Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by James Steele »

larrysharp11 wrote:James - no dis on DP intended; though I haven't tried all the major DAWs I suspected that none of them could do this since it's probably such an unlikely feature anyone would want and not worth the programming work.
I understand. I just posted that for the benefit of those who might see the topic in Google search results. :) Sadly, as has been mentioned, Vision and Studio Vision (Pro) is the only DAW to my knowledge that ever did this. And it's been done so many times, but I SO lament its passing. It was a very powerful DAW and its code was quite efficient... ran like a bat out of hell. Not only could it do two different tempos at once, it had a feature called "subsequences" which was great and you could play different sequences on the fly by just typing a key on the Mac keyboard and they sequences would go into a queue and play back in order without missing a beat. SVP was the only DAW that ever came close to tempting me away from DP. Oh.. and then there was the "Mogrify" button! :D
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by Tritonemusic »

James Steele wrote:...it had a feature called "subsequences" which was great and you could play different sequences on the fly by just typing a key on the Mac keyboard and they sequences would go into a queue and play back in order without missing a beat.
That feature was pure gold.
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by bayswater »

James Steele wrote:Sadly, as has been mentioned, Vision and Studio Vision (Pro) is the only DAW to my knowledge that ever did this.
Just a MIDI sequencer, but KCS did this. You could have 99 sequences all with different tempos all running at once, each with their own start and stop times, and looping.
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by larrysharp11 »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Tape loop? Check out the Polar feature! It's in there.
From what I understand Polar is designed for simplifying multiple takes and the like, not doing tape loop imitation. I never used it though so I'd be glad to find out I'm wrong. (I'm an old DP 4 user who jumped to SONAR; now want to switch back to DP 8.)

When I think of a tape loop I'm not just thinking of a loop of tape that repeats, like the old school version of a modern digital audio loop we might import into a track. You could do that, but the interesting stuff happens when you loop the tape from one machine to another, or multiple others, where some record, some playback (as an echo), or both. The physical distance between the machines (linear length of the loop) and the speed of the machine determines the repeat and/or echo times, etc. Every time the audio loops around there's some degradation of the signal, which can be used as an effect, and in any case becomes part of the soundscape. Then you can play new material over the top of what's there, which will add to the soundscape as older material is fading away into noise.

Brian Eno's Discrete Music is an example of what I'm talking about. Anyway, I'd be surprised if a looping feature like Polar was intended to mimic all that. But a plugin that did would be way cool!

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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by larrysharp11 »

bayswater wrote:
James Steele wrote:Sadly, as has been mentioned, Vision and Studio Vision (Pro) is the only DAW to my knowledge that ever did this.
Just a MIDI sequencer, but KCS did this. You could have 99 sequences all with different tempos all running at once, each with their own start and stop times, and looping.
Oh. Em. Gee. They don't make MIDI sequencers like they used to! No wonder when "the kids these days" don't even know what MIDI is. It's all just CC's now; knobs and faders for writing automation or live tweaking. Why would anyone need/want to use MIDI to record tracks anymore?

I guess the DAW makers are catering to the current customer. But I wonder how hard it would be to put that MIDI capability back in (or just in, in the case of DP). I'd trade a lot of the other bells and whistles they are obligated to add in order to increment the version number every couple years to get some really useful MIDI capabilities like this. If MOTU did this it seems like DP would be uniquely positioned as the only heir to these great sequencers of the past and geezers like me would switch to it in a heartbeat. As much as I like DP over any other DAW I've tried, I'd switch to something else if it were the king of MIDI sequencers and did all this cool stuff.

MOTU, are you listening? Put the MIDI back in my DAW! :D Please? :P

Maybe I'm part of a dying breed. It is called "Digital Audio Workstation" after all; MIDI schmidi.

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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by FMiguelez »

larrysharp11 wrote: Oh. Em. Gee. They don't make MIDI sequencers like they used to! No wonder when "the kids these days" don't even know what MIDI is. It's all just CC's now; knobs and faders for writing automation or live tweaking. Why would anyone need/want to use MIDI to record tracks anymore?
Besides what we've been talking about, what else would you like MOTU to implement in the MIDI department?

Just curious.


