posted 09 June 2007 14:04            

It's been a while since I've posted here. I've been working on a front-end interface in Max/MSP which will be a hub for controlling Kyma and other hardware. The main impetus was wanting to be able to reassign controllers - either midicontrollers, pen controls, virtual reality gloves, the wii controller when I get one, etc - and be able to rescale the controllers or invert them, multiply or add them to each other, save them in presets, etc, and change all of these things on the fly in performance. I can send the same controller to more than one piece of hardware, so I can use the pen simulaneously for Kyma and the Nord G2 engine, for example, which helps the sounds to meld and be controlled together in a single gesture. It's working out well, and I'm about at the point that I want to go back and modify my old kyma sounds to work with my new system.

Here's the problem: all my old sounds use quite practical hot value names, like !Frequency, !Scale, etc, but what I need now is generic names like !Fader1 or !Toggle2. I'm communicating with Kyma via the flame~ max object, and the controllers are being remapped to those generic names via a custom global map. In my VCS's I'll rename the faders with intelligible names and then make notes about what the actual generic names are for each, so my VCS's will look more or less like they did before (though I'll be looking at them less, as the Max program will usually be in the foreground).

So first off, I'd like to be able to do a find a replace somehow in my sounds so that I can choose a hot value like !cutoff and replace it with !Fader14. I tried opening the files as text in SimpleText but can't make much sense out of it and figure out what the search and replace terms should be. But even if this were to work, I think my VCS would be messed up and would have to be recreated from scratch? Would I would really like, and I guess this is a feature request, would be able to change from one hot value to another across all the objects in which it appears, and have the VCS as it currently is be preserved (ie the fader in the VCS would be in the same place and have the same settings, but would have the new name). I think this would be useful for a lot of other people as well, because sometimes you just want to be a be change your mind about what a hot value should be called, but don't want to have to deal with the hassle of fixing up the VCS again after.

And of course, it would also be nice to be able to do a search within a sound for all the places a particular hot value appears, and have a list appear that would show you all the objects that use it - I've always wanted to be able to do this, and maybe it could be implemented at the same time...

Let me know if you know of any way I can do even part of this, because I have a lot of work ahead of me...

thanks,
Phil

posted 09 June 2007 15:55            

Also, sometimes I just feel like changing a !HotValue name to something more relevant and have to search within lots of parameter fields to identify and change each instance. There is the find and replace command, but it only works WITHIN individual parameter fields. What we need is a command that will search and replace !HotValue names, or any other word or combination of words from the ENTIRE Prototype or Sound...

Find and replace (within Prototype)
Find and replace (within Sound)

Something like that would be nice... Can this be implemented?

posted 10 June 2007 08:21            

It has been hanging out there on the Wish list for while (http://www.symbolicsound.com/cgi-bin/bin/view/Wish/WorkflowEfficiencyGeneral) so maybe some more people chiming in would help evalate it in proirity.

posted 10 June 2007 10:58            

So first off, I'd like to be able to do a find a replace somehow in my sounds so that I can choose a hot value like !cutoff and replace it with !Fader14.

There might be an easier way to accomplish what you describe here. Instead of using a GlobalMap, how about doing the following? For the sake of argument, let's say that you are sending Kyma cc101 on channel 1 from David Kiers' Max object and you want that to control !Freq in one of your old sounds. In the VCS, you could control+click on Freq and choose Channel 1 and Controller number 101. To avoid having to keep paper notes to remember the generic name-to-Kyma name association, you could use the VCS Editor to change the label from Freq to Freq(Ch1-cc101).

posted 10 June 2007 20:45            

quote:

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Originally posted by SSC:

For the sake of argument, let's say that you are sending Kyma cc101 on channel 1 from David Kiers' Max object and you want that to control !Freq in one of your old sounds. In the VCS, you could control+click on Freq and choose Channel 1 and Controller number 101. To avoid having to keep paper notes to remember the generic name-to-Kyma name association, you could use the VCS Editor to change the label from Freq to Freq(Ch1-cc101).

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When I first read this, I said to myself "Of course! How could I be so stupid?" But actually I can't seem to be able to get it to work.

I tried using the default global map, but had no luck - it would work with the !cc## hot value names, but not with midi controllers that have been directly assigned to randomly named hot values. I double checked to make sure the midi controllers would work if sent directly to the midi in port of the capy, and they did. I also tried deleting anything in the global map that referred to a midi controller to make sure there were no conflicts, but no luck there either.

I must be doing something wrong.

posted 11 June 2007 14:36            

quote:

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Originally posted by SSC:
please update your Flame firmware to the latest non-AVC version on the tweaky

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That's it! Brilliant - that just saved me many hours of work! I guess I had developed that work-around with the global map after having tried it before with the old firmware.

Also just downloaded the new software update. Looks like you've been busy. I haven't updated since October and there have been several updates in the meantime. I'm glad to be back working with Kyma again after doing my Max project!

thanks,
Phil