Greetings all. I am in the midst of a heavy project www.indiegogo.com/tronbeatjazz

I am building a wireless controller with a pd based "brain" (ie all the processing is done on the computer. Arduinos take care of getting the data to the computer). But I've hit a roadblock. I can convert button presses I to notes and control their velocity somewhat, but I can't control duration dynamically. How does pute data interpret duration data? I want to be able to hold a key, and blow into the pressure sensor and have those two data streams come together to form a midi note with dynamic velocity data like cc#2.

I thi k I need to construct a midi message from scratch. Make note isn't cutting it unless there is a way to dynamically create duration there.

Thanks in advance,

Onyx

I’m just reading you project idea.

To read a value of a sensor (mic for example) with a PIC (or Arduino)you have to read this data using an analogue input of the PIC (Arduino).
A PIC can understand values DC between 0 and 5V. An outgoing signal of a mic (it has to be preamplified)is a AC signal and can’t be interpreted by a PIC (or at least you get only some random results).
To make a readable signal for a PIC from a mic (or pressure sensor) you need to use an envelope follower.
The Arduino has 8 analogue-inputs with a 10bit resolution, 4,7mV.
Now to send this bites wireless you have to create some protocol with (8bit) bytes to tell Pd the how to interpret the incoming data flow.
In my project I send 3 bytes to Pd. The first byte is a 0X00 value to initiate a switch, the second byte is “result_hi-byte” and the third byte “result_lo-byte” of the PIC.
If the value of the analogue input trops to 0x00 (no mic pressure) a last byte with a number of the input channel is sent to Pd. In this way I can define the duration of a Note, very similar to a Note-Off message of a midi_message.

I made a program for Pd and if you want I send it to you.
To send a value of a button is much easier. A button has only the value On/Off, Yes/No, so with one byte you can define the value of 8 buttons.
In my webpage I have information about envelope followers and other things. www.drumanart.com
saludos Martin

yes please.

the aspects that you speak of seem that they would make sense, if i could understand them. i am so not on yours and Maelstroms level, but i am a quick study.

i think that studying your solution may help me to make sense of these constructs. thank you.

Maelstrom, I just returned home from a weekend gig, so i can now implement some of the things you mentioned and post a reply here soon.

thank you all. i will be presenting this project at a big digital industry conference in europe in 3 weeks! which freaks me a out a bit but also is allowing me to absorb lots of info...because i have to! so thank you all for for your input.

onyx

here is a closer example of what i am trying to achieve.

in the patch, if you click the first toggle box, it will send a note off for note 70 then go back to note 59 and send the note on/off. i'd like this box to be dynamic so that when it receives a number, all the places in the boehm subpatch that now have 59 should be an updateable $ variable and it should send a note off for the existing note,just before the next note begins.

you are right,maelstrom,about using the CC#2 to control the volume. as far as the note on/off's, my options are to do this dynamic thing that i mention above, or to create a seprate note on/of subpatch for each note, which seeme like it would work but it seem very inefficient.

thank you,

onyx

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/bits2notenum.pd

i think i may have solved my note on/off dilema although it isnt elegant. i posted the patch.i simply used the [== ] to generate the proper note ons although i dont know what sending noteoffs for every note, will sound like yet...i'll report backhere shortly.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/bits2notenum.pd

well, the patch i created solved one problem and created another. now i get note ons and note offs but i get note offs for every note at once. so its one note on and 12 note offs. but at least it works somewhat. any insight?

@drumart i checked out your site. very impressed! if you are still offering that patch you mentioned, i would love to get that from you. how ever you would like to do it. here or offlist.

cheers. onyx

@drumart is it possible to get that patch exampleyou mentioned?

I really really do not understand how to declare a variable. i feel really stupid right now because i have two inlets coming into the sub patch with two streams of numbers. but once they are in the subpatch, i dont understand how to get them to represent the $n variables. i keep getting "$n argument out of range". i tried message boxes, float objects, creating abstractions...nothing "i do" works. there is some aspect of declaring variables that i'm just not understanding.. PLEASE HELP!

You might be getting the "$1 out of range" message because you're sending a bang to something that wants a number. You should make sure you are sending a float to the message box with the $1 (symbols work, too, but I don't think that's what you're after). For example:

[bng]
|
[f 59]
|
[$1 0(

will send 59 out of the [f ] object, and $1 will get replaced by 59. So the message essentially becomes [59 0(. Sending it a bang instead will give you that error.

Onyx,

I was curious. I play WX5 also, and when you're playing legato, I would think the wind controller, since you're not stopping your air, has to _automatically_ send a note off when you change notes. Not just a Note On but also a Note Off to the previous note (or set Velocity to zero).

I'm working in a similar direction, but I'm way behind what you're doing. But I was a programmer for many years, so it will help as I get more into this. Good luck in your project. Looks fantastic. If you make this work, you could save me a lot of effort!

I'm also curious about how your efforts to deal with breath control within PD is working out?

• doug

sorted!

a friend of mine who builds wind midi controllers, shared the deceptively simple answer with me. for posterity for anyone trying to generate breath controller midi data;

[inlet] breath
/ |
[ctlout 2] [> 0]
|
[X]
|
[inlet]note# |
\ |
\ |
[f $1] [change]
\ |
\ [sel 1 0]
\ | |
\ | |
\ | |
\ | |
\ | |
[50] [50] (number boxes)
| |
[$1 80( [$1 0(
| /
| /
[noteout]

@dostgard thanks alot. i'm very excited about it.

Pure data is a very powerful wind midi interpreter. i've had it shoehorned in between my wx5 and my synth rack (fl studio) for months now and there is not going back. i have added many new features to my performance system by way of interpreting key presses and breath pressure to turn things on and off and interact with the accelerometer access in touchOSC. once i sorted out the problem with the midi interface, it has been amazing, although you will want to take the latency, in the audio settings dialog, down to between 1-5ms. i have my system set to 1ms, only because thats the lowest i could get it but at that latency, i don't even notice that its there, except for the greatly enhanced amount of features i've programmed into it. every once in a while, the midi will hang up, but if i go to "midi settings" and simply click "apply" i guess it flushes the buffer and all is right with the world once more.