Ms Pinky's Reformed Max-For-Live device

For topics related to using MsPinky inside the Max/MSP graphical programming environment
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dlpinkstah
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Ms Pinky's Reformed Max-For-Live device

Post by dlpinkstah » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:33 am

A new version of Ms Pinky's Max For Live device (OSX and Windoom) is available for all fan club members to download.

Main new features:

Loop Points:

Ms Pinky's Max For Live device now supports setting, saving, and restoring up to 16 looped segments per audio file. Located between the two Ms Pinky waveform displays is a 16-segment control which you use to select the current loop slot. After selecting the desired loop slot, hold down Apple-Shift (OSX) or Control-Shift (Windoom) and drag across the portion of the waveform (on either waveform display) that you wish to loop on. Then enable the "loop segment" toggle button. Now when the file plays (with or without vinyl control) it should only loop over the selected region of the waveform. Once you've initially specified a loop segement you may refine its boundaries by holding down the Apple (Command) key (OSX) or the Control key (Windoom) and dragging near either edge of the looped segment that is displayed. The loop slot select control is MIDI-mappable. Note that these loop points are currently not tied to loop points created in Ableton's editor.

Cue Points:

Ms Pinky's Max For Live device now supports setting, saving, and restoring up to 16 cue points per audio file. Located beneath the bottom waveform display is a 16-segment control for selecting the cue slot. After selecting the cue slot, specify a cue point by holding down the Shift key (OSX or Windoom) and dragging over the waveform display. A red indicator bar shows the currently selected cue point. While still holding down the shift key, release the mouse and the cue point is set. Recall instantly by pressing the numbered cue slot selector (Which is MIDI-mappable, BTW).
Note that these cue points are not currently tied to cue points set in Ableton's editor.

Popup Track, Scene, and Clip Slot Menus

The Ms Pinky Max For Live device now features pop-up menus which display all the tracks, scenes, and audio clips in your current session. You can select an audio clip to load into Ms Pinky for scratching by simply selecting from these menus. And as before, you can also open a file in Ms Pinky by drag-n-drop from the Ableton file browser.

Auto-load of Highlighted Clip from Session View

The Ms Pinky Max For Live device now features the ability to automatically load the currently highlighted audio clip from the Session View. Select the toggle labeled "Auto-load highlighted clip..." to enable this feature. Note that in order for the clip to be loaded into Ms Pinky, the audio file corresponding to that clip must be located somewhere within the Max/MSP file search path.

With this new reformed device, you can instantiate multiple instances on different audio tracks in Ableton.

For more information, please refer to the new "Max For Live Quick Start.pdf" file included in the downloads.

Here's a screenshot of the new version:

Image

Note: To get this new reformed device to work, you'll need to delete all your current versions of the "mptcfs_sa~" and "uiwaveform" Max/MSP externals that exist on your system and replace them with the newer versions. There is also a crucial new javascript file called "MsPinky_LiveAPI.js" which must be copied into your Max/MSP patches folder (or somewhere within the Max/MSP search path).
Mudo
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Location:...Barcelona...

Post by Mudo » Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:21 am

...

:D


...
...

Mudo means mute person.


Researching new interface paradigms
...
BentoSan
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Post by BentoSan » Fri Mar 12, 2010 1:23 pm

This is awesome, there is just one little problemo i have run into :(

The windows version of the download appears to be broken ! I was really super excited when i saw this post and i am itching to try this out !

Keep up the good work ! Cant wait to get stuck into it and offer some constructive feedback :)
dlpinkstah
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Post by dlpinkstah » Fri Mar 12, 2010 3:24 pm

Sorry about the broken link for the Windoom version :cry:
It was actually just wrong permissions on the archive. Fixed now!
BentoSan
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Post by BentoSan » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:56 pm

Thank you very much for fixing up that download issue quickly :) Alrighty well here are my first thoughts on the matter (havent been using it that long).

The cue points being automatically placed is very cool :) though id like to be able to adjust the amount of cue points easily - so instead i could have 8 cue points and these 8 are evenly dispersed over the track. That way when recording a clip on the fly and loading it up into the buffer there are my 8 cue points evenly dispersed over the track and not just the first half of the recorded clip.

The loop points are cool too but im not really a huge fan of having to draw in the loop points like that. It would be wiked if we could store the BPM information of the track with the cue points and loop points, then be able to throw down different sized loops that are automatically the right size. Ontop of this some loop half and loop x2 size lengths wouldnt go astray either so we can do the classic keep on halving a loop trick (this trick never gets old).

As for the loading of the tracks auto loading the highlighted clip alone seems a bit too much for me, i personally would like it so theres the option that i can select the clip, then press a midi button to trigger that selected clip into the slot as opposed to it auto loading into the buffer. While i am on this note, it appears if your accessing a large library of music (i have about 80gb of mp3's its looking though) doing something as simple as just selecting another clip in Ableton leads to some holdup of the GUI slowing down Ableton as i presume the m4l patch is looking for the file. This is doing this with or without auto-load highlighted clip in session view is selected or not.

