What does VCI-400 EGE "slicer mode" actually do?

[FreebirdRising]

The youtube video could hardly be considered a demonstration of what this feature actually is... It's billed as a top feature - I'd like to know why I should consider paying an extra $300 for it.

Other than the mapping, the information that is available really doesn't explain why I should want this controller... and the mapping isn't a good enough reason.

Clue me in!

[djproben]

my guess is it's a lot like the serato itch slicer thats available on the novation twitch. It cuts up the next 8 (or 16 or 32) bars and gives you cue points and patterns that you can flail away on with 8 buttons, and then when you're done drop back seamlessly into the mix, effortlessly remixing the track like a ninja with a head full of acid.

[FreebirdRising]

So it's like idiot-mode beatjump? I don't understand why you would need special firmware for that?

Couldn't you just map it to do something like drop a cue point(or maybe just a loop?) and set a modifier, then, while the modifier is set, all the buttons would go to the cue point and then immediately jump by the amount assigned to the button? While the modifier is active the slice button would then reset the mod to zero so that any of the buttons could be used to re-engage...

I still don't see what's so $300 bucks about that.

[djproben]

So it's like idiot-mode beatjump? I don't understand why you would need special firmware for that?

Couldn't you just map it to do something like drop a cue point(or maybe just a loop?) and set a modifier, then, while the modifier is set, all the buttons would go to the cue point and then immediately jump by the amount assigned to the button? While the modifier is active the slice button would then reset the mod to zero so that any of the buttons could be used to re-engage...

I still don't see what's so $300 bucks about that.

I'm not sure but better mappers than myself have been unable to replicate this functionality without bomes or similar tools to send more information via midi. I think user zestoi was trying something like this a while ago but it required other programs to function (and I don't think it worked on a mac). Hopefully he'll jump on and explain, or maybe one of the designers of the 400 mapping will explain it. As for whether that (and the other benefits of the EGE) is worth $300, that depends on the user, and it may not be worth it to you. Though Ean has said that djtt will eventually sell a kit with firmware upgrade, mappings, and buttons for $99 so you can mod your VCI-400 yourself, so you really can't complain too much about the price. Save yourself $201 and get the regular VCI and mod it yourself when the time comes.

[Kaek]

As a twitch owner, the slicer mode is incredibly useful for certain genres. I usually mix trance, and it sounded like bad beatjumping when I used it on trance tunes.

But for other genre's it was incredibly expressive, it can create some very glitchy sounds.

On the twitch there are two settings quant and domain. Quant is how big the slice is, modifying the slice length can create stutter effects or allow you to isolate certain sounds within the beat. Domain defines how large the section which is to be sliced up is. This allows you to pick out slices from an 8 bar, 16 bar etc area.

The default mode is to play the slice and then continue from where it is supposed to be playing. However if you play an earlier slice while it is about to proceed to the next area, the area loops instead of continueing...

Pressing the slicer mode button twice put it into looping slicer mode, where the area is continously looped and sliced. This is where setting your domain is important as it controls the size of the loop.

Holding a slice button down causes it to loop the slice.

I don't know how much of the EGE firmware replicates this functionality but after having used slicer mode it is actually very complicated and not as simple as just beatjumping around.

[corporation]

I see slicer akin to a Traktor version of MLR on the monome.

[Otacon]

my guess is it's a lot like the serato itch slicer thats available on the novation twitch. It cuts up the next 8 (or 16 or 32) bars and gives you cue points and patterns that you can flail away on with 8 buttons, and then when you're done drop back seamlessly into the mix, effortlessly remixing the track like a ninja with a head full of acid.

dude, hope you dont mind if i make this my sig....once i can figure out how to make one lol

[zestoi]

I think user zestoi was trying something like this a while ago but it required other programs to function (and I don't think it worked on a mac). Hopefully he'll jump on and explain, or maybe one of the designers of the 400 mapping will explain it.

