#40

Keep us updated if you’re able or not to get fugue machine to work with ansible!

#41

I did get one and currently using it to go norns ‘direct’ to PC / Ableton - to get midi outs from norns driving vst instruments. Works a treat. btw the device comes with 2 leads to do the above connection for example.

#42

I have a bit of a specific issue with the fixed MIDI voice mode… if @ngwese or anyone else could provide me with insight I’d be super appreciative!

I’ve been experimenting with using Ansible as a MIDI interface with a Keith McMillen BopPad (drum pad). The BopPad has four quadrants which I’ve mapped to the MIDI notes / CC channels of Ansible’s fixed voice mode and I’ve successfully achieved gate on/off and velocity through Ansible. However, Ansible is having some issues with retriggering.

The BopPad supports a Multitouch mode which allows a quadrant of the pad to be retriggered even if the quadrant is still being touched from the previous hit. When the BopPad is retriggered in this fashion the BopPad firmware does retrigger as it’s intended, however it keeps it’s “note on” message high which means the corresponding Ansible TR output stays high and does not send a new gate.

If I use the BopPad with my DAW and use this Multitouch mode the corresponding MIDI instrument will retrigger as it should even though the “note on” message will stay high. Even on Ansible the velocity CV of a given channel will change with each new retrigger in a Multitouch situation, but the TR still stays high. This makes playing with hand drumming techniques significantly more difficult, which is the core of my experimentation with this set up.

Would an alteration be possible to the Ansible firmware to allow the TR outputs to send quick triggers instead of gates in the fixed MIDI voice mode? Or perhaps a quick inverted pulse to retrigger yet keep the current gate high behavior intact? I cloned the Ansible git to see if I could make this alteration on my own, but alas I am not educated in coding and quickly found myself lost. I am aware this may be more complicated than it seems and is quite specific of an inquiry, but on the chance it is a simple alteration I am asking for help!

#43

This sounds like a really useful evolution

#44

Found this in the source code:

case eVoiceFixed:
active_behavior.note_on = &fixed_note_on;
active_behavior.note_off = &fixed_note_off;
active_behavior.channel_pressure = NULL;
active_behavior.pitch_bend = NULL;
active_behavior.control_change = &fixed_control_change;
active_behavior.clock_tick = NULL;
active_behavior.seq_start = NULL;
active_behavior.seq_stop = NULL;
active_behavior.seq_continue = NULL;
active_behavior.panic = &reset;
clock = &clock_null;
print_dbg("\r\n standard: voice fixed");
break;
default:
print_dbg("\r\n standard: bad voice mode");
}
}

I assume I could just add some sort of delay to change “active_behavior.note_on = &fixed_note_on” to “&fixed_note_off” after a certian amount of time… gonna experiment and backup my firmware first :sweat_smile:

#45

I think the biggest challenge to be honest would be the UI to enable or disable the trigger vs gate behavior. …will have to think about that.

aside: I somehow missed that the BopPad could be played with hands not just sticks - as a developing djembe player I’m now intrigued.

UPDATE: I don’t have the code in front of me but in order to implement trigger like behavior one would probably need to modify the callback function which is called periodically to process incoming MIDI data. If in fixed mode and in “trigger” mode one could check a variable to determine if an output was “high” due to a previous note on and take is low. Naturally one also has to handle the case of multiple noteon events occurring in the same polling interval but that isn’t too difficult. The trigger width would be multiple of the MIDI polling interval - if a longer trigger width was needed than a single polling interval then one could simply decrement a counter in the callback to count the number of intervals which have elapsed.

1 Like
#46

Yeah UI to switch between triggers and gates does seem like it’d be difficult to implement. I’m going to try for a more “destructive” modification… & I’m also coming from the perspective of the djembe and so far applying that skillset to my synth via Ansible has been a lot of fun. I’ve developed a technique with the djembe where I mute the drum head with my hands as I play, hence my difficulty with this setup this far… but I’m working around it for the time being. I’ll make sure to post again if I get a suitable alternative to the current fixed voice behavior :+1:

#47

Forgive me if this has been asked before, but has anyone implemented a MIDI First In, Last Out allocation mode for Ansible? CV 1 to 4 ascending priority - resetting to CV 1 when all note off.

I enjoy the circular allocation mode but occasionally find it difficult to find 4 voices to allocate pitch CV.

FILO would allow me to hold N notes simultaneously matched to the number of N voices i have patched up. It would also allow me to assign CV 1 to a specific voice over cycling through all CVs e.g. maybe the first note played is always ROOT assigned to a specific voice, and subsequent notes are other notes of a chord allowing for inversions etc.

