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Performance Rigging - a touchpad synth / sequencer paradigm
@richardyot - if you could spare a few seconds, could I ask you to kindly jot down a quick or brief explanation of what 'rigging' is and means, from your 3D modelling arena?
Comments
Sure:
imagine you have a 3d Model, it's typically made up of polygons that define the surface of the 3D mesh. These polygons are entirely static, so in order to make them move you need to create an animation rig: hence the term "rigging"
There are two broad categories of rigging: character rigging, which involves deforming character meshes to animate them, and hard body rigging which involves rotating and moving solid mechanical objects that don't deform.
A couple of examples:
This is a character, which is modelled and textured, but not rigged. The mesh is completely static:
So in order to animate that character, a skeletal structure is built inside him, consisting of objects that do not render (invisible to the camera) called "bones" These bones are all linked to each other in a hierarchy, so if you move an arm, the hand and fingers follow etc...
The bones are then bound to the mesh, with each bone deforming a particular range of polygons, so when you move or rotate a bone the mesh deforms accordingly:
Which means you can animate the character.
Hard body rigging is a bit simpler, you simply define constraints and pivot points and then move or rotate parts of the model. For example this is a simple rig where clicking on the circular locator (another null object that doesn't render, it's there just to operate the rig) will bring up a control to rotate the gun around a set pivot:
Related to rigging, but not the same thing, is simulation, where for example you use simulated physics to drape cloth around a table or a character's clothing, or simulate a building falling down.
...and so I learnt (at least) a new thing today as well. Thanks for great explanation @richardyot . I wasn't looking for an answer to this, but found it interesting nevertheless.
No worries. As it happens I'm not much of an animator, and definitely not a rigger (too technical for my tastes). My speciality is rendering and shading, and in those areas I can pretty much out-geek most of humanity
If you ever want to know the intricacies of light and how materials react to it, I'm your man....
That was all excellent - a very useful explanation, thanks.
@Tarekith - if you could spare a few seconds, could I ask you to kindly jot down a quick or brief explanation of how the knobs work as macros in the Novation Circuit synthesiser section?
Is this going to be like an exquisite corpse of technical explanations on random topics? Next we ask @JohnnyGoodyear to do a brief explanation of iambic pentameter....
I work for a major 3D software company, and I didn't know what "rigging" is. (Of course, I work in the IT department, which means "rigging" to me has more to do with Ethernet cables and the like.)
No, bear with me, it'll make sense.
Just go lock yourself in the bathroom with Billy Waggledagger for a while and you'll feel and find out all you need to know about your iambs. As long as you remember thereafter that pentameter means five, you should be good to go.
As for rigging @richardyot , excellent and generous explanation. If this is a developing pit of sharing what we know I might be better suited for more specific areas of poetic explanation. Would be happy to start with the work (and life) of the Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub, one of my specialties.
The bathroom explanation sounds seedier than I expected. There's obviously more to poetry than I first realised. But yes, while we wait for @Tarekith to chip in with his bit, I would love to hear more about that Czech fellow, as long as it's clean.
@richardyot is that Blender? I wish I could do those things that you do
It's Modo, one of the smaller 3D packages, I used 3D Studio Max for a long time, but switched to Modo about 10 years ago because I found it pretty cool and it was also made by a really cool company. Anyway, it's not quite so cool now and the really cool company was bought out by someone bigger, and they're not as cool. I still like Modo though.
Funnily, just this minute before I came over here to sit beside the ipad, I'm downloading blender (for linux though). I'm actually going to use it first to edit a bit of video (just top and tail, but it is on a Sony RX10 cam, and LumaFusion can't read the AVCHD or XAVC it makes, so I have to get the stuff off on another machine, thought I'd try in linux as I'm spending far more time there than in macOS lately). And no, it's not for another WTFknobs (must do another of those soon though) this is just a video log of what I did today with the ARP 2600 and latest replacement VCA board (works, but could be improved).
Cool, I'm the kid at the race course who sees a car and says "is that a Ferrari?" just because that's the only name he knows.
Blender seems pretty amazing, really would like to make time to explore/ learn it. And fwiw, I think Blender can do models and animation
By all accounts Blender is super-powerful, and does a lot, the only issue it has is that people struggle with the UI and workflow.
Which is why a now, a few minutes later, I've booted up macOS. I'll be back to it, just not when I want to actually do something.
Not seedy at all. If you're going to work on your iambs you really need to read aloud and many folks feel self-conscious about declaiming Shakespeare, thus the bathroom. And then the acoustics are usually good too.
Shall I / compare/ thee to / a sum/ mer's day?
