Beans' non-daw software thread

So

I've been on a bit of a rampage lately and have turned up tons of really awesome pieces of software.

Notably:

Nodal

Plogue Bidule

Numerology

PD

I love the non-daw approach these programs offer. I usually end up chaining things up w/ midipipe and then just recording the results into logic or even just some simple audio editor. I find that the lack of finesability leads me to interesting sounds instead of working about shit like extra automation points etc.

Working w/ nodal generating notes, and numerology firing off CC data and rhythms some amazing things happen.

Anybody else work much w/ these programs?

I've also been looking a bit into OSC, but haven't bitten off much yet, as there is a lack of good beginners documentation.

Share interesting things here!

The numerology thing looks interesting.

I've been using Plogue Bidule a lot likely, it's great although a little lacking in being able to design your own interface. Love being able to make my own sequencers, control them with envelopes or whatever.

Check out Iannix too, you can use it with Bidule or anything else that accepts OSC.

  slightlydrybeans said:

I've been on a bit of a rampage lately and have turned up tons of really awesome pieces of software.

 

Notably:

 

Nodal

 

Plogue Bidule

 

Numerology

 

PD

 

I love the non-daw approach these programs offer. I usually end up chaining things up w/ midipipe and then just recording the results into logic or even just some simple audio editor. I find that the lack of finesability leads me to interesting sounds instead of working about shit like extra automation points etc.

 

Working w/ nodal generating notes, and numerology firing off CC data and rhythms some amazing things happen.

 

Anybody else work much w/ these programs?

 

I've also been looking a bit into OSC, but haven't bitten off much yet, as there is a lack of good beginners documentation.

 

Share interesting things here!

im a huge fan of Bidule and Numerology, PD is way over my head though and is far less user friendly than those programs. will check out Nodal, what's it like?

also im curious do you know how in Numerology to generate sequences of CC data, CC#s that you can assign? I just want to be able to automated several parameters at once on a VST synth im triggering with a Numerology monosequencer

would also be interested to hear what you are making with these programs since i know very few people who actually use them. Horse and Goat by Vsnares was apparently made entirely on Bidule, but the album is super wanky and sounds like a random gen patch recorded and unedited hehe

nodal looks like just the thing for the stuff i'm messing with lately, nice one.

  Awepittance said:

also im curious do you know how in Numerology to generate sequences of CC data, CC#s that you can assign? I just want to be able to automated several parameters at once on a VST synth im triggering with a Numerology monosequencer

This is pretty easy and I've had a ton of fun hooking up a bunch of the Numerology Faders (i love how they smoothly interpolate when you click above and below the current amount), XY grids, and Dual LFOs (I love the dual LFOS) to a bunch of the default paramters in Surge. I can essentially make one knob that drastically alters the characters of the sound over time.

Anyways, I'm assuming the missing piece you want is the Param mod. Slap one of those in your MIDI signal path on the way to the VST, and you can select which parameters you want to control and run whatever you want into the inputs. I think it only allows you to edit 2 parameters per mod, but you can add as many as you like. There might be an option now to add more. I'd make a screenshot but I'm at work with no Mac.

  acid1 said:

  Awepittance said:

also im curious do you know how in Numerology to generate sequences of CC data, CC#s that you can assign? I just want to be able to automated several parameters at once on a VST synth im triggering with a Numerology monosequencer

 

This is pretty easy and I've had a ton of fun hooking up a bunch of the Numerology Faders (i love how they smoothly interpolate when you click above and below the current amount), XY grids, and Dual LFOs (I love the dual LFOS) to a bunch of the default paramters in Surge. I can essentially make one knob that drastically alters the characters of the sound over time.

 

Anyways, I'm assuming the missing piece you want is the Param mod. Slap one of those in your MIDI signal path on the way to the VST, and you can select which parameters you want to control and run whatever you want into the inputs. I think it only allows you to edit 2 parameters per mod, but you can add as many as you like. There might be an option now to add more. I'd make a screenshot but I'm at work with no Mac.

thnks for the tips, will play with these techniques right now. If you have a chance to take a screen shot at some point i would be very appreciative.

edit: just saw what you're talking about with the smooth moving faders when you set the glide time, pretty nice little feature, simple but effective. and holy crap the Modulation seq is pretty cool too, i feel like an idiot for not going in that advanced tab more often

  kaini said:

nodal looks like just the thing for the stuff i'm messing with lately, nice one.

have you tried out Keykit and/or the old Cycling74 program 'M'?