indeed he did and my midimasher has now been ported to mac since i've moved to using a macbook pro (also ported to linux and will keep releasing windows versions too). the mac version is a universal binary so will work on intel or powerpc macs.

i presume their firmware basically implements the solution i came up with finally which combines ideas from my original implementation and ideas from the blog post from a while back entitled "string theory for dj's"

basically when you enable the slicer using midimasher it:

* drops the active cue at the point you enable it
* animates 8 pads, one per beat using the beatphase monitor
* when you press any pad jumps back to the active cue point and then issues one or more beatjumps to get to the right point (if not the 1st beat)
* in "loop" mode my slicer jumps back to the start of the slice when it gets to the end and with loop mode turned off it keeps moving forward re-dropping the active cue point at the new starting point of the sliced beats.
* when u keep a pad held down it loops round that beat

impossible to implement without middleware software like my midimasher or bomes or with firmware. having that functionality direct in the controllers firmware would be very cool... tho i connect all my controllers to traktor and ableton via midimasher these days anyway.

the launchpad config in the current release has two twitch style areas with 4 independant banks each, one of which is the slicer, along with 4 overall pages/layers - all with led recall.

i'll be finishing that mapping and creating instructions/screenshots etc when i get my grubby mits on traktor 2.5 so i can map all the new sample decks goodness...

one pain with slicer-ing in traktor is that to get to say the 5th beat of the sliced beats you need to send to traktor the "jump to active cue" followed by "beatjump+4" followed by "beatjump+1" and unless you insert delays in then traktor assumes you don't know what u want and ignores one or more of them.

versions of my slicer from the last couple or so releases of midimasher are also much better than older ones as now those delays don't hold up other midi messages being processed - since now you can queue up midi messages to be send a specific number of milliseconds in the future.

[FreebirdRising]

Thanks for the reply Zestoi - I'll have to check out your solution.

So what exactly is the firmware/midimasher changing in the chain that makes this work? Why is it a hardware issue and not a limitation of traktor issue?

[zestoi]

Thanks for the reply Zestoi - I'll have to check out your solution.

cool, if u have a LP then u can at least try that config out of the box. i need to work on making midi masher easier for people to understand and use, but hopefully will all be a bit clearer once i complete that mapping.

So what exactly is the firmware/midimasher changing in the chain that makes this work? Why is it a hardware issue and not a limitation of traktor issue?

it's exactly a traktor limitation, that's all it is. what the custom vci firmware (or my code) is doing is using the limited set of commands we can send to traktor and using them in ways that traktor didn't originally intend. at this stage of the game i think NI would be slightly stupid to not add some native slicer implementation, but then again the mapping window in traktor should also have been redesigned ages ago, so who knows...

midimasher sites between traktor and your controller. it uses virtual midi ports for communication with traktor and the actual midi ports of your controller(s) to communicate with them. there's no direct communication at all between traktor and my controllers in my setup - tho midimasher can be set to just send certain data on unmodified if needed.

you can connect as many apps to midimasher at the same time as u need (traktor, ableton, sooperlooper, other vsynths etc) and as many controllers as needed and mm can handle all the processing/routing between them all.

if u want to see the actual additional logic needed to implement the slicer have a look here http://midimasher.djism.com/lua/lib/traktor.lua and search for "function traktor.slicer_create". there's really only two blocks of logic, one to animate the pads leds using midi feedback from the beatphase monitor and another to handle what messages to send out when u press a pad.

right at the top of that file is "beatjumps used by the slicer" that defines what beatjumps we need to send out to get to where we want to be, which as u can see if quite a pain, esp if we ever needed to jump 7.5 beats

["jump7.5"] = { "beatjump_+4_", "beatjump_+2_", "beatjump_+1_", "beatjump_+/2_" }

midi mapping in traktor is relatively restrictive compared to other apps, people have managed to get all this kind of logic into a native VDJ mapper for example.