Thou art / more love / ly and / more tem / per ate
As for Holub, I think of him as a bookend or soulmate perhaps to Primo Levi. I think the collision of a scientific mind with a poetic sensibility is particularly interesting...here's a recent piece in the Guardian about him/one of his poems:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/aug/17/poem-of-the-week-casualty-by-miroslav-holub
A personal favorite/fair introduction to his head is
Brief reflection on accuracy
Fish
always accurately know where to move and when,
and likewise
birds have an accurate built-in time sense
and orientation.
Humanity, however,
lacking such instincts resorts to scientific
research. Its nature is illustrated by the following
occurrence.
A certain soldier
had to fire a cannon at six o'clock sharp every evening.
Being a soldier he did so. When his accuracy was
investigated he explained:
I go by
the absolutely accurate chronometer in the window
of the clockmaker down in the city. Every day at seventeen
forty-five I set my watch by it and
climb the hill where my cannon stands ready.
At seventeen fifty-nine precisely I step up to the cannon
and at eighteen hours sharp I fire.
And it was clear
that this method of firing was absolutely accurate.
All that was left was to check that chronometer. So
the clockmaker down in the city was questioned about
his instrument's accuracy.
Oh, said the clockmaker,
this is one of the most accurate instruments ever. Just imagine,
for many years now a cannon has been fired at six o'clock sharp.
And every day I look at this chronometer
and always it shows exactly six.
Chronometers tick and cannon boom.
Interesting, I dabbled in some 3D Studio Max many years ago. I loved messing around with animations and the various rendering options. Have done since the distant days of my Atari ST now I come to think of it.
Would be super good with the improvements in technology, might go back there someday I see there is a free student version.
More reasons not to make music tho ... Priorities, priorities ...
I downloaded Blender and got tired just looking at the UI. 3D graphics is just not for me. There is an iOS animation app that has 'bones' called ... you guessed it, Animation Pro.
You can assign up to 4 parameters to be controlled by each knob, incuding the start and end point of the knob and the depth of control. The list of parameters is quite indepth.
https://s25.postimg.org/osinvk10f/Screen_Shot_2017_03_03_at_8_10_35_AM.png
Love the poem. It perfectly sums up human fallibility. Will follow the breadcrumbs and read the Guardian article too. I spent a few months reading through all of Primo Levi's work about 25 years ago, that was a darker look into the human soul. The Grey Zone is something that stayed with me.
Does anyone here know much about Performance? And can contribute a brief passage?
(The playing or delivery of a live artistic activity involving musical equipment, not the excellent 1968 film featuring Mick Jagger, although there are parallels, but we'd be getting tenuous there -still trying to work out how poetry fits into this idea, maybe it does.)
What I'm tying together here, is an idea I've been seeing bob above the surface for a while now, but only now can I see what kind of thing it might be from a distance. It is also not an idea I should lay any claim to, merely be the first to point the direction for everyone to look at. I think that this is an important paradigm, perfect for now.
The Novation Circuit was a perplexing purchase, at a time I couldn't afford such a luxury (although now is worse, making such a purchase easier - I couldn't have). But, I'm glad I did, and even though I hardly use it, I'm starting to gravitate to it. The knobs. Those knobs. What the fuck do those knobs do? They don't do anything - at least, not in any fixed sense. This was a huge failing, which I'm now seeing as a huge step forward.
Now, as you no doubt know, I know my onions when it comes to synthesis. Complex synthesisers are no problem for me to get into. Yet I disparage modular synths as 'the incorrect direction' to go in, if you want to get to the future. I'm also aware that one of the problems with synths having so many knobs and switches is that it intimidates the newer neophytes - it'd be like assimilating the flight deck of a Rockwell STS Orbiter (ie, space shuttle). I can appreciate that.
What I think the Novation Circuit bravely does is to apply 'rigging' - more importantly, performance rigging - to what is otherwise a nicely complex and widely variable synth. I view it as (if not one of) the first of a new breed of what I shall term 'Performance Rigging' or 'Performance Rigged' synths.
However, strangely, the touchpad world is the perfect place for such developments. We all have about five times too many 'ordinary' synths, which are all good, but all similar, and all present an array of knobs switches and sliders that make it like a hardware synth. I think that's nice, but we don't really need any more. What we're drastically short of is 'performance rigged synths' and indeed, even 'performance rigged sequencers'. If you see how @richardyot explained that the 3D model consists of a mesh of small simple shapes, which if individually handled would be impossible to make even the simplest coordinated smooth movement. I think the same applies to a complex synth or sequencer for live performance.