EDIT:

I’ve just discovered that this is how it’s handled in POLY EARTHSEA. thanks @scanner_darkly.

1 Like
#48

has anyone tried the OP-Z with the Ansible since the recent update, it would be so nice to get this working…I tried it out and the CV signals seemed to be working well but it would drop triggers occasionally, not super often but often enough to make it unreliable.

#49

Hello!

Is there any way to have Ansible remember which midi mode it was last in between power cycles/usb connections.

I’m using the 4 voice mode w/ a KM Boppad and it defaults back to the standard midi mode every time the %@$?#!!! micro USB gets temporarily disconnected.

Any help would be appreciated.
M

1 Like
#50

I don’t know if this will do exactly what you want but the MIDI mode has had the ability to store a single configuration preset for some time - see the preset section of ansible midi docs.

If that doesn’t do want you are looking for I can investigate deeper.

1 Like
#51

oh awesome. I’ll try that!!

#52

I noticed in the docs that the arpeggiator has some kind of Euclidean fill algorithms, and some Teletype ops to configure them. The docs say very little about it though (including how to even engage this mode). Is there a forum post somewhere with more details? My search revealed nothing.

It sounds pretty neat.

#53

ah, good catch! this info is in the Ansible + Teletype MIDI section. I’ll add a quick note to the page you landed on to reference this chart!

4 Likes
#54

I don’t know how long I’ve had an Ansible. At least a year, maybe more. I’ve completely ignored the MIDI arpeggiator. “Another arpeggiator”, I thought. “Meh,” my brain told me.

So I tried it out today. Don’t know why I thought a monome arpeggiator would be mundane. I should have known better by now.

It’s awesome! A four voice, user-definable, Euclidean-timed, arpgeggiator that turns a little 25-key keyboard into a algorithmic modular orchestra! This thing is a blast - very interactive… And I was just doing some live commands from the Teletype - didn’t even get into further automating it with scripts and such.

So just dropping a line for anyone who, like me, has mistakenly ignored this ansible app. You probably should check it out.

10 Likes
#55

Much time has passed but I thought I’d mention another device which (so far) appears plays well with the ansible MIDI mode and that is the iConnectivity mio2. I had picked one up as a companion for norns but then realized that it might work well with ansible directly.

I’ve just confirmed the following setup works:

  • mio2 usb 2 (marked “power in”) connected to ansible
  • mio2 usb 1 connected to iPad (in my case an old iPad Air with a lighting to usb-a adaptor)

Launch Fugue machine, set all four playheads to send mid to “mio2 usb 2”, with each playhead set to channel 1-4 accordingly.

One particularly nice thing about this setup is that the iPad (or norns) isn’t providing power to the mio2 so it doesn’t need to be plugged in and the iPad can also send/receive MIDI from the two DIN ports on the back of the mio2 as well.

A simple setup which I have found fun which doesn’t even involve the ER stuff is:

  • CV1 as pitch to voice (possibly with some slew)
  • TR2 (i.e. the 1/2 rate voice trigger) to an envelope long enough to hear the pitch change in CV1
  • Send the voice to a delay like the 4ms DLD and drive the ansible clock input from the DLD
  • Stick the arp into hold mode and try experiment

Things get more interesting using a gate sequencer to drive the ansible/arp clock and/or mix+shift combinations of the other CV outs and use as modulation…

If you have any sound examples of using the ER clocking feature I’d be curious to hear them!

5 Likes
#56

Does your setup provide power to the iPad, or only midi?

Thanks.

#57

No the iPad is not being powered, it is running off its internal battery. Only the mio2 is being powered by ansible. If you need the iPad to be powered as well (and you have an iPad with a lightning connector) then this adaptor would allow you to connect both a USB device and a power adaptor to the iPad.

1 Like
#58

hey everyone

i’m having difficulty using ansible in midi voice mode. it seems like the cv signal its putting out is way higher than what i’m playing. a few octaves above and really sharp. around octave 0 it gets as close as i can get it and thats still a whole step above and really sharp and it only “tracks” for about an octave.

ive tried sending notes in to it in mono voice mode ( pressing key two once ) using ableton (mio usb to midi cable) octatrack ( also mio usb to midi cable) and op1 ( usb cable ). they are all behaving similarly. any ideas ?

#59

The MIDI mode does have a global pitch offset to help deal with the unipolar CV outputs. From the docs:

The default pitch offset is -2 octaves which is the equivalent of issuing the following Teletype command MID.SHIFT N -24 .

…if you have a TT connected you could see if running MID.SHIFT 0 -24 to see if that helps. IIRC the pitch offset is stored as part of the single ansible MIDI preset.