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Midi Plugins (VST MIDI Instruments and fx)
There are four MIDI plugins: XYPad, 8LFOs, DrumSeq and StepSeq.
These were the first plugins I ever made and as such aren’t great and need rewriting.
I used some, how shall I put it... "idiosyncratic" methods when hacking these together
and was still learning the VST SDK, so apologies if these do not work as expected.
Different VST hosts handle MIDI from plugins in different ways - some don’t support it at all!
Different versions of hosts also handle MIDI differently - e.g.
Cubasis 3 used to accept MIDI from VSTs in the way it accepts MIDI from outside
(e.g. a midi keyboard) - it would send it to a central buffer and then send it to the
selected MIDI track. However, after v. 3.0r2, Cubasis no longer sent this stright away
so you couldn’t have one VST triggering another.
XYPad allows you to control two MIDI ccs at the same time.
8LFOs provides, obviously, 8 LFOs that send on any MIDI cc with various waveforms,
syncing and control options.
DrumSeq was made to provide a simple grid edit drum pattern sequencer to make my life
a bit easier in Cubasis (kinda fallen by the wayside now that Fruityloops works as a
VSTi!). Still handy for controlling drum sampler VSTis like Computer Music's SR202.
StepSeq started off just for creating simple MIDI cc patterns - e.g. for filter
hocketing. However, it kinda bloated and got out of hand cos I kept adding options
and functions. So now it can also send midi notes (either a set note or you can use
a little piano roll :-) ), you can select which patterns are active at any one time
and there's a pattern playlist.
There are two versions of each plugin: one works as a VST instrument and the other as an effect.
Using either version means you sacrifice one of your VSTi or VST effect slots, but you can always
record the midi output once your happy with it and unload the plugin. Exporting the bank will also
save the plugin state - so you can reload it all later if needs be.
NB - all plugins windows only I’m afraid.
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In Development - Scrubber (old alpha version)
I made Scrubber for doing the time-stretching "Dread-voice" thing you hear in a lot
of old jungle and drum and bass. Of course, cos it's me it kinda got out of hand and
bloated with options and functions - syncing to tempo, nasty granular stuff and a
whole bunch of ways to control the playback with the mouse in the waveform window.
Now I’m working on a new C++ version that will be much better written and have lots
more functionality, with the intention of leading on into further future projects.
It's still a long way from finished and I'm still so I'm afraid you're on your own
with this old alpha til I get round to finishing it.
Known issues - the file-browser is far from ideal - it'll show up every file,
but you can only load .wavs. The waveform display is pretty shoddy (it kinda needs
a zoom function to make the looping useful) and the file info isn't saved with your
song or the scrubber programs (so it won't remember which .wav file you had loaded
the next time you load the song up :-( ) - sorry 'bout all that - when I get a
useful C++ version finished I’ll put it up here.
Instructions:
Load a .wav file using the browser on the right. It should show up in the waveform
window. If you want the file to loop, click the "loop" checkbox in the "Mode" box
and you can set the start and end points by dragging the red locators - left-click
in the strip above the waveform window (where you can see the red locators tabs) to
set the start point and right-click for the end point.
The bar immediately underneath the waveform display shows the current playing
position in the wave.
The large gauge underneath that controls the playback rate - in Grains mode this
is how quickly the audio willl play back, in non-granular mode this controls the
pitch of the audio.The two spinedit boxes underneath this gauge set the maximum
playback rates (the left sets the max rate for playing backwards and the right for
forwards). clicking stretch to tempo will sync the maximum rate so that the looped
section will play for one bar. Quantise play rate sets it so that the playrate gauge
can only be set to full, 3/4, 1/2 or 1/4.
The granular mode is uses very basic granular techniques - very small segments (grains)
of the audio file are taken and played back. The Payback rate gauge controls how the grains
are taken from the original file - at slower playback speeds, they are very close together,
so the audio will playback slower with the original pitch. The size of the grains is
controlled by the parameters in the "Grain Params" box. The spacing control sets the space
between each grain when they are played back - slider at the middle means one grain starts
after the previous ends, further to the right and there is a gap between the two, further
to the left and they will overlap. The pitch slider controls the pitch of the grains - so
it's possible to control the rate at which the audio plays back (with the playback rate
gauge) and aso the pitch of the actual grains (the top of the slider is fulll, original
pitch, the bottom will cause the grains to play back in reverse).
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VST plugin technology by Steinberg.
VST is a trademark of Steinberg Soft- und Hardware GmbH.
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