jonah's Recent Posts

i'm using the demo

select either of the wooden box models and connect pitch out to pitch in on the box sound stops. by default the dial is maxed to the right. don't think it happens if it isn't maxed out.

osx 10.9.4 logic 9.1.8 kaivo 1.1 32 bits.

is the demo of kaivo supposed to load scales? because i can't get them to show up.

btw thanks for telling me how to get the scales back in aalto. :)

where should i look for them? thanks.

saved patches still pull up the right tuning though...

logic pro x mavericks

i'm way into using grid matrix systems synthi style. well, what i imagine it was like. because expensive. :)

i got a MIDI grid system thingy setup for aalto in max that made connections, which was the easy part, but i never figured out how to automate the copy/pasting to and from aalto, so there wasn't really a point*. ;)

the issue with aalto/kaivo would be the paging system and organization of the destinations, i think. when i set it up i had 3 pages, 1 for the top row, 1 for the oscillator, gate, delay sections and 1 for the filter and reverb.

of the 14 sources i put the red 7 at the bottom because i thought it felt better for whatever reason. i also tried sequencer at the top, red in the middle and the rest at the bottom which felt pretty good too. i never tried sources at the top and destination on the side for whatever reason.

an onscreen grid where you could adjust the order of the sources and destinations and see a marker denoting a connection could be helpful, but really the GUI as it is now serves perfectly well to clue you in on what's up. in a few ways better because while a grid is very easy to physically remember it can hard to visually parse, especially on screen where it all kinds of runs together.

also, the colored LEDs on most button matrices could give an indication of the connection type, but that's getting more complex. personally, i find when you get physical with it, it becomes easy to remember the order of the connections.

i'm not sure why matrix patching in software hasn't taken off more considering button matrices are so cheap nowadays, you don't have to worry about physical contacts getting dirty or losing pins and there are no mults or stackable to worry about like with my hardware modular! :) they are great for performance. being able to make and break multiple connections at once is totally rad.

  • if you could "lock" parameter values you could just use program changes to switch between all permutations of connections that have been pre calculated.

i'm trying the demo and it doesn't look like copy paste works? basically, lfo knights y = to body pitch, modulation depth full right. turn lfo rate and level up to full and sound should cut out. using logic 9.

i've stopped the sound engine other ways, but this is the only one i can reproduce so far.

<Kaivo pluginVersion="65536" presetName="----" lfo_function="knights" res_mode="metal string" body_mode="wooden box large" sample_name="Oscillators/sine.wav"/>

also, i find the white noise excessive. often it's louder than the sound i'm making. :( when i demoed aalto it took 10 minutes before the noise kicked in and if i hadn't been so immersed that the ten minutes flew by (multiple times!) i wouldn't have bought it. kaivo seems even deeper, but i'm having a hard time getting immersed and interested in making sounds and exploring when i have to pause so often.

It looks great. I love that the interface is similar to aalto.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm going buy it right away, but damn, it's crying out for some "utility" modules!

I mean especially with those dual pitch inputs my mind goes to scaling or inverting. But also when scrubbing samples more rhythmic interrelations are always good.

Just an idea: you could put a "math" module on either side of the patch box to wire into. A dial that goes from .1 to 1 and can be positive or negative.

What's tilt? Distortion/Waveshaping? Physical modeling does well with distortion.

Good to see a limiter! I haven't used a physical modeling synth that I haven't exploded.

My 2010 SL mbp 13" 2.4gHz c2d is out of warranty and once mavericks hits I think I'll upgrade.

Quick check says benchmark performance doubled, but what does that mean in practice?

How much more CPU breathing room might I get? I basically use my computer as a sound module- 1 synth and some effects then record into my hardware sampler.

Aalto, few instances of Valhalla plugs, Space Designer and chipcrusher + numerology MIDI automation works, but peg my CPU - not a problem per say - except I'd like to cut down on the fan and heat. Especially the heat, as if makes it hard to use as a literal laptop! :)

My take is that buying software is payment for ideas and it's more like restaurant food in the grand scheme of things.

How about being able to slice up the sequencer? A lot of times it's too many total steps. 32 or even staying with 16 total would be fine, but let us sub divide them down into smaller chunks that could modulate each other. Maybe a tab system?

I'd dig stuff like track/sample and hold and envelope followers. Audio inputs on the sequencer (graphic VCO) and more points of audio out to route back in. I'd love to send the reverb and filtered sound back into the waveguide and also use them as control sources. Multiple waveguides....

