately, sometimes I think the slogan "We've got to undo the
MIDI revolution" to be a bit misguided. Instead of undoing, it might
be better to have some Hegelian negation/overcoming towards a superior
standard. OSC is of course, superior to MIDI, but many major softwares
don't "get it" yet I'm afraid. So for many softwares, plus the
obsolete instruments I'm sure many of us own, MIDI is the only option.

I've got great sounding stuff running now, where I'm using Ableton
Live as a VST host / mixer, and PD is sending generative MIDI data
through a virtual MIDI port. It sounds great and it's quite stable. I
hate to admit that, for me, PD is working best as a MIDI
processor/generator. My next step is to run Reaktor inside Ableton,
using PD to send OSC messages - I'm hoping that the VST Reaktor will
still get OSC, I never tried it.

Anyway, in my new "sequencer", I play in phrases on a keyboard, and PD
generates new music by playing through a table that records the note,
with an X% chance of skipping around in the table. I was originally
using this approach for playing video files, and realized it might
work just as well for melodies, and indeed it does.

I can either use the average velocities, rhythm, and note length
values from my own performance, or set these things with sliders or my
MIDI controller. Alternately, I can play soundfiles with [iddle~] to
generate performance data. My rhythm generator uses probabilizer to
generate rhythms like (1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2) and then processes
the list so that it's more like (0.9, 2.1, 1.1, 0.9, 3.15, 2.03, 0.86,
3.17, 1.89) for example.

I have it set to run on 4 MIDI channels, and I tried it with
orchestral type sound fonts, and started sending program changes y% of
the time to each channel, with only 1-3 notes being played on a
particular timbre. It sounds like Anton Webern on acid ... in a good
way... I'll put up some example files soon.

I think I'm going to have to graduate to neural networks and AI soon
if I keep following this direction of working.

~David

On 9/25/06, mami music <mami.music at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can use a virtual midi chanel (like midi joke for example) and send (or
> receive) midi control messages which value increases from 1 to 64 or 1 to
> 128 evey 1/32 or 1/64 of the beat measure.
> I´ve used ableton live as a master and pd receiving [ctrlin x] (x for the
> control message that you know would not interfeer with your hardware setup).
> Then using he output of [ctrlin x] (that are increasing cyclic numbers) to
> whatever time porcess youre using.
>
> i hope this helps
>
> daniel
>
> 2006/9/25, hard off <hard.off at gmail.com>:
> > in my very brief experience,
> >
> > i used pd as master
> >
> > other softwares are good slaves
> >
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