I heard about M, but never tried it. Is it interesting?

Never heard of keykit. will google.

awesome post! Cant wait to attempt to try these progs out.

Too bad numerology is mac only, looks really interesting.

  slightlydrybeans said:

I heard about M, but never tried it. Is it interesting?

 

Never heard of keykit. will google.

they are both pretty interesting for doing generative music, not very easy to use though. Nodal seems so far to be much more user friendly.

thanks guys, great post.

been enjoying nodal and numerology a lot lately.

crap. i wanted numerology, but its $110.

my 21st century entitlement wants everything for free.

PD is the platform in which msp was designed. max/msp is alot more user friendly, so to speak.PD is free though.

http://www.livelab.dk/tablet2midi.php

i have some old version installed, i didn't even know there was this fancy new one here, let's give it a try shall we

ok just picked up numerology. holy crap there's a lot of possibility in that one. can't wait to plug my vocals into it.

first five minutes:

first_sequence.mp3Fetching info...

  42Orange said:

Too bad numerology is mac only, looks really interesting.

yeah :(

  Awepittance said:

thnks for the tips, will play with these techniques right now. If you have a chance to take a screen shot at some point i would be very appreciative.

This shit might be obvious now but I thought I'd post anyways.

So here you can see a basic LFO and a param mod right below it (btw after about the first week of numerology I just leave the advanced tab open). You can see in param mod I already set it up to talk to Surge and selected the parameters.

Here is the back, notice I have the LFO's output going into the Param Mods inputs. If I had multiple modulation sources all going to the same CV input they get added together.

Cheers

yep. The ability to add all the cv data is what really makes it interesting. Thats the way you can get really complex results with very simple input.

bing! Ya I need to buy it as I only have teh demo and can't save anything.

Found this the other day. FUCKING odd.

http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/

basically it's a speech synthesis program for linguists. You can automate all the parameters of the human vocal tract including around 20 anatomical parts, the lungs, muscles, lips ect.

Or you can just pitch analyze existing audio and resynthesize it as pitch pulses.

sounds like this. (listen for vocally sounding bit)

this is a good thread. numerology looks freakin' excellent but godamn stupid mac only grah!

anyway, the reason why i'm posting is to ask if there are any programs with a feature similar to one in keykit, where you could give it two melodies/drum patterns, and over a pre-determined amount of measures, it would morph from one to the other. then you could save as a midi file afterwards. i might have to grab keykit again, but i remember it used to crash a lot on xp, so i'm not sure if it'll be stable in vista, heh.

basically, i'm lazy with my drum programming and want to have one drum pattern evolve into another automatically and smoothly over a few minutes. then throw the midi file into reaper and use it with ezdrummer.

haHA! Numerology is my revenge for the entire of mosca free plugin thread.

I'm not really sure if I've ever heard of something that could do that. NOt sure it's possible really. You can't really 'fade' midi data as it is only on-off. your best bet would be to build some layerable midi parts and construct the beat like that.

or just learn to not be lazy. :)

no, it doesn't 'fade', it takes the first pattern, and the last pattern, and during the course of say, 32 patterns it slowly re-arranges the first pattern until it becomes the last one.

and like i said, it's possible in keykit, but i don't really like the interface.

  modey said:

no, it doesn't 'fade', it takes the first pattern, and the last pattern, and during the course of say, 32 patterns it slowly re-arranges the first pattern until it becomes the last one.

 

and like i said, it's possible in keykit, but i don't really like the interface.

that sounds really interesting. i've never done any windows stuff on my mac, but that alone makes it tempting.

yeah keykit is a great program for wacky midi manipulation. too bad the interface hasn't been updated since 1997 or something silly like that, heh.