My error metric is also stuck on -1 :(

Importing Traktor Pro's cue points and loop points stored in the id3 tags would be sick - this would be useful for serato users too because serato cue points can be converted into traktor pro cue points with an app Native Insturments put out not that long ago. At the same time importing BPM data from the BPM tag in the mp3 files would be totally wicked too working with the loop point stuff.

I could go on with half a billion feature requests, but these are the main ones that are important to me personally at the moment.
dlpinkstah
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Post by dlpinkstah » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:11 pm

Thanks Bento, for the feedback. Lots of good ideas. Most if not all of the new features you're requesting are things you can add yourself. Perhaps you're overlooking the most important feature of Max For Live-- the fact that YOU can re-program it as you like. So get to patching.. :wink:
BentoSan
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Post by BentoSan » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:05 pm

Oh i am certainly not overlooking that fact, thats why i bought mspinky in the first place :D You can be sure in the future you will see a lot of work being done this patch by myself as this is basically the very basic ground work for my next long term djing project - creating my dream djing / live performance hybrid setup. I got sick of waiting for companies like Native Instruments(Traktor) and Serato(Scratch Live/Serato Itch) to make my ideas a reality(even if that means i have to go 3 steps backwards for the time being) so instead i am pouring all of my time into learning max. I'm actually a previous Traktor with the audio routed into Ableton next to Bomes midi translator for better midi support user (this got quite complicated), turning to a completely Ableton / M4L user (essentially for "simplicity" and possibilities sake) - between this patch and M4L it was just what i was waiting for to turn flip over to completely using just Ableton.

Slightly off topic: Those people using midi controllers for mixing should check out this thread on DjTechTools - http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11622
It includes a 3-band EQ, a DJM-800 style filter with completely customized frequency response curves, a Moldover style triggered gating effect and custom volume curve control. Perfectly suited to working with this patch if your are mixing internally with midi controllers like myself. You can grab the beta by emailing me, but it should not take too long to be public(ill start a new thread about that once i am there). Ill have publicly released the patch's as they just need a little bit of work on the UI and they will be done. Eventually these will be small parts of the addons i will work into the mspinky patch in time :)

If theres anyone else out there working on this patch shoot me a PM id love to shoot ideas and knowledge off other people with common goals and develop this patch even further.
dlpinkstah
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Post by dlpinkstah » Sat Mar 13, 2010 12:56 am

Bento- you mentioned earlier that you noticed some slowness when clicking around between different tracks & scenes in Session View. The reason was that the javascript code I'd written to search for the clip files was getting called WAY too often. I've fixed it now, and uploaded a new version of the patch, and the javascript file. Please use the new version, and I think you'll notice less of that lagging slowness when clicking around in Session View. :wink:
BentoSan
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Post by BentoSan » Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:47 am

Thanks for fixing that up, the performance is definitely better

Anyone looking to a way to load the selected clip into a slot without having the autoload feature on i did this quick dirty change of the patch so you can load whatever clip is selected on the press of the button.
Image

Just throw in a live.button where the button is shown in this picture and link them up as shown in the picture.
BentoSan
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Post by BentoSan » Sat Mar 13, 2010 5:24 pm

I forgot to mention that you have to go into the inspector and change the "Bang when transition from" to the both setting.
dlpinkstah
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Post by dlpinkstah » Sat Mar 13, 2010 6:57 pm

Hey Bento-

I noticed from the picture you sent that you're still apparently using the first version of the new patch that I uploaded. Could you please double-check to make sure you've got the very latest version of the .amxd patch file? The way I can tell is the "route" objects connected to the outputs of the .js object... those went away in the newer patch.
BentoSan
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Post by BentoSan » Sun Mar 14, 2010 3:21 am

Ahh,i thought you just updated the JS file and the rest stayed the same - thanks for the info !

Ill grab the new patch and make a couple edits, then throw up a revised patch today that includes a drop temporary cue and move to temp cue marker function. Including the edit i described above :)
joshuanugent
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Post by joshuanugent » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:31 pm

For some reason this updated patch (when I use my Gen 3 vinyl) plays audio files backwards!

Any ideas why this might happen?

When I select the "reverse play" option, it plays them forwards, but the volume is considerable reduced. Maybe this detail will be a useful clue as to what the problem is?

Thanks!
Josh Nugent
dlpinkstah
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Post by dlpinkstah » Sun Mar 14, 2010 6:17 pm

You probably have the left and right stereo input channels reversed. Try switching your left and right input channels from your turntable and it should play normally.
joshuanugent
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Post by joshuanugent » Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:13 pm

thanks! works great now.

I recently moved my audio interface around, and had mistakenly switched the inputs. Good to know that this is how to fix the problem.
J
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