MonsterJam - Maschine JAM controller extension

[trevormeier]

Had a chance to play with beta 6. It's really turning out great! I've got a bunch of notes for you:

User Control mode:
- touchstrip LED values not updating in User Control mode

Step Sequencer
- I love the alternating row colours, and the option to quickly turn it off. It's easy to orient myself now
- Push-turn scrolling with the main encoder appears to be broken
- Grid selection expands & contracts based on the topmost visible row of notes, but this is opposite of what I expect. Drum sequencers tend to be oriented towards the bottom note being the kick drum. It would make more sense to me to expand from the bottom.
- it might be nice for a switchable option to have the pattern pages follow during playback, so that the currently playing page is always shown (ie the pages progress with the playhead). I find this helpful once I've programmed a beat and I'm wanting to make small tweaks. My rhythms aren't always clear-cut about the downbeat, so it can be hard to find certain notes to make changes if I have to page through during playback

Note mode / note selector:
- My biggest suggestion is about having the note page scroll the last-pressed note to the top on every note press. When the grid is set to more than one note row, this behaviour is disorienting—especially if I've manually scrolled to a particular note I want to work on. It would make more sense to scroll in "banks" according to the current grid selection. For example, with a grid setting showing the four notes on the bottom row of the note selector, pressing any one of those four notes (1-4 on Maschine) would keep the note rows the same. Pressing any of notes 5-8 would jump to the next 4 rows, etc.
- The layout of notes on the grid makes sense to me. It doesn't hurt my brain - drum pads & sequencers all seem to follow the same pattern you're using
- Note page selectors: it would make the most sense to me if the pages always started at the same note. So holding down "Notes" and pressing "Scene 3" would always get me to the 1-16 pads corresponding to the first 16 pads on the drum machine. Right now with the offsets, I find it confusing to move around
- it still bugs me that note selector pages are offset by 4 semitones from the drum machine in Bitwig

Documentation:
- legato notes: "Click another pad on the left to change note length in steps" --> should be click a pad on the right?
- grid mode: Scene button numbering should be 1-4 (instead of 1,2,4,8) now?

Thanks for putting this all together!

[minortom]

Had a chance to play with beta 6. It's really turning out great! I've got a bunch of notes for you:

Thank you so much for a detailed write up! This is exciting and very helpful.

User Control mode:
- touchstrip LED values not updating in User Control mode

Oh no, not again. Great catch, noted.

Step Sequencer
- I love the alternating row colours, and the option to quickly turn it off. It's easy to orient myself now

Yay! Wonderful to hear.

- Push-turn scrolling with the main encoder appears to be broken

Oops. Fixed, going in next release.

- Grid selection expands & contracts based on the topmost visible row of notes, but this is opposite of what I expect. Drum sequencers tend to be oriented towards the bottom note being the kick drum. It would make more sense to me to expand from the bottom.

Ha, I was secretly hoping no one would call that out, but you did. This was done in part to keep the viewport math simple, it's probably easier to rejigger now.

- it might be nice for a switchable option to have the pattern pages follow during playback, so that the currently playing page is always shown (ie the pages progress with the playhead). I find this helpful once I've programmed a beat and I'm wanting to make small tweaks. My rhythms aren't always clear-cut about the downbeat, so it can be hard to find certain notes to make changes if I have to page through during playback

Excellent idea! Have a suggestion for a button combination to toggle that?

Note mode / note selector:
- My biggest suggestion is about having the note page scroll the last-pressed note to the top on every note press. When the grid is set to more than one note row, this behaviour is disorienting—especially if I've manually scrolled to a particular note I want to work on. It would make more sense to scroll in "banks" according to the current grid selection. For example, with a grid setting showing the four notes on the bottom row of the note selector, pressing any one of those four notes (1-4 on Maschine) would keep the note rows the same. Pressing any of notes 5-8 would jump to the next 4 rows, etc.

Hm! Just to think out loud for a moment. The note mode layout was copied from Maschine, but the mode itself is very different in Bitwig. Maschine has a specific rigid architecture and there this mode is more like a device selector. For MonsterJam two thoughts occurred immediately: this could be useful to quickly focus on a note (this was early step sequencer without scrolling and showing only a single note), and that this will make a lot of sense with a Drum Machine; and then it just evolved from there.

