Loopex 1.1

Update of my loop based software.

Loopex is a all propose looping machine written in Max/MSP. Loopex can cut/copy/paste/pastemix/delete any regions loop to any buffers.

see demo:



get it here: loopex-1.1.zip

Sync that DR-55

We are now on the working on producing the show from our new album. one of the songs uses arps, midi sequence and a boss dr-55 drumbox. If we want to make that song, we need to sync it with midi gear; the dr-55 is almost 30 years old you know...



The be able to do that, I looked at the external port that comes with the device:

DBS: on this port; we can see a analog tick at each 8ppq. Since the internal clock can be ridiculous fast, I've change it to a 48ppq!!!

CSQ: I don't know what this one does, it doesn't seems to output anything. according to what I've seen, it is supposed to be an output port for other roland gear (CSQ stands for Computer SeQuence). maybe this port is an input port, good for slaving the device ???

Foot switch: I've heard you can slave a Dr-55 with the foot switch, but it only seems to start/stop the sequence. quite useless to sync midi gear to my opinion.



Now, to be able to sync that device with midi, I wrote a simple max/msp application that reads the analog signal and then transform it into midi 0xF8 clock sync status byte. not perfect but it does the job. 30 years old and still young, like me???

max patch

The worlds ugliest midi controller

Okay, this is my first electronic project. Maybe more practicing with the Dremel would have been better...

I needed a small midi device that I could put on my Nord Wave keyboard to control my Nord G2 Modular Rack on stage so I don't have to bring a computer to simply change the volume/change preset.

The arduino was a perfect fit for this since it can easily work with midi. The midi input is quite straight foward, a 6n138 octocoupler does the job. I took this advice and it worked perfectly: led midi controller. The arduino is pretty fast, I never lost a midi "byte" and it does repeat midi message without problems.



The only problem is that at first, I was trying to filter the midi message in the same function; if I got a midi 0x90 (note on) message, I was using

while ( Serial.available() == 0 );
byte2 = Serial.read();
while ( Serial.available() == 0 );
byte3 = Serial.read();

That solution didn't worked, I was loosing midi byte message and my filter process was waiting for a message that was already sent by the synth. The only solution I found is to process midi message with a buffer, so the Serial.available() was always executed in the arduino loop() function.

Now this code works. Now I really look amateur on stage.

source code

simple xpath for python: minixpath

To me, if XML is still alive today it's because of xpath. xpath in it self was able to resume a complex XML search into a single string, making XML finally easy to parse.

Still today, full xpath spec is difficult to support on many language; sadly including Python. While xpath is pretty powerfull, sometime you just need xpath to get node with a filter name. But still, 'sum', 'count' is cool, it does add the complexity and support for the expression parser.

Since Python doesn't come with a native xpath support, I wrote a simple xpath parser. It was written with the "minidom" concept in mind... Again, to my opinion, it does 80% of what you need for a xpath parser does: find a node...

Source: http://le-son666.com/asb2m10/minixpath.py.txt

gnome do

Something was missing in gnome and it was the 'dock' station... I know, OS X done it before, but when you get use to the docker, you just miss something when you come back to linux or windows. The docker is not perfect, but you get what you want 90% of the time and this is why I miss it.

The gnome-do project, did a nice implementation of the docker to gnome. It's not a copy, it's an upgrade. It's a mix between Quicksilver and Dock. Clever idea. And to my humble opinion, it's better and more stable than AWM.

http://lifehacker.com/5145499/gnome-dos-smart-dock-takes-app-launching-to-another-level
http://do.davebsd.com/

Kudo to the gnome do team.

Max Runtime Helper

For those who don't have the money to buy Max/MSP and want to run my patches, here's runtimehelper.maxpath. It is a simple Max/MSP utility patch that can be run with the Max runtime where you can configure your sound card, transport bpm and use quickrecord to record the max output to a wave file.

Loopex Version 1.0

The initial release of loopex is finally done: loopex.zip.

Loopex is a simple Max/MSP looper but with a simple wave editing feature. You can cut/copy/paste/pastemix any selection to any loop. To me, it's more like a jam tool where you can record live some parts and loop/cut/copy/paste them afterward. And because it comes with editing functions, you don't have to open the loop wav file to an external editor.

Now, I will have time to make my own organ beatbox machine. I still have to time till the LinnDrum II

screenshot

Making windows disk image; with Linux.

Backup is good!

Doing a backup for an OS is either complicated (Windows) or useless (Linux). Sometime, it's good to keep a Windows image of your system that is fully working so if anything goes wrong, you can go back to a previous version. The best and free option out there is Linux with ntfsprogs.

Simply boot with Ubuntu livecd and then install ntfsprogs :

$ sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

Taking an image (where /dev/sda1 is your windows drive):
# ntfsclone --output - --save-image /dev/sda1 | bzip2 > windows-sda1.bz2

Writing an image:
# cat windows-sda1.bz2 | bunzip2 | ntfsclone --overwrite /dev/sda1 -restore-image -

Voila, you get your cloning system. And while the system is cloning, you can surf the web and do your work. Much better than any other "commercial" image system to my opinion.