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Which of the editable (EDIT:AUv3) midi piano roll sequencers are MPE supporting?
Does anyone have experience of AUv3 midi piano roll editors, such as Helium and LK, and can comment on their MPE support? IE, recording all 16 channels into one clip and per note / per channel automations being correctly recorded. I know Geert Bevin does have the tape recorder but it's good to have the option to edit this midi I think. AFAIK Atom 2 is MPE, but the lack of future support puts me off investing time getting to learn it deeply if there's an option that will exist in to the future.
Thanks
Comments
I think, tho I might be wrong, that Xequence 2 is the only thing that will let you actually edit the mpe midi. Atom2 will record it (though some say it also might not do that properly in all cases, I've generally found it OK for my uses), but offers no mpe editing.
Thanks @Gavinski
Possibly then nothing is ideal if the most ideal is Xequence 2, but Xequence 2 not being AUv3, Atom 2 being by the sounds of it possibly adequate up until it not being but also being 5 years old I'm unlikely to devote energy to learning in depth and seemingly the dev deep in land of corporate employment. I might end up having to try all the main contenders to find out for myself where they fall down. I would hope Helium because Paul has somewhat joined in with his MPE synths nowadays, or,
@SevenSystems you might be sick of answering but might xequence (3?) as an AUv3 be on a roadmap?
Non AUv3 xequence 2 would be a bit like rewinding to pre cubase VST when I had black and white midi only cubase. Not that that's good or bad either way, it could be great for some. But I would love the AUv3, and to not have to switch between apps (not news to anyone I'm sure).
Atom2 will hopefully be maintained, though I've no insights into whether it will be. But do you really need mpe editing? It's a bit of a pain in the balls by all accounts (I've never dabbled), many people who do have access to it apparently decide it's easier to just focus on getting good takes and forgetting about editing.
Yes, I do. I play MPE all day every day. And absolutely of course what you do is you practice just playing well, and every now and then you edit something just a little bit. There can be actually numerous use cases for editing it even if just minorly, or just repurposing those automation lanes. I would suggest the fact that it is MIDI distinguishes it from being printed audio and that saying why do you need that is a bit dumb, not to be rude, I'm not calling you dumb I promise, but it slightly misses the point., that it is MIDI Also can we get out of the habit of asking people if they really need the thing they've said they need.
No rudeness intended, it was a genuine question, that's all
I know @Gavinski, its not taken as rudeness at all by me, I read your post as 200% helpfulness and nothing else. Its me thats the passive aggressive one!
EDIT: And I'm very grateful for the additional info
No worries! Thnx for that xx
It seems to me that an MPE editor is a very difficult thing to implement. The problem is that you play each note in one fluid motion. The MPE controller converts that into a sequence of discrete MIDI messages, with the expressive controls sampled at some rate. It is fairly easy to edit the individual message streams, but doing so consistently is much more difficult. If you change the duration of a note, how should the other streams be adjusted? How does the editor select the channel for a new note? Fundamentally, once the playing has been discretized, it is difficult to reconstruct the original consistently. This means that any editor will be based on compromises that may or may not be convenient or desired.
@uncledave I would say that's both true and a larger conversation, an aesthetico-technical discussion worthy of NIME conference papers, meanwhile the editing of MPE automation in the major DAWs works as fine as some of us need, tricky or not, I get it to do what I need to in Logic, Bitwig, Ableton etc, all fine. Hence, I would say a larger conversation, and meanwhile, if any of the AUv3 editors simply offfers the same automation it has been offering, per-note, and thus all channels in one clip, just as those DAWs do, and seemingly that Xequence 2 does but I haven't tried it, that will do me nicely.
SAND has "full MPE support". I haven't tried it myself, though
Wow thank you @pseudophysics for that info, I will look in to it!
Can't see if it runs as an AUv3 itself though
... research continues
ah, ok sorry. you need an AUv3
then this:
https://uwyn.com/mtr/
MIDI Tape Recorder excels at capturing and playing back expressive performances with MPE controllers and MPE MIDI plugins.
MTR can't be edited but thanks still
Yeah 'full mpe support' is a phrase which needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Ability to edit is very very rare on iOS
@Fantastic no worries about asking for AUv3 support 😄 I'm not saying the idea is wrong at all, but I'm also not saying I can do this realistically anytime soon, especially since Xequence 2 sales are not very inspiring!
However, regarding your MPE editing desires: Xequence 2 has very well thought-out and flexible MPE editing indeed, including intuitive and seamless (as far as the technology allows) per-note editing / creation of controller data.
The manual has extensive details about MPE support -- but do let me know here if any questions remain:
https://seven.systems/xequence2/en/manual/#section-12
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I honestly doubt it Gav. The developer, @blueveek (Victor) went dark a long time ago, and has completely stopped communicating with anyone regarding Atom 2 as far as I know.
I was a huge fan of the original Atom. With Atom 2, I was “all in” during its development, and it was the whole reason I went out and bought a Launchpad MK3 for its tight integration with the app.
Sadly, I think there were many users that kept hounding him with feature requests that were outside his vision for the app. (Which was a piano roll sequencer - which IIRC only had a maximum of either 8 or 16 bars in length, with the idea of using multiple instances, where you’d use one instance to orchestrate and fire others). I still remember him telling people to “embrace modularity” but some people weren’t having it and insisted he make the bars unlimited, where users could compose whole length pieces on a single instance. So he did it to try and make everyone happy, but even then, it wasn’t enough, they then wanted to be able to edit MPE data, and for it to do this and that, but then all of a sudden he disappeared.
Cant really blame him honestly.
So while it still works today, I myself have quit using it, as I don’t see it getting any further updates. One day it will break and stop working, and I don’t want to have it at the heart of a project when that happens. I’ve actually been kinda surprised to see you start using it this late in the game.