This bank idea is interesting. With it you'd lose the ability to offset the grid window with the note selector alone (i.e. seeing notes from adjacent "banks"), but knob scrolling could make up for that.

There is another interesting implication (or two, actually), and it's related to grid focusing on the top rather than on the bottom. The Notes mode is meant to be toggled on and off, and the grid layout is different between the two states. So:

1. Exiting Notes mode would double the size of the "bank". In other words, in Notes mode you're looking at a half of a large bank, the question is which half.
2. Because the grid is top-focused and doesn't have to move, the Notes mode simply "covers" the bottom. If this were to change to bottom-focused, would Notes still cover the bottom and push the focus point or push the grid up and keep the focus point the same?

Based on your use case it sounds like the bottom half is more important to keep.

- The layout of notes on the grid makes sense to me. It doesn't hurt my brain - drum pads & sequencers all seem to follow the same pattern you're using

- Note page selectors: it would make the most sense to me if the pages always started at the same note. So holding down "Notes" and pressing "Scene 3" would always get me to the 1-16 pads corresponding to the first 16 pads on the drum machine. Right now with the offsets, I find it confusing to move around

That's how it's supposed to work, I think you've spotted another bug.

I'm adding scales right now, going to have to revisit note selector either way.

- it still bugs me that note selector pages are offset by 4 semitones from the drum machine in Bitwig

Oh yeah, I just now noticed Drum Machine has a truncated bank at the very bottom. Hmm.

It's easy to correct the offset, but that would divide the note range into 9 pages instead of 8, and with the current UI there would be some notes you cannot navigate to. Needs some thought.

Documentation:
- legato notes: "Click another pad on the left to change note length in steps" --> should be click a pad on the right?
- grid mode: Scene button numbering should be 1-4 (instead of 1,2,4,8) now?

Thanks for putting this all together!

That's what happens when you rush a release in the dark hours Nicely caught.

Thank you for the thorough review, really happy this is useful to someone. I'm thinking I might need to implement a QC process, and if I do these reviews will make a great basis for a checklist.

[trevormeier]

Toggling note mode, you could have a fancy animation where the note mode scrolls up from the bottom? Hehehe easy to say hard to do right? I think your assumptions are correct, being bottom-anchored is probably my preference. But I think for note mode an argument could be made for having it “cover” the notes too.

Regardless, it’s probably smart to have consistency between “rhythm” note mode and “melody” note mode so it might be easier to have a strong opinion once that’s implemented

[minortom]

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... ag/v8.0-b7

Maintenance release

* STEP: Fixed push-turn
* Fixed UserControls not updating LED strips
* Fixed missed README corrections

Toggling note mode, you could have a fancy animation where the note mode scrolls up from the bottom? Hehehe easy to say hard to do right?

I could but I won't. I have a beef with animations, they often provide no value while taking up time you could be spending doing something useful (like using the controller). That's why I don't use MacOS Spaces, that gracious slide is too damn slow and too annoying. At any rate, the occasional LED update lag is probably animation enough.

[minortom]

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... ag/v8.0-b7

* Fixed UserControls not updating LED strips

... And spoke too soon. Hopefully for the last time:

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... ag/v8.0-b8

* Fixed UserControl slider activation (again)

[trevormeier]

It seems like with the fixed note scrolling, by default the step sequencer is off by one. Programmed notes begin at beat 2.

This made me realize, it's quite hard to find your place with the note scrolling. It would be good to have an indicator of the start and end of a pattern, and possibly a quick way to return to beat 1 being the leftmost note.

I also noticed that note mode turns off if I exit the step sequencer. If I go to clip mode, and then return to step mode, I have to enable note mode again. I think it would make more sense if the note mode state was saved.

Another "finding my way around" request would be to have the notes pick up the track colour in the grid. With the rows no longer matching the track colour, having the track colour on the 16 note pads would make it much quicker to find where I'm going when programming drums.

[minortom]

It seems like with the fixed note scrolling, by default the step sequencer is off by one. Programmed notes begin at beat 2.

Not normal, but I see how that could happen. Making a note of that for the state handler refactor. Pressing Scene 1 should refocus on beat 1 in the meantime.

This made me realize, it's quite hard to find your place with the note scrolling. It would be good to have an indicator of the start and end of a pattern, and possibly a quick way to return to beat 1 being the leftmost note.