Or maybe as features for hyökyaalto, tulva, pulahtaa, etc. Ha! I'm a fan of the simplicity of Aalto, so don't listen to me. Don't get me wrong I'd love a cracked out version, but then it's not Aalto.

I thought each copy of Aalto was slightly different sounding? I'm curious to hear if solo sounds different than my copy. Are all the solos the same sounding?

I'm trying to modulate envelope 2 release time with either a modulation sequencer or dual LFO and I can't work out how to get the control fine enough to go to both the min and the max values. It seems like I have to use a -.0999 or something to get near the bottom end, but then I can't get at the top.

I had tried hosting Aalto in Logic, turning on Learn Mode,, sending MIDI CCs, (which would be my preferred method so I can record the CCs), but Logic seemed even more strict about the values it would accept (0-127?). I tried playing with the different scaling options in expert mode and maybe I overlooked something, but I didn't find anything that worked. I had to multiply by something like .01 to get near the bottom end.

Are you talking about allowing automation of patch cords?!

If you did allow automation of patch cords, I'd appreciate an alternate or pop up matrix view to keep track of what's going on.

I love the flow of patching in Aalto as I'm jamming, but if I wanted to make adjustments after the fact, I think working with the the connections would be the same issue that faces a hardware modular, the spaghetti monster! :)

And the DAW automation would be worse with different rectangle on/off "pulses" telling you what was going on.

I'm a big fan of sequenced switches in my hardware modular and it'd be great fun to get that control over Aalto, through DAW automation, or Numerology LFOs, more likely! :) I love playing notes while patches connect and disconnect. I currently send note sequences to Aalto so I can patch while it plays, but I'd rather play while automation patches it! :)

Nice! ...I think I missed the news about 1.3.1 though.

A MIDI command to activate save as version would compliment revert very well, but would get into the duplicate name issue quickly.

I feel "end of the line" is manageable and would be good enough if we want to start a new patch "genealogy" we can rename it or rather save as.

I mean, if you went back to 2b, then did save version, what is it 2b1, then 2b1a, 2b1a1? :)

Summer is coming! Well the sun has been out at least.

I'd love to let my synth nerd flag fly with a shirt with the image from the cover of the Aalto manual.

Also, would it help fund updates? I seriously feel like I under paid. :)

Fooling around in with the gain plugin in Logic I flipped the phase of one channel and turned it to mono which as expected kills the sound - But! the reverb still comes through and of course modulating the pan will bring the sound back as well.

Modulate pan with a high freq LFO or ENV 2 for some cool new timbres, link it it to a mod controller, etc, etc. It surprised me how much this one difference opens up so much new territory. It makes sense though since it's basically turning the panner into another VCA and the way the reverb works is just a nice bonus. :)

I'm not into feature creep, but I wonder if something along these lines would be worth adding internally? Either way, if anyone has the means I encourage them to try this out - it's good fun!

Just wanted to come back and give a belated thanks! Somehow I didn't associate this snapping with fine adjustment. Also, I foolishly skimmed over the beginning of the manual because I thought I had that part pretty well figured out. :)

Aalto is an excellent learn by doing synth and purely by using and playing around with Aalto my understanding and skill with all modular systems increased. I guess Aalto's downfall is that it was so well designed it never made me feel so stumped that I was forced to look at and pore over the manual. Ha!

Anyway, It makes sense why the ratio, pitch and delay frequency have locked positions. It got me wondering if there are other "generally thought of as musically useful" values for other parameters such as timbre. I generally play it by ear, but I'll have to pay closer attention and see if any values jump out.

Maybe I'm the only one that misses it, but it had its uses. Maybe clicking on pitch or carrier could give you the option?

Would it be a ton of work to expand the snapping to get it to match the key we have selected?

Unrelated, but while I'm thinking about it, I bet an option to lock the pitch modulation to the various fixed pitch points could be pretty neat. So for example the LFO would snap between 55, 110, 220, 440.

Hitting return causes the previous patch to be loaded. I'm used to using return to bring the playhead back to the start, so I've lost a few patches this way. I don't think I've changed anything and no other plugins appear to be doing this.

Aalto 1.2.6, logic 9.16.

You're right about the behavior. I just checked and it appears aalto defaults to select the previous patch if you haven't clicked the key or patch selection menus. I thought it was strange because I've never had this happen before because it usually just pulls up the menu to select a patch.

On the positive side I just noticed is that using return or the prev & next buttons to switch presets within aalto it doesn't cause the same CPU spike and slowness as if I use logics buttons prev & next buttons or the [ ] keys to switch presets.

Thank you!

