Deckadance MIDI scripting!!

[Scoox]

I've never been a fan of Deckadance becasue it only provided support for very basic custom MIDI controller mappings, and no LED feedback. This is the main reason I am a devoted Traktor user. However, I have just checked the latest version and learnt that, since v2.2 was (released on 29 July 2013), Deckadance is equipped with proper bi-directional MIDI comms and full-blown MIDI scripting capabilities. I am not talking about crappy mouse-driven scripting like in Traktor, I am talking about scripts that can be edited by humans in any plain-text editor, organized logically into separate files, merged, split and shared with other users without being constrained to a monstrous, monolithic, encrypted TSI file that can only be clumsily edited in Traktor's mapping editor.

I have always had great mapping ideas but I am never in the mood to implement them in Traktor because it's just too hard to do anything mildly sophisticated. With Deckadance DeckaScripting it's very easy to achieve sophisticated mappings, especially controller banks or pages. An unlimited number of variables may be defined and named meaningfully (as opposed to Traktor's skimpy M1-M8 "modifiers"). Heck, it can even handle SysEx messages to initialize my Launchpad and my BCR2000!

Deckadance also supports third-party VST plugins

I am in the process of comparing Traktor and Deckadance, and so far I am seeing a lot of overlap, which is good because I might switch.

[synthet1c]

are there any mapping docs available? The image line website is terrible... I really liked the ability to effect only certain frequencies, but not much else. Midi scripting would probably make up for a lot if it's as in-depth as VDJScript.

[Stewe]

Scoox - perhaps you're willing to share your ideas with us robots who could hopefully incorporate them in traktor and share for everybody.

[Scoox]

Well I just managed to get my first test script working with LED feedback on my Launchpad S. Doing other buttons would be a matter of copy-paste and typing the right MIDI note value in (piece of cake since I already have a list of those!) I am trying to figure out how to tell multiple devices apart. I read somewhere that it is possible but so far no concrete info on how to do it.

My impression so far is very good, although I find Traktor does a better job at syncing to tracks. However, Deckadance is able to sync tracks with drifting BPM which (correct me if I am wrong) Traktor cannot do.

[Scoox]

Just programmed play buttons on my Launchpad, no problem at all synchronizing two well-behaved EDM tracks.

This was also fairly painless to achieve:



Having trouble though sending MIDI to more than one device, because Deackadance sends messages to all devices. I'll have to configure each device to receive on a different MIDI port.

[Scoox]

I have found some areas of Deckadance lacking, but it holds more promise than Traktor. I've just sent an email to Image-Line with some suggestions. It does pretty much everything Traktor does, and there are also things Traktor cannot do that DD can, such as deleting hotcues without having to select them first (when using the mouse). The main two limitations holding me back are: 1) no markers (not the same as hotcues because markers don't take up a hotcue button) and 2) inability to direct MIDI data to a particular MIDI device. Well, at least I haven't found a way to do this yet.

[Scoox]

Conclusions:
1) Traktor syncs better. Trigger a fast loop in flux mode and when you de-activate the loop the track will be in perfect sync with all other tracks. With Deckadance's Leap function, which is essentially the same as flux+loop, tracks end up out of sync every single time.

2) Although Deckadance can tell which controller a MIDI message came from, all LED feedback is sent to all controllers which would be OK if I could change the global MIDI port on my Launchpad, but that's not the case. In fact, there are many controllers that use a fixed MIDI port number. I suspect this would be easy for Image-Line to change, but they haven't replied to my email yet and I am not buying the software just so I can rant on their forum.

So for now I'll be sticking--reluctantly--with Traktor.