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Sending CC messages from DAW

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Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby nimaranjbar » Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Dear all,

Im a newbie, have browsed the entire forum and did not find an answer to my question henc. Well I think I did but alas, the solution did not work in my case. Hence starting a new thread that I can call mine:)

Say I have one staff in notion and I have entered midi notes (manually using mouse clicks), and have assigned a vsti to it.
Now I want to send, say, cc 1 (modulation ) from Logic x (I draw this in hyper edit) into notion's staff that I just mentioned. Logic and N4 are both in rewire mode, and the playback is perfectly in sync.
The midi output of logic track (which contains cc1 data) is connected to midi in of Notion. The cc1 though has no effect on the performance of the Notion playback:(
Another test: In the same configuration mentioned above, I send midi note from LX to N4 and I am supposed to hear the N4 instrument, right? Well no. I hear noise as long as Echo Midi in is checked and if unchecked, no sound is being heard whatsoever.
In short I do not know how to send midi messages from a daw into notion.

Any advise here? Many thanks.

Best,
Nima
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Re: Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby Johnny » Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:19 am

Hello Nima,
_ _ I do not think Notion will receive real-time MIDI data "except" when it is in record mode. As a "Rewire Slave" I also believe "Notion will only follow the start, stop, seek/cueing and tempo of the Rewire Master". Also if Notion has tempo data on it's staff timeline a timing battle issue will occur between the master and slave applications. For tempo I might! export the Notion file as a MIDI file and import it into the master Rewire application and delete any note data in order to avoid timing issues. The Rewire Master drives tempo then.

Again I do not think Notion will receive any data unless recording one track at a time. It then will only record "note on/off, controller and possibly pitch-bend and after-touch data to a "Sequencer Staff". No controller data will be recorded into a conventional notation staff.
Hope this will answer your question.
I also hope more Rewire and multi stave real-time recording and controlling options will be added to Notion in the future.
_ _ ,Johnny
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Re: Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby Surfwhammy » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:03 am

nimaranjbar wrote: I do not know how to send midi messages from a daw into notion.


You mentioned Logic Pro X (Apple), so you are doing digital music production on the Mac, which is excellent!

My primary Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application is Digital Performer 8 (MOTU), but I also have Logic Pro X and a few others that I use primarily for doing YouTube video tutorials to accompany my posts to this FORUM; so I tried to discover the rules for Logic Pro X, but after a few hours I decided that I need to do a bit of reading to make sense of the virtual maze of parameters and rules . . .

Then, I switched to Digital Performer 8 and got it working in a few minutes, which is one of the reasons that I use Digital Performer 8 nearly all the time . . .

Nevertheless, I am somewhat confident that it will work with Logic Pro X, but Logic Pro X tends to make everything overly complex, so it will take a bit of work for me to make sense of it . . .

I did a YouTube video tutorial to show how it is done with Digital Performer 8 as the DAW application, and this is done in a ReWire 2 session where Digital Performer 8 is the ReWire 2 host controller and NOTION 4 is a ReWire 2 slave . . .

DP8 N4 MIDI Recording Tutorial ~ YouTube video tutorial

THOUGHTS

ReWire 2 is a very complex real-time interapplication communication technology, and it does a lot of work, as do the ReWire 2 host controller and ReWire 2 slave applications, so it is not particularly unusual for there to be an occasional odd behavior, at which time the best strategy is to exit or force quit the applications and to start over with a new ReWire 2 session, noting that for this reason saving your work frequently is advised . . .

Among other things I am third-party ReWire and Rack Extension Developer, and while I cannot provide any proprietary information, this is the link to the public overview of ReWire from a developer's perspective, and as you can see it is doing a lot of work . . .

ReWire Technical Overview (Propellerhead Software)

Sometimes you might need to click on transport buttons two times, and as noted sometimes you just need to exit everything and start a new ReWire 2 session, all of which I consider to be expected behaviors . . .

Everything works nicely on the Mac, and as a general rule I do ReWire 2 sessions in two-hour blocks, where after two hours, I end the current ReWire 2 session and then start a new ReWire 2 session; and I save my work frequently . . .

You can work in NOTION 4 when it is running as a ReWire 2 slave application, and this includes adding new instruments; writing new music notation; editing existing music notation; and so forth . . .

If you are using Digital Performer 8, then you want to insert four empty measures at the start of your NOTION 4 score and to set a marker in Digital Performer 8 at the first beat of the fifth measure, which is what you will use instead of the transport to move to the start of the song, which is necessary because moving all the way to the first beat of the first measure in this scenario causes Digital Performer 8 to crash, but other than this odd behavior, everything else is fine, noting that this does not happen with Ableton Live 9, Logic Pro 9/X, or PreSonus Studio One 2.6.1 Producer . . .

For reference, Ableton Live 9, Logic Pro 9/X, and PreSonus Studio One 2.6.1 Producer tend to use the same metaphors for ReWire 2 in the sense that they want the ReWire 2 to interface to an auxiliary channel strip and then for the auxiliary channel strip to send the audio to a track for recording, which is fine with me, except that Digital Performer 8 does it directly without the intermediate auxiliary channel strip, which for me is vastly easier since it requires me only to know what type of input I want to use and what type of output I want to use, where for ReWire 2 I just need to tell it that I want to use a ReWire 2 channel pair from NOTION 4 for the respective stereo track ; and for MIDI I just need to tell Digital Performer 8 where I want the MIDI sent, all of which is very easy to do . . .

