Convert PureDSP results to CC?

[mesayre]

Hi everybody,
I'm trying to do some resynthesis of an instrument by piping its recorded sound through some physical modeling synths to see what kind of wacky noises I can get. But to do this well, I really need to be able to track the pitch of the sound I'm putting in so I can feed it to the synth as an input.

DP's built-in pitch analysis seems to track it quite well, but it looks like I can only get the data out in MIDI-note form (by cutting & pasting the segments into a MIDI track). I'd really like the data to be continuous so I can more expressive control. If I could get the actual pitch detected (the pitch line, not the pitch segment) from DP and make that a pitchbend or automation value, I'd be a happy camper. But I don't see how that's possible.

FWIW, most of the stuff that's around seems to have one limitation or another that prevents me from implementing a simple pitch tracker on my own without quite a bit of grunt work. Max/MSP doesn't support creating plugins anymore (unless you roll your own). Synthedit is 32-bit only. Bidule doesn't have all the math operations that would make it easy to do. PureData is...challenging to deal with.

I don't need this to happen in real time, and DP's built-in analysis seems like it'd be great since it's also very easy to edit the results. Is there a way to do this with DP?

Any thoughts out there?

Happy Saturday,
Mike

[David Polich]

I decided to answer your question
with another question, as I am a long
time synth programmer and it's how I
earn a living.

And my question is this - why are you
trying to feed pitch-only information to
an input? Or are you trying to feed
audio into the input of another synth,
and which one exactly?

You can certainly feed audio input to
another synth, thats easy. But that
isnt resynthesis. It's actually just
treating the synth you're "feeding" as
a big effects plugin. Resynthesis
requires the synth to process and
analyze an audio waveform and then
resynthesize it as new audio output.

Please state what modeling synth or
synths you're trying to accomplish this
with, and perhaps you can further explain
the end result you want as well.

[mesayre]

Hi David,
Thanks for the reply and the good questions.

One of the synths I'm trying to do this with is Reaktor's Prism. The instrument includes a nice, easy-to-use fx version so getting audio into it isn't a problem at all. The synth works by stacking bandpass filters at user-controllable intervals and feeding them back on themselves, so it needs to know the pitch to get the correct overtones. The input sound simply serves to excite the filters, and the feedback comprises the bulk of the output. In this case, the goal is to manipulate the harmonic series - perhaps adding inharmonic overtones to make the sound more metallic/bell-like, or accentuating the odd overtones to make it sound more hollow. I'm also messing around with Tassman's various resonators (bars, beams, pipes etc), to see what kind of stuff I can get. But they also require a pitch input.

MIDI notes can work for this, but are a bit unrefined. The input for this whole thing is a brass instrument (French horn), so there's a fair amount of natural variation in pitch over the course of a sustain. Manipulation of the pitch is part of playing the instrument. I'd like to preserve that so I can bend notes and otherwise keep it as expressive as possible.

I suppose another possibility is to import the recorded audio to Alchemy, where I can pretty much do whatever I want to it. But that's a little clunky from a workflow point-of-view, and I thought DP's built-in pitch tools might provide a more elegant solution, since the data is already there.

Cheers,
Mike

[David Polich]

Well in my opinion you're stuck with the MIDI notes. If you want to know what pitch a segment of audio is in DP, you simply look at what "line" on the pitch "staff" it is closest to, follow over to the left and see what that staff line's pitch is according to the keyboard on the left side of the pitch editor window.

Melodyne allows you to click on a "blob" (segment of audio) and see exactly what it's pitch is.
There may be a similar feature in DP's pitch correction but I'm not aware of it...I use Melodynefor all pitch-related tasks.

I have Reaktor Prism. As far as I know, in my experience of using it, you can use it as a synth OR as an effects plug-in and run audio through it that way, but using at as an fx plug-in is not the same thing as using an impulse (oscillator) within the synth itself to excite the resonator paths. I see from your reply that you are
indeed using it as an fx plug-in, meaning your source (the french horn) is another VI. So
trying to provide "exact" pitch information to the plug-in is moot - you can't do it. The pitch
is determined by what MIDI notes you're triggering from your MIDI controller. If what
you're hearing at the output of Prism is whack - well, it's just whack. That's what happens.

To explore physical modeling of real-world instruments, and to create instruments that don't
actually exist, you need something like Tassman. Prism is sort of a poor man's Tassman.
Logic's Sculpture also does physical modeling of instruments, but of course you can't use
Sculpture in DP.

[mesayre]

Hi David,

In response to this...

