A simple MIDI controller audiovisual monitor

(and wannabe musical instrument)

By Eyal Gruss

https://eyalgruss.com

Supported controls:

• CC MIDI input
  • 8 sliders
  • 8 knobs
  • 8 solo/mute/record buttons
  • Transport buttons
• State/LED programmatic control:
  • solo/mute/record toggle all
  • solo/record exclusive mode
  • Slider up solo exclusive "one-finger" mode
  • Stop toggles off record button
• Software override logic:
  • Mute override all
  • Solo defeats mute mode
  • Several knob modes with memory
  • Reset knob and slider states
• OSC

Musical instruments:

• Fader Organ:
  • Tracks = notes or samples / slices
  • Sliders, solo, mute = volume
  • Knobs = pitch bend or temporal scrub
  • "One-finger" (slider-up solo-exclusive) mode
• Live looper
  • Record = start / pause recording
  • Stop = stop recording and clear buffer for next recording
  • Play = grab current recorded buffer and loop it / stop
  • Tracks' record-arm = Grab current recorded buffer, assign to track and loop it / revert to last synth
• Finger Theremin [TBD]

Synths / samplers / effects:

• Sine waves
• Detuned saw
• Chords
• Arpeggiator
• Hammond drawbar harmonizer
• Sample slicer and looper
• Paulstretch stretch and freeze (oh yeah!)
• Pitch bending
• Autotune

Setup:

• This codebase has only been tested on Windows 10
• pip install -r requirements.txt
• Code defaults settings in controller.py are for KORG nanoKONTROL2
• In KORG KONTROL Editor:
  • If you have a KORG nanoKONTROL2, you can load the pythotron.nktrl2_data scene file included here
  • Otherwise:
    • Set Control Mode to CC
    • Set LED Mode to External, to allow programmatic control
    • Set all solo/mute/record Button Behavior to Toggle
    • Set transport cycle, set, play, record Button Behavior to Toggle
    • Other transport buttons should be set to Momentary
• Otherwise, if LED Mode is Internal, change external_led_mode to: False
• Put your audio samples in the "samples" folder (dynamically read, so you can also add files while running)
  • files in that folder will be sliced to the tracks
  • files in subfolders will be cyclically mapped to the tracks
• For MP3 support install ffmpeg or gstreamer
• Download the rubberband executable and add to your path
• Issues are to be expected when running inside an IDE.
  • For best compatibility run in a native terminal
  • To run in PyCharm enable: Run -> Edit Configurations -> Emulate terminal in output console

Known issues:

• OSC interface not functional [WIP]
• Autotune not implemented for looper [WIP]
• Need a lowpass filter to reduce paulstretch hiss and improve saws
• No way to run without a MIDI controller
• No way to save and recover the controller state
• My inefficient implementation requires high CPU settings to avoid glitches and clicks (make sure your laptop is plugged in)
• Code needs to be refactored to use classes instead of function factories
• Looper (but not Paulstretch) has significant clicks when pitch bending and scrubbing
• Due to the currently used framework of pysinewave:
  • Controls latency is high
  • Stereo samples are collapsed to duplicated mono
  • Polyphony is implemented by multiple stream which may not be supported on all platforms

I began this because I could not find an existing easy plug-and-play visual or audial monitor for my controller. But if it was not evident, I am using this as a platform to learn more about music theory, digital audio and sound synthesis, thinking about new "metaphors" to allow me, as a non-musician, to create and perform in the audio domain, and working on developing this into a performative musical instrument. In the famous words of Feynman: "What I cannot code in Python, I do not understand."

Ride the tide: a_saucerful_of_secrets_celestial_voices.txt

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