'deus ex maschine' - the ultimate Traktor Pro 2 mapping for Maschine

Cool, well my gig went pretty well last night.

Even though I used a limited mapping because I was using an external mixer, the Maschine controller still ran admirably. Anyway, here's some of the random stuff that's been running through my head.

- I've gone ABCD. For some reason it just makes more sense now. I've stopped thinking that Maschine is emulating a conventional mixer now, I guess

- mapping will be restricted to 2 track decks and 2 sample decks. This is to ensure there is visual consistency across the controls so you can 'feel more at home' with it. Oh but you can switch any deck to 'Live input' on the fly.

- I intend to integrate the Maschine software as closely as possible. So if you've got the inputs on your soundcard, you can run Maschine slaved to Traktor through any deck. YMMV, particularly on PCs using a virtual MIDI cable.

- I also plan to run the output of Traktor through Maschine too, so you can use 'The Mouth' or 'Stutter Edit' on your master output.

- Furthermore, I think it may be possible to 'record and play back' MIDI used to control Traktor's FX into Maschine patterns. Thus you'll be able to record yourself messing about on the FX , tidy up the relevant Maschine pattern and play it back as a one shot to effect your sound later!

- Deck Focus = FX Deck Focus. 4FX will be displayed, one will be linked to each deck. Thus when you select Deck Focus (buttons E-H on the device as A-D is for cue monitor) you will also be selecting that deck's FX.

- Deck Focus = Shift. Some buttons/knobs that are mapped to deck focus will have an alternate shift mapping. The Deck Focus buttons will double as shift buttons so to enable a shift function on any deck you'll just hold down the relevant Deck Focus button

- Right hand controller will always display mixer functions as above. This is because you always need to be able to kill any channel at any time.

- Left hand controller will display one of the following:
- Looping and beatjumping commands: loop size set forward, loop size backwards, loop move, beatjump forwards, backwards, depending on Deck Focus)
- FX Panel (enabling you to choose FX, switch from single to group and operate all controls mapped 1:1 depending on deck focus)
- Sample decks (volume, filter, type etc depending on deck focus)

Brain dump complete.
Laters,
Rob

 

sounds good, eagerly awaiting the tsi and ncm for this....will give you as much feed back as possible...

 

I'm working 7 straight late shifts at the moment. I have 5 days off from next Friday so I hope to have something basic but useable during those 5 days. No bells and whistles or magic but something you can use to mix tunes on your computer at least!

 

Okay, that's pretty sick.

If you've got an audio8 or audio10 you can route your monitor and master outputs through the Maschine software. Put The Mouth on send and The Finger as an insert and you can mash up your signals! Use Macros and you can control the send from the Maschine mapping! You can even preview the FX through the cue channel before you apply them to the master!

 

Starting to put together a manual prior to release:
http://demdj.com/deus-ex-maschine/manual/

 

Just a snazzy little thing I thought of. When you hold down the 'focus deck' buttons in my mapping, the 8 pad mode buttons display a VU of that deck's AFL.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBRlbSrm908"]YouTube - ‪deus ex maschine - VU channel meter‬‏[/ame]

 

Here is a possible implementation of how the lights could work with knobs above the led panels. If I can get them to change back properly afterwards that is.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kf2hZWQ0qw"]YouTube - ‪deus ex maschine - possible LED implementation‬‏[/ame]

 

It has to be Bome's...

...it just has to be. All the problems with lights and leaky modifiers that I'm having can be sorted in Bomes. So Bome's it is.

 

Implemented in Bomes: Maschine type locking/momentary mechanism. 75 controller editor mappings with 3 modifiers reduced to 2 Bome's translations.

Also had a look at using pitchbend for hi-res knobs. Problem: Traktor does not output pitchbend properly. It only outputs LSB (with the values it should output for MSB). I wrote a translation that converted Traktor's LSB to MSB and copied the LSB from the incoming Maschine encoder but the results were not acceptable.

Conclusion: It is not practical at this time to pursue 14-bit MIDI for all pitchbend controls. Instead I will map the tempo knob which has no LCD feedback for fine-dialling of the Master BPM or Track BPM when used with a 'Deck Focus' button.

 

Had a play around with Bomes and sending MCU sysex to Maschine. Quickly realised it is quite easy to get text to the Maschine LED displays:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJhJBoNqg8Y"]YouTube - ‪deus ex maschine - sending text to Maschine‬‏[/ame]

Using this it will be possible to send out info such as loop length, FX selection etc.