So
trying to provide "exact" pitch information to the plug-in is moot - you can't do it. The pitch
is determined by what MIDI notes you're triggering from your MIDI controller.

...you actually can, or at least you could if you had a continuous data stream. When used as an FX plugin, the root pitch of the bank of filters is set by the master tuning values - which can be automated (both coarse and fine values). And if you disable the MIDI-note triggering so the gate is opened by just the audio input, voila, tunable resonant filter bank. I have made this work using a hardware controller via MIDI learn. Just not with the actual pitch data.

What's bugging me is that the raw pitch data is right in there in the track - DP draws a lovely little line showing me the pitch of the audio - but I can't get to it. That's not really MOTU's fault since this isn't the intended use of that tool. But I thought if I could it might offer an easy way to experiment. Ah well.

I've been on the fence with Tassman for a while - I like the idea of it, and have done some cool stuff with it in the past, but the interface drives me bonkers and it hasn't seen a major new version since the first time I used it 10 (!) years ago. I don't currently own it, and for those reasons I'm not really psyched to invest in it right now at least not until there's some news about version 5. Even with Tassman, I'd still need some way to get higher-resolution pitch data into the synth to be able to do what I'm thinking of.


Thanks,
Mike

[mesayre]

Oh, and to clarify, the source is actually a recording of me playing my French horn - hence the need for more granular pitch-tracking. Horn is my primary instrument, so I'm experimenting with ways to wring a bit more sonic variety out of this instrument I've spent a couple of decades learning to play in an expressive manner, instead of trying to create something expressive with my ham-fisted piano-playing .

[Shooshie]

I've been on the fence with Tassman for a while - I like the idea of it, and have done some cool stuff with it in the past, but the interface drives me bonkers and it hasn't seen a major new version since the first time I used it 10 (!) years ago. I don't currently own it, and for those reasons I'm not really psyched to invest in it right now at least not until there's some news about version 5. Even with Tassman, I'd still need some way to get higher-resolution pitch data into the synth to be able to do what I'm thinking of.

I've had Tassman4 for many years, and it had become my favorite synth until we went to 64 bits, and it didn't. I've been waiting on it to catch up, as I'd really like to have it back.

Tonight I tried running it in 32 bits, but found that it no longer recognizes my audio interfaces. None of them, not even the Mac's internal speaker. I could not figure out any way to make it even acknowledge the existence or an audio out port, much less use it.

One of my favorites now is the AniMoog for the iPad. Seriously, this little synth is about as analog-ish as they come. I haven't figure out yet how to run it from MIDI, or even if it can be done, but I enjoy playing it live on the iPad, and you can hook up the iPad to the Mac to record the audio.

I just took a look at AniMoog, and it does appear that you can set up MIDI In through Setting, but that probably requires some kind of interface which I don't have yet.

AAS will be receiving an email from me tomorrow when they arrive at their computers. Hopefully someone will answer it and tell me if they ever plan to update Tassman4 to 64 bits. One can still hope.

Shooshie

[mesayre]

Shooshie - there may yet be hope for a v5 of Tassman. Through this entire year they've been slowly releasing new versions of their smaller synths; Ultra Analog, String Studio, etc. I read somewhere that it took them so long to because they were moving to a totally new codebase/platform. Not sure what they're porting it too, but the new stuff looks quite a bit slicker than the old. They also said that Tassman was taking the longest because it's their most-complex product, which makes sense. Here's hoping we see it by year end, cause I'd love to have something like that in my toolbox.

Later,
Mike

[Shooshie]

Shooshie - there may yet be hope for a v5 of Tassman. Through this entire year they've been slowly releasing new versions of their smaller synths; Ultra Analog, String Studio, etc. I read somewhere that it took them so long to because they were moving to a totally new codebase/platform. Not sure what they're porting it too, but the new stuff looks quite a bit slicker than the old. They also said that Tassman was taking the longest because it's their most-complex product, which makes sense. Here's hoping we see it by year end, cause I'd love to have something like that in my toolbox.

Later,
Mike

That's good news. I do hope to see Tassman4, or would it be Tassman5? I don't know if software companies are going to be able to keep up with Apple's rate of change. They need to put their feet own and say to Apple that they've got to keep older software in the loop.

The rest of us have to tell Apple to make their stuff work. I'm appalled as I try the Magic Trackpad on more and more software. On some apps — Magic Birds (game) for example — it's almost not usable. It used to be incredibly good on every app I tried with it.

Ahh.. change. It gives us hope, it gives us cool toys, and it takes away every shred of our security!

Shooshie