Arturia Keystep Sequencer - Ableton workaround?

Hey I managed to do a lot of work on the thing over the weekend. I only tested it in Live, but it worked well enough to record my weekly beat.

You have to make a new MIDI track with an instrument that receives midi from the sequencer track, because adding PdSequencer turns the existing track into audio - this is because of the VST format or something.

Anyhow you can grab the files here - https://github.com/djlehm/pd-sequencer/releases/tag/0.1 - download the source code and if you are on OS X, the VST that comes with it is good to go. Otherwise check out the Camomile documentation for generating plugins.

I would definitely love some feedback if anyone ever uses it!

Will the VST not work on Windows 10 then?

Thanks for your efforts!

  On 4/9/2018 at 12:38 PM, Polytrix said:

Will the VST not work on Windows 10 then?

 

Thanks for your efforts!

I am pretty sure it will. The PD files should be universal, you just have to follow the Camomile instructions for Windows VST. Unfortunately I can not test if they work because I have no computers with Win 10.

It literally seems to be as easy as get the Camomile files from here, copy CamomileFx.dll to the pd-sequencer folder, rename CamomileFx.dll to PdSequencer.dll.

I have to say though that now I was mostly focusing on getting the thing itself to work properly, but I also feel that there could be some improvement in how it integrates with Live (or other DAWs)- i.e. right now I am pretty sure it can be used without having to look at the UI, especially if you can map some visual feedback capable surface to it, but there may be some snags that could be worked out.

Should probably also post it on PdPatchrepo as well...

  On 4/10/2018 at 2:55 AM, thawkins said:

I have to say though that now I was mostly focusing on getting the thing itself to work properly, but I also feel that there could be some improvement in how it integrates with Live (or other DAWs)- i.e. right now I am pretty sure it can be used without having to look at the UI, especially if you can map some visual feedback capable surface to it, but there may be some snags that could be worked out.

 

Should probably also post it on PdPatchrepo as well...

After seeing that youtube video I had the exact same wish, and then I found this thread and subsequently joined watmm. Thanks for making this vst Trent, really cool to use already. After trying it for a bit, I was able to map all the functions to my controller. I think one additional change would be awesome.

As far as I can tell the sequencer doesn't record note length, so if I hold a chord for 4 steps, It will quantize that midi information into just 1 step. 

It would be cool to record at 1/8 speed, for example, and hold some chords for 2 sequence steps, but then add quick chords for only one step. 

If I knew how to code this I would try to help, but I don't. 

Hey! First of all thanks for using my stuff, I am really glad someone thinks it is useful. :)

With regard to note length, it's a difficult thing for this kind of sequencer. Even the Arturia documentation says that if you want to have one note span more than one step, you have to use the tie functionality. This was a bit too difficult to wrap my mind around in Pure Data, but I did try to make it possible to manipulate note lengths per step and globally.

Basically in the UI there is a vel/gate toggle - if the toggle is set to "vel" (the default), all the sliders correspond to note velocities per step. If the toggle is set to "gate" the sliders correspond to gate times (sort of...). There is also a global gate multiplier slider and a gate time slider on the bottom. So for each step, the note length is actually calculated like this:

note length = step gate time x global gate time multiplier x gate time

My idea was that this should be good to cover all scenarios:

1) if you want one knob to mess with all the note lengths, you map something to gate time

2) if you want to do drones or something with a really long step, then you push the gate time multiplier to the limit (this basically increases the effective range of the gate time slider)

3) if you want some notes to sound longer than other notes, you set the individual gate times (and also adjust the global parameters if it does not sound right)

(sorry if the explanation does not make perfect sense, I am not at my computer at the moment so I can not check the real thing)

This is how it should work now (if I remember correctly). The next time I get a chance to work on the sequencer, I'll try to think about that tie functionality a bit more because right now it does not actually seem very difficult to program.

Oh and by the way if you find some bugs or weird things happening, let me know for sure and I will try to see what's wrong. :)

Thanks for keeping this going!

I think it's incredibly kind of you to put the effort into making something that others desire and can use.

Thanks! I enjoy doing stuff like this because I get to build a (sort-of) instrument that people can actually use, and I get some practice coding stuff in Pure Data. Win win as far as I am concerned. :)

Hey man, so I've managed to get this working in Live.

Can I ask a big favor? 

Would you be able to make a quick video tutorial on how to actually use it in practice? Like a quick video tutorial?

It looks good to me. Well done!

  On 5/24/2018 at 1:22 PM, Polytrix said:

Hey man, so I've managed to get this working in Live.

 

Can I ask a big favor? 

 

Would you be able to make a quick video tutorial on how to actually use it in practice? Like a quick video tutorial?

 

It looks good to me. Well done!

Uhh well I have never actually made a video before so I know it won't really be "quick" for me in any sense, but I will try to think of something.

In any case I have been planning on doing some work on the thing when I have time, so hopefully I will do a tutorial thing as well when I get around to messing with it.

Thanks!

Or just a series of images with idiot proof guidance? I'm referring to myself as the idiot there!

Thanks again. I plan to use this vst on my upcoming debut full release.

Yeah a written tutorial is much easier for me as I don't need to mess with video editing and set up cameras etc. which would mean that I spend most of the time learning how to make a video. :)

I think hopefully I will have some time this weekend to look into it. There's a lot of projects that suddenly have sprung to life so I am trying to juggle things.

Ok so I did some work on the thing today. Updated the Camomile version on the OS X VST and fixed some other stuff. You can grab the new version here: https://github.com/djlehm/pd-sequencer/releases/tag/v0.2

And luckily it turns out that making a video was easier than I expected, so here is a quick demo jam I made of all the features (well I forgot the "add rest" part). I just used a Simpler instrument and Live's computer MIDI keyboard.

this thread has given me GAS. my midi keyboard just crapped out on me, and i really would love a keystep, but they're out of stock everywhere! wtf