Incidentally, I actually think MOTU should improve CC or CC-like behaviour in DP. Urgently!!
And for VERY good reasons. For instance: (And I ain't no kid :lol: )

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 30#p431060
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by bayswater »

larrysharp11 wrote:I guess the DAW makers are catering to the current customer. But I wonder how hard it would be to put that MIDI capability back in (or just in, in the case of DP). I'd trade a lot of the other bells and whistles they are obligated to add in order to increment the version number every couple years to get some really useful MIDI capabilities like this.
I think the problem is audio. The modern DAW tried to make MIDI and Audio work the same way. In principle, it's pretty easy to get this sort of function in MIDI, but in Audio you'd need some pretty intense processing to be able to do the same thing.
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by dix »

Replying to the OP (I don't think anyone suggested this yet - sry if it's already been posted):

I don't use simultaneous multiple sequences, but I do have multiple tempos crossing each other often. I simply lock the tracks and change the tempo - keeping the various sections that need to play in sync in folders usually. I'll keep multiple takes of the tempi and switch to the desired section's take if I need to work on a grid for that section. The delays can be a problem since most nowadays sync to tempo and go wacky when a new bpm shows up. I either use multiple delays or set them to time rather than bpm-sync so they don't change as the sequence plays. Hope this helps.
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by larrysharp11 »

FMiguelez wrote: Besides what we've been talking about, what else would you like MOTU to implement in the MIDI department?

Just curious.

f=26&t=50777&start=30#p431060
Maybe nothing. However "what we've been talking about" is quite a bit IMO. Bayswater's description of KCS sounds pretty awesome. Beyond that I could imagine MIDI functions/logic - weird stuff for most people, but fertile ground for experimental composers.

The standard DAW paradigm is linear tracks in sync for the purpose of measure-based Western music. This is great since that's what most of us probably do most of the time. But in the computer there's no reason to be limited to that. What about time-based (no reference to measures or time signatures) MIDI events? Maybe the MIDI spec isn't up to it (I don't know). But I don't see why a MIDI sequencer couldn't be coded to do all kinds of stuff that external MIDI gear doesn't have to know about; i.e. the HW synths would just see note-on, velocity, etc. like always, even though there could be all kinds of voodoo going on computationally to generate that data. Same for softsynths for that matter.

As someone else pointed out, it may well be "audio driven", trying to make audio and MIDI tracks functionally identical. I can see that logic, and like I said it's great to have that choice. But I would love to have other choices too. The audio part of DP8 is so powerful now that I'd be happy if MOTU concentrated on MIDI for the next few versions (or MIDI 2.0 or whatever they wanted to call it; wait was that a thing at one time?...).

Anyway, I assume I'm not the first person to think of or propose such a thing, and that it hasn't happened because it wasn't deemed fiscally viable.

ld
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by daniel.sneed »

DP realtime MIDI plugins could be pushed farther.
For VIs are not all created equal and, IMHO, DP is the place to help about that.

I've already asked Motu for something about note duration.
Still hoping for this to come up someday.
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by rukidding »

Wouldn't the easiest way be to just to use two computers and slave them? I used to do that when recalling old sequences that had plugins not supported.
G
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

If this is something you do a lot, then some thought really needs to go into the process. If it's more of an occasional thing then any of the above will work. Two computers... got me thinking. How about two apps, one feeding start and stop to the other, both running off the same clock, and both with different tempi? You could run two copies of DP at the same time, you know. How they would feed each other might be IAC. Interesting possibility.

Just make a copy of the DP app. Mind the preference files... LOL.
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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by Shooshie »

rukidding wrote:Wouldn't the easiest way be to just to use two computers and slave them? I used to do that when recalling old sequences that had plugins not supported.
G

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Seriously, this is probably the best idea. It's just so easy to do.

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Re: Simultaneous playback at different tempos?

Post by larrysharp11 »

Shooshie wrote:
rukidding wrote:Wouldn't the easiest way be to just to use two computers and slave them? I used to do that when recalling old sequences that had plugins not supported.
G

We have a winner!
Vanna, Tell him about the prizes he's won!

Seriously, this is probably the best idea. It's just so easy to do.

Shooshie
At first I thought this was too kludgey; "inelegant" or whatever. But then I realized I have 3 computers in my studio, haha. I have a PC with SONAR and Komplete on it; I was only going to use Komplete with MIDI sent from DP on my new Macbook Pro, but I can just as easily use SONAR too. Just have to figure out how to start SONAR remotely from DP. Actually, I have a Mackie Control - I wonder if I use the transport control on it and send its MIDI out to both computers if that would do the trick.

This is starting to sound pretty cool. Then I'd have 2 full-blown DAWS to play with. I could use different tempi, time signatures, forms, etc. The only thing they would have in common is starting and stopping!

Ok, this is indeed a great idea. Thanks Shooshie!

ld
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