"Intermediary midi mapping" software *discussion thread* (Traktor mapping is a pain)

[sushilrai]

Well if we look at the djtt firmwares for the vci-100 and midifighter as an example you can see that Traktor is capable of some amazing things. Superfaders, fx triggers, etc are made possible by combining various midi commands into one control which are then executed in a certain way. The only realistic way to achieve this is by re-writing the firmware on a midi controller at a hardware level. Yes, it's true that some of these effects can be done via a plain old Traktor mapping

[zestoi]

The only realistic way to achieve this is by re-writing the firmware on a midi controller at a hardware level.

completely untrue - all u need is something like midimasher to sit between your controller(s) and app(s). latency and handling massive amounts of traffic are the main concern - which is where having custom firmware instead wins.

adding custom funcs like those found in the vci/mf/etc is at least part of the reason for my midimasher software - to add that kind of custom functionality that (for the most part) you can't get from the base firmware.

plenty of other reasons too ofc. you can do some stuff so simply with some custom lua code in midimasher than you'd never be able to get with any firmware in a controller, even if you do have the source (like for a midifighter) and were willing to recode the C and recompile each time u wanted to tweak something.

[zestoi]

plus it's not like having middleware like midimasher is any new kind of concept... automap is used by a lot of users as are custom apps like DaRouter based on bomes etc. and who knows what other cunningness some maufacturers hide in their driver code instead of putting in the firmware...

[zestoi]

did i just reply to a bot? ah well... if so then that's the 2nd time in as many days

both of "sushilrai" look like they could have been scraped and spun... apols if i am wrong ofc

[MiL0]

bigups zestoi - looking forward to trying it out

[zestoi]

bigups zestoi

cheers i just hope it actually runs on someone else's machine and i haven't forgotten to package something etc

[derschaich]

will give this a try this week, will report back!

thanks for your work so far!

[zestoi]

very minor update, but grab this if anyone wants to try it and hasn't grabbed a version yet:

http://djism.com/mm/midimasher-20110921.zip

only change is in dump.exe, where it wouldn't work if it only found one midi-in device.

btw... dump.exe is *not* trying to replace something like midi-ox, it's only there to debug issues as it uses the same RtMidi lib as the main midimasher executable and also the same midi message decode code of mine - so is useful if it's not reacting as expected to midi input.

i had a friend test it on his laptop and seemed to run - tho as he only had a midi wind controller and no traktor etc the testing he could do was a bit limitted

dump.exe can now also log to a file - which could be useful for debug.

[austin]

Amazing work, i see that it works on the lpd8, will it also work on my nanopad2 or do i need to tweek anything in the code?

[zestoi]

Amazing work, i see that it works on the lpd8, will it also work on my nanopad2 or do i need to tweek anything in the code?

you would need to create a device config file which tells it what note/cc etc is sent out by each pad on the nanopad2 and then make a couple of minor tweaks. not too tricky tho...

i guess i would treat the 16 pads as 4 sets of 4 pads instead of 2 rows of 8? this will let the code work with minimal changes...

run learn.exe, enter 'nanopad2' for the device name, 4 for rows and 4 for pads. then it will ask u to press each one, one at a time. so press the first 4 pads on the top row, then the first 4 on the second row, then the 2nd set on the top row and then the final 4 on the 2nd row. press q after that to quit.

once you have this config file you never really need to mess with it again. unless u wanted one that included different internal nanopad banks etc.

i haven't used the learn.exe for a while now, so if something isn't working properly let me know and i'll fix. all it does is create a file called devices/nanopad2.lua that u can edit later if needed.

i presume u mean this for the midifighter 4banks mapping? if so then either edit config/lpd8_midifighter_4banks.lua or copy it to something like config/nanopad2_midifighter_4banks.lua and then change this:

open_midi_device("traktor", "traktor", "Traktor to MM", "MM to Traktor", 2);
open_midi_device("lpd8", "lpd8", "LPD8", "LPD8", 2);
open_midi_device("midifighter1", "generic", "MidiFighter1 Input", "MidiFighter1 Output")
virtual_midifighter_4banks("lpd8", 0, "midifighter1", 0, 0, 0, 127)

to this:

open_midi_device("traktor", "traktor", "Traktor to MM", "MM to Traktor", 2);
open_midi_device("nanopad2", "nanopad2", "YOUR NANOPAD MIDI DEVICE NAME", "", 2);
open_midi_device("midifighter1", "generic", "MidiFighter1 Input", "MidiFighter1 Output")
virtual_midifighter_4banks("nanopad2", 0, "midifighter1", 0, 0, 0, 127)

the first arg to open_midi_device() is the name u use to reference it anywhere else in the config, the 2nd arg is the type so it knows which file from the "device" dir to load for it, the 3rd arg is the name of it's midi input and 4th is it's midi output (none for the nanopad i presume, so empty) running either dump.exe or learn.exe will list your midi 'in' device names so u can copy from there.

then double click on midimasher and select your config.

it's not as much work as i've made it out here

if it works (and if not i will fix it so it does) can you send me your devices/nanopad2.lua file and the nanokontrol editor config file so i can include those in later releases? it would be cool to build up a set of device config files for anything that's out there to make it easier for people to get started in future.

this is the output of me just checking learn.exe with my lpd8:

1: From SCS.3 DaRouter
2: LPD8

choose a device: 2
enter the device type (will create devices\TYPE.lua): flibble
writing to [devices\flibble.lua]
Enter the number of grid controller rows (0 for none): 2
Enter the number of grid controller columns: 4
Press pad 1 on row 1
Press pad 2 on row 1
Press pad 3 on row 1
Press pad 4 on row 1
Press pad 1 on row 2
Press pad 2 on row 2
Press pad 3 on row 2
Press pad 4 on row 2
q

i did find a minor issue, if you see it outputting this warning ignore it, tho i will fix it in the next version:

cygwin warning:
  MS-DOS style path detected: devices\flibble.lua
  Preferred POSIX equivalent is: devices/flibble.lua
  CYGWIN environment variable option "nodosfilewarning" turns off this warning.
  Consult the user's guide for more details about POSIX paths:
    http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#using-pathnames