For my piano roll needs, Drambo’s piano roll has/does everything I need. And if I’m not using Drambo standalone, I’ll use instances of the Drambo Auv3 (Midi processor) in AUM or other hosts.
And as far as MPE goes, with those type performances, I record straight to audio (like a GeoShred performance for example) I’ll either record to the Flexi sampler in Drambo, or use an instance of Loopy Pro to record said audio. Never had an urge to “edit” MPE MIDI, if I’m not satisfied with a performance take, I’ll re-record another take until I get it right.
Hmm, define 'late in the game'. I did a very detailed video on it which dropped on the day it was released back in 2021 😂
I did write 'hopefully' above, but I know he's been incommunicado so maybe I'm being too optimistic. My hope, as far as it goes, is just that it'd be maintained if it broke, I'm definitely not expecting him to start actively developing it again.
Oh, I was only referring to some of the things I’ve seen you do lately/recently in which you’re using atom2. @Gavinski
I thought maybe you’d just recently started using it, and thought to myself “dang, Gav is using that abandonware?”
Edit: wow, was it really 2021? Man, it seems like forever ago!
….
Imo, that isn’t quite a fair portrayal of what happened. Many of the features you mention (such as longer clips and non-note event editing), were features the developer had said would be in Atom 2 after he wrapped Atom 1.
His vision changed somewhere along the way… which is how things sometimes go and totally his right. But I don’t think it’s fair to portray people wanting features he had said he was going to implement as being unreasonable for wanting them.
Well Ed, I did say “I think” right at the start of my post you quoted above.
That’s the way I took it, and that’s what I remember. I apologize if I portrayed “users” “unfairly”, though I’d like to point out that I didn’t single out any particular people as “users”.
Back on the topic of MPE Editing, so it seems like you might be OK with just editing notes in captured MPE @Fantastic? Or, what is it you edit in Logic, Bigwig, and Ableton? For instance, if you have a pitch-bend slide between two notes, and you move one of them, what do you expect to happen? Do you expect the slide to adjust to the new relative positions of the notes? If you change the pitch of one of them, what do you expect as far as scaling of the bend? Are you OK with adjusting that manually in addition to moving the notes?
I guess I'm trying to get to what your bottom line is as far as editing of the expression.
I don't believe there's any AUv3 plugin for full MPE recording and editing such as I describe above. You can record and play back MPE with high accuracy using MIDI Tape Recorder or Loopy Pro. You can record MPE with somewhat acceptable expression in Atom 2 and edit the notes, but not the expression. You can edit the notes in Loopy Pro, but not the expression.
My best suggestion given the lack of MPE editing in plugins is to record to MIDI Tape Recorder or Loopy Pro, then for the (infrequent?) cases where you want to tweak something, export into Xequence 2 for a quick edit and export back to MTR or Loopy Pro.
@wim . I believe it's even worse than you imagine. If there's a glide between two notes in MPE, the second note does not actually appear, just the first note and a long chain of pitch bend while the note is sustained. So the second note does not even exist to be edited. And say the glide ends with a little vibrato. If you want to make the note longer, do you expect the glide to be slower, or just to extend the held bit at the end. And there are Channel Pressure and Expression (CC74) variations in parallel. So it's multi-dimensional, every note has 3 parameters varying in time. Keeping them all consistent, so the result doesn't sound choppy would be very difficult.
No, not worse than I imagine. I was trying to be brief and not distract from the reason for my post, which was to ask: “You say you do limited MPE editing in some desktop DAWs. What does that look like?”
Understanding the expectation is key to seeing if there’s anything that will work.
Such an underrated app. Works great with the core midi, or even IAA.
Here's a really clear and simple example
Most major desktop DAWs have perfectly decent MPE midi editing these days
While 95% of the time I do not edit what I've played, occasionally I do, which is really useful for getting a record ready for release and you have an absolutely near perfect take that you've performed but one moment that is irritating that you want to "fix". And as with anything else, in a live performance you live with that, and with a record you might be inclined to tidy it up, such is the nature of production.
It's really not that strange or uncommon I promise.
@wim I do think that's a good suggestion, in the absence of an ideal. I hope that the future of Loopy's midi automation editing is per-note, much like Bitwig etc, and in the meantime I may end up using @SevenSystems or I may as you suggest use MTR and just do finalizing of things elsewhere. The ideal for me while waiting for Loopy Pro's future update for automation, is an AUv3 that is as capable as Xequence2, and then those are the next best options.
Thanks
Maybe @Michael could bring @SevenSystems in to the team for the midi features?! and we get Xequence 3 inside of Loopy Pro!
Parallel universes? All just so I can have ideal MPE editing in Loopy. Shall I add request to Roadmap for Seven Systems to joins Loopy? (That's a drank too much coffee-fueled joke. I'm not actually adding to Roadmap, which has so many actually excellent suggestions and everything I want already roadmapped)
Thank you @SevenSystems , I will likely purchase in the next couple of weeks, given there's no equivalent AUv3 in exstence, and at least try to make the workflow work for me, if it doesn't it almost certainly won't be because of xequence 2, it will just be the necessity of an AUv3, of staying within one app interface that hosts, in the meantime I do look forward to getting to know it, and if I do find anything specific I will drop you a message.
Thank you!
😄 It does sound like a good suggestion, and funnily enough, this has been brought up (half-jokingly) by several others on the forum in the past.
If I were able to fully commit to a large project at this point (which I amn't due to personal reasons), I'd totally sign that declaration of intent 🙂
And thanks for considering Xequence. There's a load of stuff on my own Roadmap that I'd love to add to the app once life and financial situations allow! (not-so-secret secret: Xequence isn't exactly keeping me afloat...)