Numerology - a new user

[TWINSTATES]

First thoughts.

Wow.

This is a bit like discovering ableton live for the first time for me.

2nd thoughts, oo-er, there a re a few things I am having problems with. . .

Firstly there is no undo feature. So you gotta be really really careful!

Secondly, I have made a bunch of sequences and am trying to arrange them into a song using the arrange page, it could do with an easier way of drawing the presets in (why not just mouse click a la live or acid or something, the behaviour is a little erratic i find.)

Thirdly, am i being stupid here or what - I can't find a way to scrub through the arrange page, i.e. I start a track then 5 have to play back from the start again, or where i stopped it (i checked the little prefs box).

Also, can I draw automation for parameters onto the arrange page 9am guessing not at the moment) I have yet to get into the automation and lfo side of things, have been having too much fun making techno music this afternoon!

lastly, I want to make sequences in num, then do a rough layout then export the midi to live, is this possible? Audio i understand we can do but midi export (along with parameter modulation would be awesomely good) If anyone can give me a heads up as to the best way of doing this I would b greatfull

I must say i think this is an absolute winner. It's basic in some places (and this is coming from ableton which is super basic anyway) but actually tha makes you focus on the music, and the sequencing thing forces you to think in a whole different way. I now understand the music I make much much more thanks t this wicked lil appplication.

Ans the best part is I haven't even hooked it up to my modular and Volta yet. . .

[jim]

First thoughts.

Wow.

This is a bit like discovering ableton live for the first time for me.

2nd thoughts, oo-er, there a re a few things I am having problems with. . .

Firstly there is no undo feature. So you gotta be really really careful!

Secondly, I have made a bunch of sequences and am trying to arrange them into a song using the arrange page, it could do with an easier way of drawing the presets in (why not just mouse click a la live or acid or something, the behaviour is a little erratic i find.)

The basic idea is to cmd-drag to select an area, then pick a preset from the dialog box. I've considered various alternatives, but nothing so far has really stuck. Perhaps just having a "+" button on the track is the answer: hit the plus to add a preset block, then you have to cmd-click to pick the preset...

Thirdly, am i being stupid here or what - I can't find a way to scrub through the arrange page, i.e. I start a track then 5 have to play back from the start again, or where i stopped it (i checked the little prefs box).

It's just got a basic locate for now -- cmd-L to bring up the dialog, or use the item in the Timeline menu. Adding a "drag to locate" is on my list.

Also, can I draw automation for parameters onto the arrange page 9am guessing not at the moment) I have yet to get into the automation and lfo side of things, have been having too much fun making techno music this afternoon!

No track-based automation yet, but you can use really long Modulation Seqs to get similar effects.

lastly, I want to make sequences in num, then do a rough layout then export the midi to live, is this possible? Audio i understand we can do but midi export (along with parameter modulation would be awesomely good) If anyone can give me a heads up as to the best way of doing this I would b greatfull

Only realtime-MIDI so far. There have been several requests for some sort of 'render' function, so I'm looking into that.

I must say i think this is an absolute winner. It's basic in some places (and this is coming from ableton which is super basic anyway) but actually tha makes you focus on the music, and the sequencing thing forces you to think in a whole different way. I now understand the music I make much much more thanks t this wicked lil appplication.

Ans the best part is I haven't even hooked it up to my modular and Volta yet. . .

Awesome, thanks!

Cheers,
Jim

[koalaboy]

The basic idea is to cmd-drag to select an area, then pick a preset from the dialog box. I've considered various alternatives, but nothing so far has really stuck. Perhaps just having a "+" button on the track is the answer: hit the plus to add a preset block, then you have to cmd-click to pick the preset...

I was thinking about this some more the other day, and the obvious answer is drag-and-drop, but of course the presentation of that isn't quite so simple.

Perhaps, if the 'stack' was selectable, there could be a 'preset' window/column on the right-hand side that would display the presets for the selected stack that could then be dragged onto the timeline.

Or, if you have the ability to use splitpanes (where two windows are split by a movable divider), the perhaps the timeline and mixer windows could actually be combined into a splitpane.

Just thoughts.

[TWINSTATES]

Hola,


Re. Midi.

Would the best solution not be to have the arrange page as the midi files (a la ableton) that you could then export, or ideally drag from num to Live or logic or whatever.

I have set up Num so that it sends midi to live but I have noticed that the midi timing is a bit all over the place.

A render presets as 'midi' feature would to my mind make a lot more sense. Obviously I would hope that it's not actuall midi untill its exported or if it is that it's sample accurate!

A few days in and this is still one of my favorite purchases of the year so far!

[jim]

Re. Midi.

Would the best solution not be to have the arrange page as the midi files (a la ableton) that you could then export, or ideally drag from num to Live or logic or whatever.

I have set up Num so that it sends midi to live but I have noticed that the midi timing is a bit all over the place.

A render presets as 'midi' feature would to my mind make a lot more sense. Obviously I would hope that it's not actuall midi untill its exported or if it is that it's sample accurate!

A few days in and this is still one of my favorite purchases of the year so far!

Since a stack can generate much more than MIDI, including audio, CV signals and ParamMod messages that can be routed to other stacks, just storing MIDI in the timeline would not work all that well.

re: MIDI timing, tell me more about your setup; i.e. standalone vs. ReWire. There is a small but unavoidable amount of jitter in the timing of MIDI messages when running in ReWire mode. A small amount of quantization clears that up, as does hosting plugins in Numerology (when possible).

[begin technical mumbo jumbo]
In order to send accurate MIDI messages from one app to another, you have to timestamp it with a special 64-bit value, which specifies when the event should occur. Unfortunately, the base values needed to generate these timestamps only come from the relatively low-level CoreAudio callbacks used when generating audio. So Numerology gets them running standalone, but not in ReWire mode. Instead, I use some clever trickery to generate them on my own. The generated values are pretty good, but not quite as good as the real ones.
[end technical mumbo jumbo]

Regardless, if you're seeing more than say, 1 ms of timing jitter, or more than 10ms of timing delay, then let me know.

And, of course, having some MIDI rendering functions would help resolve this.... (as will some other things I'm working on....).

Cheers,
Jim

[TWINSTATES]

Hi Jim,

hd a few things on recently so hven't been able to get that much time with numerology.

I have noticed that there is an email from you for bug checking the arrangement page bug (some parts not sounding) does that need running still?

Also I have just noticed that 2.2 looks like it's on it's way, cool stuff. Is the render feature going to be in this release?

Am looking forward to some numerology fun this evening!

[jim]

I have noticed that there is an email from you for bug checking the arrangement page bug (some parts not sounding) does that need running still?

Still working on that one -- trying to juggle several projects this week...

Also I have just noticed that 2.2 looks like it's on it's way, cool stuff. Is the render feature going to be in this release?

MIDI or Audio?

Cheers,
Jim

[TWINSTATES]

Hi Jim,

OK then i'll run the bug reporter thing then over the weekend.

Btw I have found a workaround, it only seems to happen if you start the project from the very start. If you start from bar 2 for example it's fine.

Don't know if that helps?

As for rendering, I was referring to Midi. Sorry for not being clear!

[jim]

Yup, that helps. MIDI rendering is on the list, but I don't have a priority set for it yet.

Jim