It's written with a different voice and scope, but In terms of being a manual that's first and foremost a good read this is up there with Howard Scarr'sa<a href="http://www.zorchmusic.com/hscarr/html/downloads.html
">Programming Analogue Synths
for the Virus. (hope the linky works)

"The cover illustration patch-cord wave is absolutely gorgeous, and I would be proud to wear it"

Heck yeah! I'd buy a t-shirt. I dunno if cafe press is still good (or if it ever was). Aalto blue :) with pink or multi colored patch cables would look pretty swell, I think. I'd also dig that image as a desktop background.

Bongo-noid and the illustration on page 58 (I see a seagull and a duck) are also particularly inspired. The illustrations have very much driven the point home that Aalto is rather conductive to turning mental imagery into patches... usually I work backward. It's a cool new avenue for me to explore.

"cease to resist, giving my goodbye
drive my car into the ocean
you'll think I'm dead, but I sail away
on a wave of modulation."

Apologies to frank black. :)

I just tested and those patches make sound for me. They seem to be set to host though, so you'd have to change it or start your sequencer running. I'm having problems with the sequencer too on osx. :(

Do you use 1/4" cables and strip one end?

Could you use a Behringer ada8000 getting Toslink from a macbook pro? This would be a super cheap solution, if so.

I was sharing a patch with a friend today and seeing the "guts" of the patch in such a simple manner made me want to make a random generator. I've never made a program, but I feel like learning and this seems like it would be pretty simple, useful and fun.

I'm looking for some tips on where to start. What programs to use and so forth. I have taken classes on programming, but we used teaching software that is limited to learning concepts, but not building an application and also a tiny bit of c++.

The biggest hurdle will be coming up with an interface that isn't slower to use than Aalto itself. I'm making some sketches now, but I haven't seen many examples to get inspiration from. Is there anything people would want to see? That's relatively simple, of course ;)

How to even go about creating a gui is also what I'm most unsure about. Should I use Apples own x-code tools or is there something easier?

Here's what I plan on doing more specifically:

A gui where you can check off which aspects are randomized to "grow" your sound. If everything was random that would sound bad more often than not. Often you wouldn't even want to change many of the dials especially level and pitch. The randomization limited to a few aspects at once and loading in patches you already like to start should produce interesting results.

I would build the option to constrain the changes to further sculpt the sound. That is you could set pitch to only link to specific dials or release to change between 5 and 10 and so forth.

The only other task I'd realistically undertake I'm not even sure is possible within the frame works of aalto/osx. I'd like to be able to automatically copy and paste the patch into and out of Aalto. I have some ideas like sending specific randomized changes at certain intervals.

I like the idea of making a semi- abstract gui that lets you be expressive, but that would take a lot more planing. One step at a time. :)

Most of what I'm seeing in the text file is pretty easy to figure out. Only thing I am confused by so far is the patcher_input. There are 27 variables and I guess those are the various patch points? I'm just making really simple patches and comparing them now to figure it out.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can offer advice. Gonna go get familiar with xcode now.

I'm making progress and have built a few parts. I have a few questions. They aren't holding me back from building, but if you get a spare moment I would be interested to know what's going on. Thanks.

1) For some settings Aalto will allow a different input than is possible from the main gui. For example osc_waveshape maxes out at 0.899999976 but I can set it to 1. Sonically is there a difference? I can't hear one.... And of course I'd like the random numbers that go into Aalto to actually change the sound. :)

2) Aalto seems to do some rounding to decimal numbers that go into it. Do you mind sharing the rules Aalto is using? I want to keep things as random as possible, and not input values that will be changed to something else.

3) In general in Aalto values are 9 digits total, but there are exceptions for really small numbers. Is this correct?

I didn't know pitch could be any value. :)

I really underestimated all the different rules I would have to setup for the random number generators! It's overwhelming.

For anyone else that wants to experiment with Aalto's patch data, I made a text file that has all the options semi-organized and (hopefully) easier to parse. I tried to determine the min/max values, I named the patcher inputs and I printed the directory tree of the scales to text for easy access too. "-" for range and "," for unique values. I might put the info into a spreadsheet in googledocs eventually, but who knows.
http://www.mediafire.com/?b1fodznhs4vz01k

I've been playing with the demo and plan to buy as soon as I can get the money together. There is something about the character of the reverb that I really like and I would love to be able to run some other synths through it. I was wondering if would be possible to make just a verb plugin. Thanks.

I posted this elsewhere too, but I got automation working in logic by going to the controls view rather than the editor view. I'm on 10.6.4 osx 9.11 logic. 32-bit