 

Addressing the Maschine display...

...OK, so I've figured out the ins and outs of addressing the Maschine display.

- you need to have an MCU control on the knob page of the Maschine Controller Editor. I'm using MCU Buttons for my mappings. They are actually recognised by Maschine as midi notes, for example MCU Button 1 = Ch01.Note.G#-1, and the LEDs work appropriately. I will now be keeping MIDI channel 1 for just MCU controls and move other mappings to different channels

- you need some way of sending SYSEX MIDI commands to Maschine. I use Bome's. You can then send information to Bome's via MIDI and have Bome's send out text to Maschine as a result.

- the MIDI you need to send is in the format F0 00 00 66 17 12 oo pp .. F7

- the F0 00 00 66 17 is the SYSEX header. This tells Maschine that it what follows is for a Mackie device

- the 12 means what follows is addressing the Mackie LCD screen. The screen is basically one long 'scribble strip' which is displays 108 characters (out of a 110 character string). The first 27 characters address the top line of the left display, then there is a character that is not shown. The next 27 address the top line of the right display. The following 27 address the bottom line of the left display, followed by a character that is not shown. And the final 27 the bottom line of the right display.

- oo is the offset (in hexadecimal) from the start of the displaty. So 00 means the following characters are put in the top left of the display.

- Following the offset, pp are the characters in hex that you want to display (I think up to 100 or so bytes). F7 terminates the command.

- F0 00 00 66 10 12 00 48 65 6C 6C 6F F7 will write 'HELLO' to the top left panel

- I've decided to split the screen into 4 panel columns on top and 4 below on each display. The columns are 7 characters long with the exception of the right most character of each which only displays 6 characters. Consequently I will send messages of 6 characters long in a 7 character mask to each 'panel', resulting in Maschine showing text a bit like this:

http://www.mackie.com/products/c4/images/C4_Vpot.jpg

The offset for the 8 'panels' are as follows:

Left dsplay
Top
00 = 1
07 = 2
0E = 3
15 = 4
Bottom
38 = 1
3F = 2
46 = 3
4D = 4

Right display
Top
1C = 1
23 = 2
2A = 3
31 = 4
Bottom
54 = 1
5B = 2
62 = 3
69 = 4

Cheers,
Rob

 

Sweet!

 

Annoyingly the displays only show 26 characters across, not 27. Boo!
---
It's a bug in Maschine. I'll have to use 5 characters per panel until it gets fixed.
---
On another note, if I use v-pots I can also get Traktor+Bomes to change the metering type from 0-127 to -63-+63 on the Maschine controller which would be great if I can convert the endless encoder message to one Traktor recognises. The added benefit of this is of course endless encoders.
---
Had a look at the maths involved and it doesn't look too difficult. I'll have a go tomorrow.

 

Implemented MCU V-Pots > 3fh/41h encoder type translation. Works well. Traktor only mirrors the MIDI input on the output though so it won't work well with the LCD encoders.

I'm implementing them on the 3 left encoders instead, so you'll use these for fine adjust of master tempo and fine adjustment of tempo fader (with the Deck Focus buttons). Oh and you'll be able to browse through tracks in the browser properly.

 

Here's a quick view at the beginning of the LCD screen implementation:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3atMCWKSeBk"]YouTube - ‪deus ex maschine - LCD screen implementation‬‏[/ame]

As you can see, you'll be able to change FX or check what they are set to without looking at your computer screen. I plan to implement similar views for loop sizes and beatjumps too.

 

Also attached is an excel spreadsheet that I made. You can plan out how to fit text onto the Maschine displays with it, calculate the offset of text, and it converts text into decimal and hex ASCII.

 

This is how the FX will look on the screen - if the FX are in single mode, you'll see the single FX on the left. In group mode, they will be listed on the right:-

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ8U5kcyAX4"]YouTube - ‪My Edited Video‬‏[/ame]

 

Fixed: the bug in Traktor that means when you output controls like filter the control on Trakor moves backwards when you move the knob slowly. No more.

 

It can be done...

Edit..(unless i am remembering wrong lol, i am at work an cant test to see.. hrm)

Examine my TSI it well commented, and you will see how to do it.
Here is the link (updated version as of today)