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'The Harmonic Algorithm' BM3 Bank - Audio Examples Added!!

I've been building a BM3 bank for my modified electric bass instrument to allow me to take full advantage of the extra timbral and harmonic options that the modifications provide (as well as to share it with you guys!). I've written a 60+ page thesis with all kinds of spreadsheets and analysis to explore the possibilities of this instrument! I'm making good progress and getting deeeep into understanding the underlying mechanics of BM3 in the process.

Rather than mapping all the overtones inside one pad, I opted to use individual pads in order to take full advantage of choke groups (only one overtone should sound on any string at any point in time) as well as to use the mod wheel as a 'latched' pitch bend (one of the higher strings has a dynamic retuning device fitted). By mapping the samples with multiple layers of articulation and a bit of thought for layout, the pad controller and mod wheel very accurately recreates the, effect of, possibilities and limitations of actually performing the overtones on the instrument itself.

It sounds insanely good! It's more than a 'bass' - you could build full range works with all the overtones of the instrument that I've sampled. I'll post up an example!!

However, I'm running into all kinds of anomalies and things that I'm having to troubleshoot and work around using 'creative' controller mappings and keyboard zone settings. It's stuff that I can just about tolerate and work with grudgingly, but I wouldn't want to publish any bank that requires working around nuances like this.

I've seen and read similar discussion to this (specifically regarding Patterning) and have done my own exploring through this setup, so I'll share my thoughts and process before my questions, in case it's insightful or useful.

A major 'BM3 understanding' leap for me was noticing that the 'pad note' is actually which note on the 'mapping' page the pad will sound (even after reading through all the documentation, that fact had somehow managed to evade me). I first set it up so that every pad was sounded by C7 on its respective channel, then set the pad notes to C7 and disabled pitching. This worked fine but how I solved the modulation and pitch bend issue (first only the active pad was receiving the info then after some tweaking only one channel/pad as I couldn't sent an 'omni' signal from my controller) was to have mod wheel and ped. send to pad 16, and set every pad to individually listen to channel 16 on the bank's midi port, which is set to 'all' (this way they listen to their own channel as well as channel 16). This then causes pad 16 to trigger all the pad's notes, which I solved by changing the individual pad's notes to E6-G7 (and allocated the appropriate pad notes).

At this point the instrument functions like I want it to, but uses every single channel from that controller.. not ideal. It seems logical to me that as every pad is triggered by a different note number and the sample zones mapped accordingly, that all the pads should be able to receive on the same MIDI channel and the bank function identically. This would also allow the pads to be performed with a keys controller (as it is, only the sample on the currently selected channel's pad will sound from its respective key). When I set it up like this however, strange things happened. Most of the samples wouldn't sound and just made a 'clicking' attack sound. This normal? ( @mathieugarcia ?). Anyone know what's going on here? Anyway, back to using different channels.

Problem this is causing us that the pad controller also has a MIDI keyboard, which I want to use to input Bank B. Ideally bank A would only listen to a single channel and bank B a different one, but as that didn't work I tried to solve it by deleting the overtone on pad 1 (I never use that one anyway - too low pitched to be useful in an upper structure) to 'free' up channel 1. I thought that should at least provide a doable workaround but I'm still finding issues with 'clicky' sounds happening as well as pad 16 triggering an extreme range MIDI note to trigger from bank B. No idea how this is happening as neither the physical or BM3 pad should send anything to channel 1 (tried with pad 1 as both 'no sample assigned' and with a silent sample and everything to off/none). Anyone got any insights or relevant experience here?

I also don't want the bank A sustain pedal on channel 16 (which is assigned to a button control) to affect bank B, however although bank B should only listen to channel 1, I can't seem to get the bank to stop listening to the pedal on channel 16 without losing all note data from channel 1. Anyone got any experience or insight regarding this?

I think that's it for now. When I get home and explore more then I'll post any updates to the problem solving process.

By the way, the fact that this kind of depth is possible is phenomenal. There's nothing negative at all about this troubleshooting process! I'm sure through our early exploration, the app will be refined (and collective knowledge build up) to make these kind of workflow considerations logical and streamlined. The fact that these possibilities actually exist is firstly and foremost, a fantastic and exciting thing.

