Midibox SEQ v3 editor

MIDIbox SEQ
1

I haven’t built a midibox seq myself yet, but I’ve been preparing myself by reading the forums and the ucapps.de website since a few months. I’m planning on building one in August/september when I’m back home.

I think this project (and all others btw) is awesome and thanks to TK, everyone can make additions to it. I thought perhaps an editor would be a great addition.

I had following options in mind:

  • Basically everything you can change through the hardware buttons should be changeable with the software version.

  • Drum map mode where you can click buttons to enable that step (like a TR808, but with all instruments on one page, no need to switch instruments)

  • Event viewer/editor on a bigger screen

  • ARP/Pattern editor

  • Can read directly from midibox and/or can handle sysex dumps from the banksticks

  • …

Some kind of KARMA editor for the midibox seq :wink:

I have programming knowledge, but not in the MIDI or hardware controlling area. A good point to start at would probably be by choosing the language in which this application would be written. And who’s volunteering to help? I hope there are some experienced programmers around who want to help. There are some open source midi programs which could be extended. Perhaps we should even think about creating a (VST) dll that converts data from seq to the native program which lets the user make the changes and put them back? There are a lot of options.. Let’s consider the easiest and cheapest (time/money) one :slight_smile:

Keep up the good work TK!

2

I might use something like that, provided that the PC was passive (could catch fire and explode and the seq would keep going), didn’t mess with the timing or the physical interface, and wasn’t a VST… I’m trying to get away from coding windoze though, so I’ll beta test, but development is definitely out of my scope.

3

Welcome!!!

If you build a working version of this you will be my best friend!

This is something i am looking for a long time.

Can i excpect v0.01 next week :D:D:D:D:D

Thankx i hope something nice will come out of this.

4

I think we should find some people first who want to contribute to this project since I probably won’t be able to manage all this by myself. If we split up tasks, it’d be easier to realise things in a faster way.

5

I think we should find some people first who want to contribute to this project since I probably won’t be able to manage all this by myself. If we split up tasks, it’d be easier to realise things in a faster way.

All i can provide is webspace and money.

But i guess that is not what you are looking for.

6

If we split up tasks, it’d be easier to realise things in a faster way.

Rome wasn’t built in a day

(but it fell in one)

(spot that lyric and win a lollipop)

7

Thanks Twin-x, but I already got enough webspace. Money however.. just kidding :wink:

First let’s see if we can build a team. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish this on my own while doing 2 jobs, working 60kms away from home, my wife and our cat :wink: And not to forget with all my other hobbies like music, satellite, linux routers/storage devices and all kinds of geeky/nerdy stuff I tend to get out of time very quickly. Nevertheless I’d like to start by calling out to people experienced with programming for midi based applications.

I read that MIOS currently supports a dump from the banksticks/memory, but I understood it resets itself after giving the dump through sysex. (Is this still functioning like that?)

My preference would actually go out to a real time midi based visual editor. I didn’t have time yet to look into the MIOS/mbseq code or the sysex implementation but what I can tell is we can certainly make use of and/or extend the CC/NRPN functions in a way to be able to control it in real time through the software. Mix this with sysex and we got our software (actually it’s a bit more difficult than it looks like :p)

I also noticed there is an LCD message command through sysex, so extending that command to also return data that’s currently on screen would make us capable of displaying the data on screen as well. 

This would be the first (and easiest?) phase, just to mimic the hardware functions through the software.

In the meanwhile I could start designing the screens for:

  • drum mode (x0x style, but more like the doepfer schaltwerk layout so you don’t have to switch between instruments to see what’s going on)

  • pattern mode (reason’s matrix sequencer style: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul07/articles/reasontech_0707.htm) - only disadvantage is that it’s a monophonic seq in this way

  • pattern chain mode/song mode

  • event viewer/tracker mode

  • i probably forgot some other things

After that, we could start experimenting with all the stuff in the mbseqv3_sysex_implementation. It’s cool that we can read out and write patterns etc. directly from/to the machine. Perhaps the sysex debug commands will even provide us everything we need already.

I’d prefer this application to be compatible with as many OSes as are available, so I don’t know if we should use java or c. Is it correct of me to think that java might have latency issues since it is being used in a non native instruction set? I think it also would be way too bloated if we used java, but what other options do we have to be able to maintain access to MIDI ports in an OS? The code would be GPL’ed of course. We could try in ABAP, since that’s the only language I’ve been using for a while to program :stuck_out_tongue:

But first of all, I should start building my mbseq v3 and get to play around a bit with it :]

I’m very sure this will drop like a bomb on synth/seq/workstation manufacturers. Imagine all the possibilities.. drool

8

I pledge my time for testing if it helps, that’s about all I could do but I would love to see something like this get off the ground!

9

I can offer some of my scarce spare time to work on the app GUI, need high quality photoshop/illustrator stuff done?, I’m your man :wink:

And yes, please make it multi platform, as soon as I have a working mbSEQ I’ll be able to test on the Mac side.