Control - Open MIDI controller platform for 128 grids

Hi all,

Attached to this post you can find ‘control’, a patch that turns your monome 128 grid into an open platform for custom MIDI controller making. I found the need for something like this some time ago when I was improvising with fellow musicians. I prepared some stuff but during rehearsal I felt that I wanted more control over my interface. Some faders here, some toggles there, an xy-pad … and in a different situation a grid filled with faders f.i… I wanted to be able to build it on the fly … so I gave it a shot …

Control gives you the ability to draw controls (faders, momentary buttons, toggle buttons, xy pads) onto any place on the grid. I’ve implemented a paging system for up to 16 layouts (= 16 MIDI channels) which can be saved, together with their presets.

After creating the layouts you can map your controls to your DAW. In Ableton Live f.i., just activate MIDI-mapping, select the parameter you want to control and assign a control on the grid by pushing a corresponding key.

Would somebody care to give this a try? If you do, be sure to read the info in the patch and you’ll be up and running in no time. It’s still in its early stages so there are still some bugs but it works fine for me. let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Ithkaa

download control on github

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this looks wonderful-- such great interface design!

with 7.1 i’m getting errors-- togedge: doesn’t understand “script”

any ideas?

Oh my I’m cursing this xmas holiday right now. I agree with @tehn the layout is great… Now if I weren’t on this Amtrak train remote desktoped over my openvpn server I might be able to give you some feed back. It’ll have to wait till I get back my grid on Sunday. @jasper_ryder check it out man.

Now, I gotta ask because I know others are gonna ask the same thing, is there any possibility of a m4l port b cause a number of us have been dying (and I mean reaaaaaaly hungry) for a patch in the footsteps of insanity (yours sounds a lot like it) ported to m4l to use in combination with terms and @elquinto s m4l suite. serial osc apps and m4l monome apps just don’t play nice together.

Wow….wow…wow…so smooth @ithkaa. Real amazing work. Just opened it and did a little mapping quickly without any problems. Very intuitive setup!

Like @raws, I use m4l stuff pretty much all of the time at this stage so this beauty won’t fit in with my workflow right now, but man, down the line if this could be ported I would be happy to donate to the cause.

It really is aggravating the way osc patches and m4l patches don’t jive together! I hope one day the divide is patched. :smile:

@tehn thanks! just fixed that error alongside some variables that were out of range (uploaded new version to the first post)

@raws @jasper_ryder thanks guys! I’ll look into it. M4L port would mean no pages (since I can’t define MIDI channel in output, I think) but perhaps a combination of autofocus and several instances loaded over different tracks could work. I’ll keep you posted …

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That would be really cool and helpful. An autofocus version wouldn’t be as flexible as the main version but I can think of some killer uses for it.

@jasper_ryder @raws been trying to port the app to M4L today … as far as I can tell the patch needs a complete rewrite (too many things in ‘control’ that M4L can’t handle). No time for that now, but I might have some alternatives for you. In attachment some M4L devices I created some time ago. It are (more or less) the same controllers that are included in ‘control’, in M4L format, with autofocus.

Most devices are pretty self explanatory. for ‘notes’ and ’toggles’ there are ‘random’ and ‘pattern recording’ options in the upper righthand corner (14 0 and 15 0).

Let me know how it works out.

All the best,

ithkaa

M4L_controllers.zip (196.5 KB)

@ithkaa,
Thanks so much! Sounds like the exact thing I’ve been wanting!

@ithkaa,
So far having a good time playing around with ‘notes’ and the pattern recording. Thanks. Great stuff.

I’m curious what you use the ‘toggles’ patch for? It doesn’t make any sound with my drum rack and I can’t midi map it to anything so it seems not functional at this point. I must be missing something.

I want to try and add a toggling option to the ‘notes’ patch perhaps, as I really enjoy having that on the little ‘grid’ patch I ported. Could that work with the pattern recording though? I would think it could.

Haven’t messed with ‘faders’ or ‘xy’ yet.

toggles is just a M4L port of the toggle portion of tehn’s grid-midi. to use it you must

  • put the device on a MIDI track
  • setup an IAC bus (or MIDI Yoke) in MIDI preferences (track and remote ‘on’ for both input and output).
  • set MIDI output for the device’s track to the activated IAC bus (or MIDI Yoke).
  • enable MIDI mapping, select a parameter to control and press a toggle on the grid.
  • make sure to activate the track (deactivated tracks don’t output MIDI).

same setup applies to the 16 sliders device. XYnome works with Live’s Parameter Control.

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@ithkaa
Amazing so excited to try this on Sunday when I return to gridsville!! Looks like the setup is along the same lines as setting up pages. This is the app I’ve been waiting for. Thank you so much!!!

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@ithkaa These M4L devices are great, especially XYnome! Nice work. Super useful. On Toggles and Notes, is there a way to quantize the start and stop of pattern recording?

@hypnosapien tx! I’m using Real-time MIDI quantize for quantizing note output. never needed to quantize toggles so don’t have a quick solution for that …

uploaded a new version of ‘control’ in the top post. added “keyboard”

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@ithkaa,
I’m trying to add a toggle option to notes. I pasted the bit of code in and was hoping it would be a pretty simple bit of doing. Could it be as simple as connecting ‘gate output 2’ somewhere or am I barking up the wrong tree?

gate 2 will work … but not in this way

here’s one with toggle but might not be how you intended

Notes.amxd (181.7 KB)

Just had a chance to try this. Very nicely designed, easy to use and very, very useful. Thanks @ithkaa!

thanks @chrisharrisx!

UNSTOPPABLE WIT THIS SHIIIIITTTTT THANK YOU @ithkaa

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That seems exactly like I was intending! Thanks.
@ithkaa

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