Cheers!
Oscar

Comments

  • This is wayyyyyyyyyy beyond my understanding, but wanted to insure you that it sounds very, very interesting and that I would like to hear your examples and also am interested in anything you develop, describe and build :-))))

  • edited August 2017

    :o
    you_cooked_my_brain....
    but, massively inspired by what you are (i think) attempting

  • Sadly it seems there isnt a way currently. Bm3's midi implementation is woefully undercooked. On the flip side it's better than the Doa implementation at launch. Hopefully updates will get it working the way it should eventually :) and I would gladly play with even a nonideal version of this instrument you've created D:

  • edited August 2017

    Cheers for the positive comments guys! Spent a short while more on it today and seem to have got those few performance related issues sorted. Actually happened pretty much immediately when I went back to my equipment (ain't it always the way?!).

    Basically, I set the bank B 'bank' MIDI settings to 'none' and channel 1 and the pad's MIDI settings to the controller's port and channel 1 ('bank settings' would also prob work here). Seems to have sorted out all the problems I mentioned above (although would still be preferable to have everything on one channel).

    This means that aside from a bit of loop point editing, renaming and tidying up, the instrument is playable and V0.5 has been achieved! Guys, it sounds f***ing fantastic!!!! It's way beyond what I imagined for it when I set out. I'm excited to record a demonstration and show it to you!! It's also playable and fully functional on the BM3 pads screen (the velocity layers work very intuitively with BM3's pads 'Y velocity' actually).

  • Please registered me as beta Tester :))))))

  • @OscarSouth said:
    Cheers for the positive comments guys! Spent a short while more on it today and seem to have got those few performance related issues sorted. Actually happened pretty much immediately when I went back to my equipment (ain't it always the way?!).

    Basically, I set the bank B 'bank' MIDI settings to 'none' and channel 1 and the pad's MIDI settings to the controller's port and channel 1 ('bank settings' would also prob work here). Seems to have sorted out all the problems I mentioned above (although would still be preferable to have everything on one channel).

    This means that aside from a bit of loop point editing, renaming and tidying up, the instrument is playable and V0.5 has been achieved! Guys, it sounds f***ing fantastic!!!! It's way beyond what I imagined for it when I set out. I'm excited to record a demonstration and show it to you!! It's also playable and fully functional on the BM3 pads screen (the velocity layers work very intuitively with BM3's pads 'Y velocity' actually).

    This does sound very interesting and useful but very hard for me to follow with only a written description. Any chance you could do a video tutorial of how you set this all up?

  • @InfoCheck

    I've not really been planning to go into doing technical tutorial videos, but I'd definitely like to make this info easily accessible to others. BM3 works in a really logical way (and down the road as refinements are made, the few point of 'broken' logic will be fixed) but I didn't immediately 'see' the logic until after this process of trial and error. The mapping screen 'explained' a lot to me!!

    I'll have a think about the best format to present it!

  • By the way, for anyone looking to get deeper into sampling, I recommend you check out this thread:
    https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/20517/wonderful-articles-on-sampling-historical-technical-perspectives#latest

    Those Sound On Sound articles which I've linked to (they are a little difficult to navigate between on the page itself) are a wonderful overview of sampling from both a historical and technical perspective and after reading them I felt a whoooooole lot better equipped to work in deeper ways (musically and technically) in BM3.

  • Already reading :D

  • Recordinging the next set of samples for the 'Harmonic Algorithm' set .. bowed overtones of Double Bass!

  • Wow can't wait!!!
    Brain steaming but frantically awaiting!!!

  • edited August 2017

    I put together an example this morning of applying the theory behind these sample banks (60 page document!) to weave complex textures through interesting chord progressions & harmonic modulations, using the overtones I've sampled from these two instruments:

    That's the overtones of my electric bass (performable live) over the overtones of my double bass (it'd take two passes through to layer the two counterpoint lines). Also got a bit of 'shamanic' percussion that I added and a low texture that I programmed in Lorentz comes in for a few bars.

    Not mastered so crank it!

  • Sounds really sweet!

  • I like it very much!
    Sadly, it is very short :-(

    Do you have more or that?

    What do you plan to do with that document of yours?
    Any change to read it?

    And would you offer your BM project?
    :-))))

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