Using DP as an Auto-Arranger
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2017 12:11 pm
I use DP for gigging, audio and MIDI in the chunks, and then a Vrack with the Vocal, guitar, plugs etc. NOTE: I especially love DP control on a little iPad Touch on my mic stand – MOTU, please update the app!
For jamming and solo work, I tried One Man Band, but the editing the arranger files is a black art. So I though I could do something in DP, thanks to DP’s unique split structure
I decided up front that I would have 4 sets of 4 MIDI tracks – drum, bass, pad and keys (some of the bass and key tracks could be minor key) for each chunk. Each track would be a looping 4 or 8 bar pattern. I would want to switch various combinations of tracks via a foot switch.
I have a set of Keith McMillan 12 step pedals. Using a utility called MIDIpipe, I mapped the 13 bass pedal notes to pitch bends 0- 8192, set the receiving synth to +12 pitch bend. To avoid the obvious pitch bend effect, I made several maps with various split points. For instance the E split imitated the bass guitar, the D below E folds up an octave. For a keyboard, a G split minimized the “staircase” pitch bend effect.
For the foot switching part, I looked at expensive MIDI foot controllers. Then I discovered that MIDIkeys has a “Global hotkey” feature – it hijacks the keystrokes mapped to it, even when running in the background. I made a foot switch using an old Dell keyboard. I decided to use the number pad key codes so that I could also use a Bluetooth number pad as a wireless controller.
The next step was to open the MIDIkeys package, and find the keymap xml file, and edit it to respond to the numpad key codes. So now I could generate MIDI notes in the background to be used for control.
As DP does not allow control access to the track mute buttons (outside of the control surface hooks), I decided to use MIDIPipe and Applescript to do the switching. I set up 16 IAC channels and routed the 16 MIDI tracks to MIDIpipe via IAC.
I could then program various foot switches to activate various sets of the IAC DP MIDI tracks in real time. But arrangers allow you to press a button ahead of time, and the change occurs on the downbeat. And, as you probably need to play a bass note on the downbeat as well…
MIDIpipe has a limited implementation of Applescript, but with the help of some friendly folks at MacScripter, I discovered that 8 or 9 properties were “global” ie: could be shared between individual MIDIpipe “pipes”. So now I could set a flag for a function and then have DP send a “trigger note” on a designated DP “control track” to trigger changes on the downbeat.
The biggest challenge was limiting the number of footswitches. I currently have 8 – 5 “mixes”, a major/minor toggle, a drum fill one shot and start stop.
If anyone is interested I could share the MIDIPipe file and other details.
For jamming and solo work, I tried One Man Band, but the editing the arranger files is a black art. So I though I could do something in DP, thanks to DP’s unique split structure
I decided up front that I would have 4 sets of 4 MIDI tracks – drum, bass, pad and keys (some of the bass and key tracks could be minor key) for each chunk. Each track would be a looping 4 or 8 bar pattern. I would want to switch various combinations of tracks via a foot switch.
I have a set of Keith McMillan 12 step pedals. Using a utility called MIDIpipe, I mapped the 13 bass pedal notes to pitch bends 0- 8192, set the receiving synth to +12 pitch bend. To avoid the obvious pitch bend effect, I made several maps with various split points. For instance the E split imitated the bass guitar, the D below E folds up an octave. For a keyboard, a G split minimized the “staircase” pitch bend effect.
For the foot switching part, I looked at expensive MIDI foot controllers. Then I discovered that MIDIkeys has a “Global hotkey” feature – it hijacks the keystrokes mapped to it, even when running in the background. I made a foot switch using an old Dell keyboard. I decided to use the number pad key codes so that I could also use a Bluetooth number pad as a wireless controller.
The next step was to open the MIDIkeys package, and find the keymap xml file, and edit it to respond to the numpad key codes. So now I could generate MIDI notes in the background to be used for control.
As DP does not allow control access to the track mute buttons (outside of the control surface hooks), I decided to use MIDIPipe and Applescript to do the switching. I set up 16 IAC channels and routed the 16 MIDI tracks to MIDIpipe via IAC.
I could then program various foot switches to activate various sets of the IAC DP MIDI tracks in real time. But arrangers allow you to press a button ahead of time, and the change occurs on the downbeat. And, as you probably need to play a bass note on the downbeat as well…
MIDIpipe has a limited implementation of Applescript, but with the help of some friendly folks at MacScripter, I discovered that 8 or 9 properties were “global” ie: could be shared between individual MIDIpipe “pipes”. So now I could set a flag for a function and then have DP send a “trigger note” on a designated DP “control track” to trigger changes on the downbeat.
The biggest challenge was limiting the number of footswitches. I currently have 8 – 5 “mixes”, a major/minor toggle, a drum fill one shot and start stop.
If anyone is interested I could share the MIDIPipe file and other details.
