2017

~ Paul Oord

Emigration

Since February 2017 and onwards we have been very busy with our emigration to El Hierro. In the meantime no recordings were made at El Hierro. Only some technical adjustments to my software. After August we settled on El Hierro and continued our work.

Technical

I did a lot of experiments with Sforzando and Sforzatron with .sfz and .sf2 soundfonts. By using multiple instances of Sforzando with Sforzatron in Ableton Live you are rather flexible, but the sounds sometimes get stuck. Not ideal for reuse.
After a lot of research, I succeeded in using the native Sampler and Simpler of Ableton Live. Ableton is nice but some parts have a steep learning curve… First I had tried Max for Live but I didn’t like it at all: too less flexibility, poor quality, problems with saving settings, crashes, and of course all that spaghetti…, with tiny connectors… Dropped.

Now I can edit and save all sampler settings in Ableton Live, and many sampler settings are adjustable with MIDI CC messages that can be generated with my software, be it by motion detection or by using a button. From now on only I deal with Ableton and my own software.

After the emigration, when my loyal iMac, now 11 years old, safely arrived here, a lot of additional technical adjustments have been made to the program. Here a compilation.

Implementation of screen regions

  • each region is connected to a different midi channel.
  • position and dimensions of the regions can be changed on-screen.
  • every region, and so every channel can be assigned one or more different instruments or samples in Ableton Live.
  • further individual refinement of the properties of individual screen regions, e.g.:
    • select midi note range.
    • send pan messages.
    • send note velocity messages.
    • send cc x, cc y, cc size messages, size factor. These can be interpreted in Ableton as pitch, volume or velocity, pan or more.
    • send MIDI program change (mainly for external synthesizers).
    • select how x and y coordinates are interpreted.
    • play more simultaneous notes.
    • repeat the same note.

Global issues

  • use only the largest detected contour.
  • cross areas (let notes sound or not if you move outside an area).
  • let multiple areas simultaneous play if the contours overlap more regions.