garageCube

Modul8 and I get on a storm, except in one area, MIDI, it drives me mad. I've worked with MIDI for years but it's got me stumped.

1. When mapping MIDI in M8 is it possible to use parts of all three options (Focus, Position and Layerset & Position) or are they mutually exclusive?
I want to assign a media set exclusively to each of the 4 layers in Bank A.
This will allow me to have 4 groups of individually controllable media stored in such a way as to be easily rememberable.

2. Whilst on the subject of MIDI and M8, a more comprehensive description and explanation of its implementation in the manual would be very useful, especially to newcomers.
Or maybe someone could post an addendum which could cover all the main points.
At the moment, a search on the Forum with a keyword 'MIDI' is not very helpful as there are too many "common words".

I'm hoping that someone can at least give me a few pointers, thank you.

. for me, i found the best way to work w/MIDI in a way that made sense to me was to start creating my own modules.. (Under 'Modules' -> 'Editor' )

. poke around in there to get an idea for what's possible.. check out 'Modules' -> 'Keyword Browser' and you can see all of the main interface keywords... a little digging in the manual and you start to get an idea of how powerful the back end module system can be.

. for example, i wanted a single window to control multiple parameters on different layers... not really intuitive from the front interface. so, i created a module (w/the checkbox 'Layer Contextual' unchecked - so it could access any of the 10 layers) w/four sliders and tied them to layer opacity. then, i added buttons to toggle luma key, transformer, auto color, etc. for specific layers. after the module was working it was trivial to create a MIDI Designer or TouchOSC layout to control them.

. getting deeper into the Python code behind the modules, i created buttons that would select through the media in a particular bank or change sets of parameters

. the Modules forum is a good place to ask questions about how to do things w/modules or ping me if you have questions and i'll help as best i can


. good luck!

-james
(a nomad. )

Thank you James,

I appreciate your advice and will dig deeper into the dark art of module design in the future.
However, for now, I just need to understand the distinctions between the 3 MIDI mapping options.
Is it possible to have invisible mapping left over from previous projects?
Or, It seems that there can easily be an invisible corruption of the MIDI data once it reaches M8.

If I attempt to map different MIDI channels to each of 4 layers (layerset + position) M8 accepts the input and registers it, but will not react to incoming cc data.

Any Ideas?

ridart wrote:Thank you James,

I appreciate your advice and will dig deeper into the dark art of module design in the future.
However, for now, I just need to understand the distinctions between the 3 MIDI mapping options.
Is it possible to have invisible mapping left over from previous projects?
Or, It seems that there can easily be an invisible corruption of the MIDI data once it reaches M8.

If I attempt to map different MIDI channels to each of 4 layers (layerset + position) M8 accepts the input and registers it, but will not react to incoming cc data.

Any Ideas?

. make sure to check out the Module Programming manual - http://www.modul8.ch/documentation/modules_manual/

. to be honest, i never quite understood the distinction between the three modes, hence writing modules.

. make sure you open 'Preferences' and choose 'Key/MIDI mapping' and choose 'Use document mapping configuration' - that will also show you which MIDI devices Modul8 has identified.

. sometimes the mapping doesn't survive a project save, you can search the forums for how people got around this issue - i seem to recall something about deleting your preferences and trying again. also, some foreign language characters can cause problems as well.

. if Modul8 sees the incoming data and assigns it to a control that's a pretty good indicator the MIDI is coming in to modul8.

. if you want to see what module is seeing - open the Module editor and create a new module. click the 'Scripts' tab at the bottom of the window (it's between 'Visual' and 'Info'). then, from the upper left drop down menu, select the third item 'DirectEvent(type,param)' in the window below, type

print type, param

. then press command+options+s (to save) and command+option+r (reload/run)
. press command+option+o to see the output window. anytime you send MIDI data (or type on the keyboard) you will see what Modul8 is seeing.

. another caveat i've noticed over the years is that Modul8 does not differentiate between CC and NOTE messages - so CC 1 is the same as NOTE 1 - that's tripped me up before.


. good luck

-james
(a nomad. )