OSX BETA quick & dirty external midi routing

[birk]

I wanted to be able to use my samchillian to control external midi
devices so I wrote a simple max patch allowing me to route midi data
coming in to the IAC driver to anywhere else. It's still a little
buggy so if anyone has any suggestions for improvement let me know.
You don't need to buy MAX/MSP to run it - I'm pretty sure you can
download their runtime version for free and open it with that. You can
find the patch here: http://www.jonbirkholz.com/samchillian.htm

- Jon

[birk]

...and thanks for the shoutout last night, Leon.

[samchillian]

thanks for contributing that

maybe i'm missing something but i have sent midi to external devices by
using what's in the program already. in preferences you can specify
where you want the MIDI to go: IAC bus or an external MIDI interface -
though you can't do both at once, which is possibly what you wanted(?).
anyway, as long as it's installed and up and running, it should appear
in the drop-down list.

i probably should expand what i have in the manual about this to make
it clearer

> thanks for the shoutout last night, leon

was wondering whether any of you would catch that! thanks for
noticing...

[birk]

For whatever reason, my dropdown menu only has the IAC driver listed
under preferences/midi output device. By the way, what does Kurzweil
polyphony mean?

[samchillian]

short answer: "kurzweil polyphony" is the setting to be used when one
wants polyphony when triggering a kurzweil K2000 (and probably others
in that family).

long answer: there is an issue regarding cutting notes off that is
specific to samchillian (or possibly to a sequencer), which is that
because two keys on the keyboard can hold the same midi note, it is not
clear how to approach sending a MIDI note off command when only one of
the keys is released. (obviously this is not an issue on a standard
MIDI keyboard, since you have to release a key before striking it
again)

i used to trigger a kurzweil k2000 - and they have what i consider to
be a more logical approach, which is that subsequent repeats of a MIDI
note start a new instance of that note, so that each instance must be
turned off with another MIDI note off. however, it seems that software
programs like reason ignore multiple note ons of a note already being
held, so if you use the kurzweil approach with reason, say, then
releasing one of many keys being held will cut off a legitimate note
being held, with the result that the playing sounds choppy when you
play fast.

turns out actually that the kurzweil mode is useful for some effects
that i use, so in addition to setting this mode in preferences it is
possible to set per patch in the set.xml, so you can mix up which mode
you like in live performance

note that the third setting, polyphony=off, is one way to be
monophonic, though you are more likely to want to do it on the synth
side, as then you can take advantage of envelopes and portamento, etc.