If we make a distinction between performing, on one end of a continuum, and practicing, noodling, experimenting or even planning out and constructing and composing, on the other end, the bigger patchable (either through actual knobs and wires, or matrix schemes or switches) synth systems are more suited to the composing and noodling end, than I think they are for performing with. Obviously people do perform with modulars, but by far and away they're making life difficult for themselves and they'd probably be better served with a good set of synths that have good preset recalling capabilities. It wouldn't look as impressive, I admit, and there's something organic about watching people pretending to depict the early days of Tangerine Dream etc. However, imagine if even modular synths had another layer - a fully performance oriented architecture that enabled sets - super sets even - of parameters and patching to be moved and manipulated with finesse. An approach toward this is patch morphing, but it can go much further than that, and become a performance control too.
A performance rigged modular might be an engineering feat, and I'm sure it is possible, and would be impressive and everything. However, I think performance rigged touch screen synths are the thing that's needed. The rigging would be not unlike the 3D world's skeleton and bones, in principle, but maybe use a different analogy for grabbing a patch configuration all at once, and twisting it with finesse into or toward another patch configuration, as if that itself is part of the instrument control surface. Same with sequencers, by the way. The Novation Circuit is more or less this, but - the knobs are anonymous, the knobs are guesswork, and in many cases, the knobs are actually not positioned to the best extent possible for a knob (bit too close together, clustered up top, but that's the design of the small machine). I think touch screens can do this sort of thing, but even better. The closest I can imagine is TC-11, but even that baffles people when performance rigging is ideally supposed to make things more open and understandable.
What do people think? There's a lot of manufacturers and designers and developers here, we could push this performance rigging concept quite far. As I say, nobody needs any more 'normal' synths, no matter how nice they are, but what there is a shortage of is grouping the capabilities together to a higher level and applying rigging for a performance. You've only got ten fingers, a few more appendages here and there, and gravity and direction and orientation and speed, and you generally can't easily noodle on one synth and also another with any degree of seriousity - every synth demands the whole hands-on interfacing the whole time, or you leave it alone in the background and you're no longer interacting with it but listening to it - ie, not playing it, it plays itself (by the magic of midi or multitrack). I think the future of this is performance - whether at home for recording, or live out there in front of people - you need not only a performance rigged synth, but several, that you can perform with all together in concert, effectively. If we had to have hands on across several synths, while tweaking only one parameter at a time, our art would suffer, whereas if we had a higher level layer across several synths, we'd have more power in our hands.
@u421793 that's more or less what the new Alchemy does in GarageBand: you have 3 pages of controls (pads, knobs etc) that are performance based and specific to the loaded preset. So a lot of stuff is hidden from the user, and what is exposed is there for you to twiddle with while you perform - so it's specifically performance, rather than sound-design, based.
Indeed that's true - all of this is quite an 'Apple' thing to do, really - taking control to the next level, without necessarily restricting it (not dumbing it down really, either, despite potential accusations).
Every time I see people asking for a display or fixed control knobs on the circuit, I can't help but feel they are totally missing the point of what makes circuit unique and forward thinking.
Circuit isn't alone in the performance rigging....Novations Ultra and Mini nova both have the same 8 assignable macros, and additional controls too. I think this is part of what makes Novation such a respected name.....they understand music AND performance, and not just how to make a good sound. This is clearly demonstrated by their line of controllers...
I think you are right in that the way we interact with the rigging which is going to be interesting, touchpads/ribbon controllers, motion sensors, proximity sensors, light sensors, audio sensors are all possible ways to perform with the rigged sound, ways that would possibly allow us to control a performance through dance.....when I am playing an instrument my fingers and arms are dancing on the keys/strings/knobs sliders and pads....so why not have a performance that can be controlled by our more general movements.
And in a way, it is sort of (from a distance) exactly what's been happening in web dev, with all the new frameworks etc. A framework is simply a way of encapsulating best practice and grabbing several dynamics at once, giving the impression of making things easier. The similarity is that it takes a designed selection of smaller facets and moves them as a bigger movement.
Well the thing about virtual modulars is that you can wire up these kind of interactions. It is relatively painless in everyone's least favourite iOS modular synth to hookup a controller to several parameters in multiple modules at the same time in order to create these performance controls. It can be a useful approach, even more so when your platform allows you to record these higher level parameter changes, but it does mean that you then have controllers assigned to more abstract manipulations in terms of the users understanding of what is happening. How do you label a controller that modifies 47 different LFOs in different directions controlling a multitude of oscillators, filters, amplifiers, fx etc..?
I can see the utility in this but not everyone would be comfortable being so removed from the underlying sound generators. It does suggest a kind of 'dumbing down', much like these colossal workstation keyboards that nearly write your music for you.
And I'm not sure all musicians want to get to the 'future', it's an odd concept, more aligned with technology than music I think. Some people just like to make music. Some will benefit from a knob that lets you turn up the 'Grime' or somesuch genre and at the other extreme, some will enjoy the ability to make noises doing 'Jazz hands' in front of their camera but I must admit I get a lot out of playing with the modules and their connections and such.