I haven't added this to the README yet, but you should have that indication with the Scene buttons: it shows you how long the clip is in pages and where you are in it currently. Hitting Scene 1 should return you to beat 1. Is that not useful?

Scene (pattern page) button colours taken straight from the code (the second integer is brightness, 0-3):

Code: Select all

    def selected = C(WHITE, 2)
    def playing  = C(WHITE, 0)
    def nonEmpty = C(clipColor, 3)
    def empty    = C(clipColor, 0)

Obviously, a page can be in several of those states at once and Jam can only show one colour, so these are laid out in decreasing order of precedence.

I also noticed that note mode turns off if I exit the step sequencer. If I go to clip mode, and then return to step mode, I have to enable note mode again. I think it would make more sense if the note mode state was saved.

That's actually half-way implemented already. The state is being saved, just not reactivating the note overlay. Noted.

Another "finding my way around" request would be to have the notes pick up the track colour in the grid. With the rows no longer matching the track colour, having the track colour on the 16 note pads would make it much quicker to find where I'm going when programming drums.

Good idea, thanks!

[minortom]

Another "finding my way around" request would be to have the notes pick up the track colour in the grid. With the rows no longer matching the track colour, having the track colour on the 16 note pads would make it much quicker to find where I'm going when programming drums.

Good idea, thanks!

So that's done now.

Adding scales required a bit of a rewrite, took longer than expected. Grid is now bottom-focused, pages match Drum Machine. Note selector banks not implemented yet, next time. Restoring Notes mode is not trivial with the current mode layer architecture, punting on that some more.

Have not done extensive testing yet so probably some surprises there, but:

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... ag/v8.0-b9

New:
* Lenient launch lookahead setting to compensate for event processing delay
* STEP: scales
* STEP: pattern page follow + setting (no button combo yet)
* STEP: alternating row colors apply to note selector
* Docs, of course

Fixed/changed:
* STEP: Brightness levels were not updated when displaying velocity matrix
* STEP: Sequencer state was not properly recalled when switching tracks
* Lenient launch was flakey upon initial transport start
* Lenient launch was flakey due to event processing delay on some systems
* STEP: grid window now bottom-focused
* STEP: note pages match Drum Machine layout (in chromatic scale)

Known issues:
* Switching scales does not attempt to preserve relative Y-position in the clip
* NOTES mode does not automatically restore on STEP activation
* NOTES mode activation can be a little wonky in general (but still harmless)
* TUNE mode does not reactivate with STEP
* Deactivating TUNE mode does not automatically reactivate previous slider mode
* README typos

[trevormeier]

Somehow I missed beta 9! I was wondering today how this project was progressing. Will download and give it a try!

[minortom]

Somehow I missed beta 9! I was wondering today how this project was progressing. Will download and give it a try!

It's been waiting on your feedback, that's how. Took a break to work on some music in the meantime.

[minortom]

Somehow I missed beta 9! I was wondering today how this project was progressing. Will download and give it a try!

It's been waiting on your feedback, that's how. Took a break to work on some music in the meantime.

Actually, my apologies, found a serious b9 bug where NOTE pads are not aligned with the sequencer. Back to coding.

[minortom]

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... g/v8.0-b12

Added:
* Step: note selector jumps in banks
* Step: scrolling will display note range notification, many other notifications added
* Hold REC to arm multiple tracks
* Clear REC/MUTE/SOLO on all tracks with CLEAR
* Clip queued for recording will flash red

Fixed:
* No more collision warnings that TrackTracker complained about
* Adding new step would display wrong velocity in NOTES mode
* Step sequencer was mapped to wrong notes and not aligned with note pads

Upcoming fixes
* Scales other than C calculated incorrectly, already fixed in dev branch
* Add note preview to sequencer, to make sequencing audible

[minortom]

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... g/v8.0-b13

* Step: note preview + setting. Pressing any step in step sequencer will play that note.
* Step: NOTES mode now restores automatically and reliably, per track

Fixes
* All scales are now correct, not just C
* It was possible for sequencer state to save on the wrong track, now much more robust

[minortom]

https://github.com/unthingable/monster- ... g/v8.0-b14

* Step: multi-row notes were wrapping incorrectly, fixed
* Step: NOTES - improved activation (experimental). Now a single press activates mode, but holding+SCENE navigates to note pages without activating

[sp00k]

thank you! it works great, love it!