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TouchOSC controlling TR-6/8S via SysEx
Hello!
I found a fantastic tr8s manual for midi and sysex showing how the TR editor is controlling the TR machines: https://mididesigner.com/qa/10040/roland-tr-8s-sysex-whats-what
There is a guy that is making a control surface in Midi Designer but this software looks sketchy AF, constant popups, convoluted payment system, and ad trackers for everything. I’d rather use something more mature like TouchOSC, and I have some questions:
Can you control a device via sysex? So taking the manual I could do my own version of the iPad controller for the Roland drum machine?
Is there coding involved? If yes, did anyone vibe code in TouchOSC? Is it needed or is it simple stuff?
And lastly are there people who do this for a living and could do a controller like that if commissioned to?
Thanks!
Comments
You certainly can control hw via sysex. It’s down to the manufacturers implementation how much and what can be controlled, but generally sysex is the most capable and least user friendly way of doing it.
F.e I made a controller in Lemur that controlled every aspect of my Waldorf Pulse 2, loaded presets with names in the controller and controlled almost all system settings (+some goodies for my own amusement like per section randomiser, additional modulation and crossfadeable (probably not a word) snapshots - so the limit is your imagination.
Not familiar with TouchOSC but it’s probably a very similar environment.
In my experience you’ll need…
Little bit of coding, mostly to work around the limitations of the screen size, mostly few lines of short scripts.
Deep understanding of every aspect of your hw, and sysex in general.
Usually before the light you will see plenty frustration (most manufacturers have their own quirks, workarounds) so, having the hw around to test things is crucial, which leads to your last point… finding someone with the hw who is willing to put the time in.
The hard part is understanding sysex. Making TouchOSC controls send and receive sysex is easy. Doing other things such as changing labels based on received sysex requires scripting. TouchOSC uses LUA for scripting. Lua isn't particularly hard to learn.
What I'm not sure about is doing things like saving control sets to files. I assume you'll need to do that to do things like save and recall settings.
I'd start simple. Just put up a knob and get it to send Sysex to the TR to adjust a control. Then see if you can get bi-directional feedback going. Then I'd look into Lua and see if I could figure out how to save and recall that knob "preset". Then build from there.
The sysex concepts in Midi Designer Pro 2 are similar to TouchOSC, so that manual will probably help you a lot. I made a ES-1 controller with Midi Designer Pro 2. Once I could make (some) sense of the ES-1 midi implementation chart, I was able to control it bi-directionally. That was about 1/5 of the total sysex implementation. I couldn't make heads or tails of things like sysex dumps.
Good luck. 👍🏼