Doing the audio part of ReWire 2 is easier in Logic Pro X compared to Logic Pro 9, but at present doing MIDI is not making so much sense to me for the scenario you described . . .

Regarding MIDI control change (CC) messages, NOTION 4 only supports a limited subset, so there is not so much that you can do in that respect, but you certainly can record the MIDI notes in the scenario I demonstrated in the YouTube video tutorial (see above) . . .

I started with AudioDesk (MOTU) over a decade ago, which is the lite version of Digital Performer, and then upgraded to Digital Performer a while later; so I have a lot of stick time with Digital Performer, and it makes intuitive sense to me. With the other DAW applications, I need to do experiments and a bit of reading, but so what . . .

So what!

The Logic Pro X user guide has detailed examples for doing MIDI with Reason, so if you have Reason 7.1 (Propellerhead Software), this is a good way to start. If you do not have Reason 7.1, then you can download the 30-day trial version and experiment with it . . .

Reason 7.1 Demo (Propellerhead Software)

I like Reason 7.1 and the new Rack Extensions are fascinating . . .

For some genres, Reason 7.1 is necessary, but no matter what the musical genre might be, there are some Rack Extensions that make it very compelling, where as an example there is a Rack Extension which takes a MIDI sequence and makes it consistent with one of the various modes or scales, so if you have a melody and want it to be Lydian, then you can do this automagically, which is something the Melody Editor (Celemony) also does but in a different way . . .

Auto-Theory Harmonic Engine (Pitchblende) Rack Extension ~ Propellerhead Shop

Melodyne Editor (Celemony)

SUMMARY

You can record MIDI sent from Digital Performer 8 in NOTION 4, and as time allows I will try to make sense of how this is done with Logic Pro X . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

P. S. If nothing else works, there always are real instruments, which is fabulous . . .

"M-O-N-E-Y" (The Surf Whammys) ~ YouTube music video

Fabulous! :P
Last edited by Surfwhammy on Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby Surfwhammy » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:17 am

Johnny wrote:I do not think Notion will receive real-time MIDI data "except" when it is in record mode.


I did an experiment using the NOTION 4 score from the Digital Performer 8 experiment used in my previous post to this topic; but I added a Kontakt 5 VSTi virtual instrument staff set to an outer space choir . . .

I was able to send MIDI notes from Digital Performer 8 to the Kontakt 5 VSTi virtual instrument staff without putting NOTION 4 in MIDI Record mode, so at least for Digital Performer 8 this works nicely . . .

This includes being able to record the generated audio as a soundbite in Digital Performer 8, which is interesting, although the recording aspect is not demonstrated in the following YouTube music video . . .

[NOTE: There is no vocal announcing on this YouTube music video . . . ]

DP8 N4 K5 Timeless 2 MIDI Experiment 2 ~ YouTube music video

Lots of FUN!
:)

P. S. This is the only correction, since I think that everything else you mentioned is correct . . .
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Re: Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby nimaranjbar » Tue Apr 22, 2014 3:46 am

Thank you gents. Its a pitty that CC messages cannot be received during playback. It would have been awsome.

Best,N
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Re: Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby Johnny » Wed Apr 23, 2014 1:15 am

Nima,
- - - - -- One workaround is with your own ".prules" (Rules documents) that control external/outbound MIDI data which is sent to a Rewire host application that your VSTI's are loaded into. Notion would be sending MIDI note on-off data, MIDI key-switches and a small limited number of MIDI continuous-controllers. Your host Rewire application would hopefully do the rest of your automation type control using the MIDI implementation of your choice.
-- -- At this point of the game in "Application development" I'm focusing on my musical ideas and trying not! to get too distracted by the technical possibilities. It's taken me quite a long time to get my prules to work correctly for my needs and I'm not going to explore too many other technical issues until I see what's new in the future of "Personus - Studio One/Notion software.

There certainly are some clever possibilities to get more control of Vst', External MIDI instruments/Devices; yet, I think getting the most out of Notion without making it complicated is more of a benefit as far as compositional and creative learning.

I had some favorite vst' that I couldn't live without so the long learning "trial & error" of creating my own prules documents was essential. For me it's time to just get better with creative uses. Don't get me wrong I like to try new ways of getting the most out of software. I'm just on the waiting side of the wheel of development.

Meanwhile back to finding new ideas in music creativity.
- - - , Johnny :arrow:
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Re: Sending CC messages from DAW

Postby Surfwhammy » Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:13 am

Johnny wrote: I think getting the most out of Notion without making it complicated is more of a benefit as far as compositional and creative learning.


One of the things I like about NOTION 4 is that if you work on an idea for a while, it tends to get better, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: This started as a somewhat randomly composed example for MIDI, and then I used it to demonstrate a simply way of doing NTempo in another topic, which was nice but not so precise in terms of timing; so I worked on it for another 10 or so hours, and now I like it. There is a virtual festival of FabFilter Software Instruments Timeless 2 echo units, hence the "syrupy" aspect; and adding the Addictive Keys (XLN Audio) Grand Piano makes the keyboard timing precise . . . ]

N4 Syrupy Strat (The Surf Whammys) ~ YouTube music video

Fabulous! :)
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