Next Beat-Lookup Thread

OK, I've been messing around with some new ideas that are coming out of the old BeatLookup. One is a new of doing scratching that's sequenced and that leaves the "record" in the spot it would be if you'd actually scratched it, but always locked to the nearest 1/16th note. Kind of like a scratcher combined with beat-shift, but sequenced - it's kind of cool.

The other thing is that I think I can make the whole thing into an interesting effect plug-in, which would, I think be most excellent in Live, where all of the beat loops could be loaded in live, and then all of the beat-lookup effects could be applied to them. Before I do this, however, I'm asking for info from you guys, since I am, as mentioned in the other thread, very lazy.

1. Is it possible to route midi to *effects* in Live 4 or live 5. Note that I'm not talking about recorded automation, I'm talking about routing midi to effects in real-time. You can link to a post here if you know of one.

2. Is the same thing possible in Cubase SX2 or 3?

Thanks,
Chris

 

Do you mean MIDI from host to Reaktor back into host.

 

No, it's like this. You're in live, in the grid-view (the non-arrangment view, whatever they call it). You add a reaktor delay as a plug-in to a "column" ("channel", "track"). I have a keyboard with sliders going to the midi-in on the PC. I want to have the midi cc's from those sliders go to knobs on the reaktor delay.

If I have multiple reaktor instances on multiple "channels", I want the same midi to go to all of them, or perhaps be able to control each one independently.

Thanks,
Chris

 

I would assume so... I don't have cubase. I don't know live too well yet and i havn't figured out a way to route 1 CC to multiple ins (I've only been trying for the past five minutes though). The only program I'm certain you can do this in is old trustworthy fruityloops or FL studio as they call it these days...

 

Hi Chris, this is indeed possible in Ableton Live, however the user cannot route midi directly to a send effect - which is why you need to set up tracks which you bus the sends to. It's quite easy.
Although the pic I included may illustrate this very well I'll just describe the goings-on a bit;
The first track is your midi input - this is where your controller tweaks arrive. (Note that it has no output selected, this is because we're going to tap the ccs from the receiving tracks.)

To the right are the effect tracks - send audio to them from the sound-sources you want to process (sound-source isn't shown in this pic) - These two effect return tracks are then routed to individual midi tracks containing reaktor as a vsti - which allows you to select its midi input directly.

 

This sounds extremely cool! My main work-setup is reaktor loaded into Live, so I'd be enormously interested in this! This means doing all the playback trickery to a record-enabled table or a core-array, right? That shouldn't pose a problem to a wiz like you, methinks

 

i think its an awsome idea. i have a livesampler that i did which i use for this purpose, and it is sweet with Live.

i second machinate's method, with the FX routing for live. that way you can use the send knobs, controlled via midi, but still have midi controlled FX.

 

This is good to know, I'll play around with it and keep you guys posted on progress - thanks guys!

 

Yes, you can assign a MIDI track to the FX and control the FX in real time (you can "activate" many MIDI tracks at the same time).

 

Yes, this is very much possible in Cubase.

In Cubase whenever you load a MIDI aware FX (and Reaktor is one of them), you see them as possible output destinations for MIDI tracks. All you need to do is create a MIDI track, set it's input to the MIDI controller and it's output to Reaktor, enable Monitor or Record, make sure the contoller and the MIDI track are set to MIDI channel 1, and have at it!

 

You can also do things like this (use Reaktor to control FX via midi) in Plogue Bidule. E.g., in Bidule, I use my jambient Radr to control eight copies of SpinAudio's 3D effects. I also got this to work in Live, but it was a real pain there.

I think there's a whole class of applications waiting to be done with this. I've always been thinking about some kind of AI or ALife thingy that would muck with VST parameters one the basis of what you are doing, and then use the output to influence further mucking.

Re. Clist's idea: spinning is changing pitch, damping etc., why not do something that changes other parameters as well, e.g., when I spin really quickly from high to low speed, the sound zips from left to right, or starts disintegrating, etc.

I want tactile sound--you push it around and it crumbles, reassembles, etc., like a school of fish disturbed, etc.

 

C-List:

Thanks for all your work on BeatLookup. I just got Reaktor, and have been going through all the posts in the previous couple of threads. I've tried out BeatLookup version 5, and it works great.

I'm working with Ableton Live 5 with Reaktor as an FX plug-in. I sample my turntables and keyboard and loop live to create new tracks. For example, I'll have 8 layers consisting of scratches and sampled synths. These are all routed in Ableton to one track. Is there a way to use BeatLookup to have the same effect on this track?

Thanks in advance for you reply, and many times over for your work on BeatLookup.

 

That's the plan for the next incarnation of it, but right now it only works as an instrument, not an effect.

- C

 

you coulsd use the beatlookup as an FX plugin. thats how i used to use reaktor in ableton live 2, back before it used instrument plugins. back then, you had to use sequenced stuff in ableton, i personally loved using DSQ-32 or my sine_rave with abletons session view. anyways, you can use the live record part of beaatlookup as the effect part, and have the samplers work as normal.

 

OK kiddies, here you go. This is a beat-lookup that works as a realtime effect plug-in. It does such charming things as allowing you stop and scratch audio in realtime. beat juggle and beat-jump. Obviously if the incoming sample changes when any effect is on (including if you have the beat-offset set to anything other than "0") unpredicable results will occur as the effect is essentially acting as a delay. Note that it also works as a real-time pitch-shifter.

Enjoy!

http://www.semaforte.com/reaktor/files/BeatLookupEffect-v6.zip

- CList

 

...oh yeah, I should mention that to use it as a VST you'd delete the sample-player instrument and connect the AudioIn to the input of the beatlookup module. The sample player instrument is just there for stand-alone demo purposes.

Additionally, you need to be able to route midi events to the plug-in in your host, or else it won't do anything!

- CList

 

This is totally awsome - the scratch sounds wicked!
Is it possible and\or what's the best way to put add it into the previous version? Playing a party with Version5 tommorow - cheers!

 

It's effin great! I've been working on something similar myself, but this is so much more efficient 3% as oppossed to 12% for mine.
I'm gonna be digging around in this for quite some time.
Keep up the good work.

 

Mr. cList
i just started playing with the new version today and i was wondering if the fx sends still have a function. i tryed to trace back the connections but i don't understand the system you used to send the on/off buttons. i'd like to put a little delay or reverb box but i'm at a loss on how since all my attempts have failed.
right now i'm putting this beatlookup (you should come up with a cool name for this thing, like "viscera" or something) and pluging it into limelite to add to the real time playing and it sound great.
thank you so much for the work

 

The previous version does all the same things already for each channel, so I guess I don't understand why you'd want to add this one to it.

- CList