Midwife - A souped up MIDI Out module!

[Mark]

I've made this in Synthmaker today in response to another thread here about program changes in the Electribe EMX etc.

If you want to read the thread it is here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9352&start=0

Midwife.jpg

Link to dll here:

http://www.box.net/shared/rpiz1vg3y6a91quiy5do

Anyway, this is something that I always wanted the MIDI out module to be and then some. So, if you have some hardware that you want to control then this is for you. It does patch changes (using both MSB and LSB unlike Orion's MIDI Out), it has some hardcoded CC messages and more interestingly selectable CC destinations (bottom row) - click on the red numberand type to choose the destination. They are currently set to cutoff, resonance, amp attack, amp release, modulation and breath (according to MMA specifications).

MIDI output select is top left, whilst next to that is a button to resend all data if required.

There is also the ability to output notes from the piano roll to the selected channel and it should act as a MIDI channel converter too, i.e., anything MIDI that is received by it will be converted to the output channel selected on the GUI.

Looking forward to hearing:
a) it works
b) further suggestions
c) I like it
d) any problems (well, not looking forward to problems per se, just please report if something doesn't work as expected).

Things to do:
Presets
MIDI learn
'Panic' button
Maybe an audio in to selectable MIDI CC out
Lots of other stuff

[Mark]

Forgot to add, you should find it in your VST instruments menu.

[ufo]

Awesome - very generous of you (selfish???) to put the effort into this creation.

I have no need for it, so I wont test/feedback, just wanted to acknowledge your community spirit.

Peace

[Kriminal]

good work Mark, no need for it myself either, but looks like (as you said) what the MIDI Out module should be. I/We did bring this up a while back (when i had an external synth) but it seems to have been overlooked.

anyway, well done mate

[chrisqhq]

Woooow!

Seems to work fine with all of my synths that can recieve CC messages!
It would be great if the plugin would also react to movements of the knobs on the synth.
I will definetly use it for my DSI Evolver. It is not able to send CCs and therefore it is impossible to assign CC numbers to the knobs of Orion's Midi out without any inconvenient workarounds.

Great work! Thanks!

[ThehakkeMadman]

I´ll test all functions tomorrow. I´m really looking forward to this, thanks again

[chrisqhq]

One more suggestion for Midiwife: Could you put some small editable text boxes under the respective assignable knob, so that you can enter the information which parameter is edited here? I have a very bad memory for numbers and so it would be great if you could enter what you assigned here.

[chrisqhq]

oh, and I just found out that CC numbers and knob positions are not stored here.

[Mark]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

@chrisqhq: the plug in won't remember anything about the previous state since the preset system is yet to be implemented. I hope to do that this weekend. Remember that I only tarted making this two days ago, so is essentially an alpha version atm. I really appreciate you testing it and can see you're as excited as I am!!

The text boxes are a great idea. That will be easy enough to do and will be done today. Keep the suggestions coming!

I have audio-to-MIDI working, but that might be better served in another plug in. What do people think? It should be great for converting audio in to breath controller data, for instance.

Ultimately, though, I'm hoping this spurs Richard on to make the native generator better!

[Teksonik]

You should get Kriminal to make a nice skin/knobs for Midwife..........

I haven't hooked up my hardware in ages but I can see this being very useful to those that do......

[Mark]

Fnarr fnarr!!

[Teksonik]

Had to go to Google for that one.........

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fnarr

[ThehakkeMadman]

I was short at time the past days, but now I´ve just checked "my" plugin
It works very well so far and I am looking forward to the "beta" (for now, I would be pleased if saving would work).
Some further suggestions: naming the CC-knobs (as mentioned here before), customizing the number of CC-knobs (or at least a number of 15 CC´s would be enough so that you don´t have to insert too many midwife´s for just one synth to access all functions, but just ONE module for ONE synth would be GREAT either you could store presets then for every single synth), fully implementation of the (Song) Event-Editor, making midwife select the right bank and patch (pattern) when song is opened (this should be an "one-time-event", otherwise there could be problems when pattern-based sending bank lsb etc.

So far, awaiting the new version impatiently

[Mark]

I'll see what I can do, but glad that it's working for you. The text box has been implemented. Still working on the preset system. I might need to reduce the size of the knobs if we're to have 15 knobs, although I guess I could 'hide' extra knobs in tabbed pages. Would there be an interest in implementing RPN/NRPNs as well?

[chrisqhq]

Great, I'm really looking forward to the new version