Harmonizers in Scope

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Wed May 19, 2004 5:19 am

Hi.
Im asking to myself why nobody try to develop an harmonizer for the SFP.
It's full of similar devices around,a lot of echoes,reverbs and a lot of compressors but nobody try to develop something different.
I really need an harmonizer (and i've buy a TC helicon for that!) a device such the Eventide Octavox for the protools platform.
Take a look here :

http://www.kwild.com/eventide.jpg

for more info check http://www.digidesign.com

Well a stuff like that (maybe with a piano roll instead the note staff) will be a killer application for SFP.

http://www.kwild.com

[ This Message was edited by: kwild on 2004-05-19 06:29 ]

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Wed May 19, 2004 6:12 am

Have you tried Tri-Octaver. It is certainly very limited but works fine for what it does. Not a retuner though, and doesn't include Tune Tables, just a constant multi pitch shifter. For purely harmonizing it is pretty fine.

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Wed May 19, 2004 4:45 pm

From how many times don't u check ur forum SpaceF (sorry i don't rememba ur name)?
I've post something similar in the octaver post comments.

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Wed May 19, 2004 7:18 pm

the way you ask ..... pretty rude, i generally ignore

you should avoid the "why don't you do" part,

moreover on my site you talked about "a lot of money" but i didn't really understand.

[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2004-05-19 20:37 ]

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Thu May 20, 2004 3:48 am

Sorry,mate,but isn't my intention to be rude!
I have some problems to explain me right in English,so excuse me... ;O)
What do u think about a device like that?

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Thu May 20, 2004 4:20 am

hehe, good attitude

thanks
yes tri-octaver is more for guitarists than a general purpose harmonizer (it works great on voices though

What do I think ? I think it is a good idea. The interest of such a device (harmo) would be to include references to chords, harmonies (harmony is when two voices makes the air vibrate to produce that particular modulation effect and new harmonics) or special tune tables. It would also have to give the ability to fine tune every "band" (every single pitch shifter) in order to get quarter or small detunes (which actually are often more musical than perfect "in tune" tones, for the same reasons that it creates modulations or make the air vibrate).
It would also have to be good on high pitching, which is the tricky part in picth shifting.
I do not know how much dsp it would take (making tune table "per se" is not so dsp hungry, it's just very long to do but to implement them to react on sound, may be more tricky, i didn't try yet) but as long as it does not have real time "autotune" function it could be quite "light".
In my ways of working (which "controls" my device makings) a dsp plugin which takes too much dsp in comparison to a vst plugin is useless : that's why i will not try to make an "autotune" on dsps, because autotune directX version is very light, works very fine, and i can use scope for something else.
I do not think i can do something like the Eventide plug you posted, especially with a piano roll etc, it would require engineer skills that i don't have (writing codes to have such function etc).
I've used the H3000 many times in studio but we kept the results only once, just to create some very discrete harmonics in the background. In general the result were not kept, we would like the idea of doing it, but not the results : so we end up making real harmonies by recording real voice again in another tune (which also allows to make tune variations which would be hell to program in a plugin).
So I do not know, may be in the future i will improve the tri-octaver to something closer to a harmonizer but for the moment it's not really planned. I keep the idea though, so it is not hopeless (and there are other developeprs anyway so...).

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:05 am

Ok...
I think that a device such as Steinberg Voicemachine it's not too complicated and works well.
Especially without the strange latency of that crappy plug!
Thanx fot the reply,see ya!

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:37 am

I see. I've read the info about voice machine and i think you can do something similar with Flexor.
Not sure though. Atomic will confirm

scary808 · Post by **scary808** » Fri May 21, 2004 6:44 pm

A clever member of the Z (MCCYRANO) created a patch in the modular w/ Flexor that does do harmonizing. It may not be able to practically correct pitch but it can yield
some damn freaky results as heard in this clip:

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=17&3

Here's where to find his patch:

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=15&1

Hey MCCYRANO, have you been working on more
harmonizing stuff?

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:59 am

I think this old post it's still very interesting...still no harmonizer into the plug-in universe (vst,dxi,scope).

http://www.kwild.com
http://www.balentia.com

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 6:16 pm

adding to what spacef wrote, my personal guess on this subject is that the processing will require too much (local) DSP memory.
But it's really only a guess - I have no idea about the math background in detail.

Even CWA implemented the pitch shifting algorithms of the STS5000 as native CPU code, so there must be a reason for this.

No doubt, a tool to operate on voices (in whatever way) would be highly interesting

cheers, Tom

Casper · Post by **Casper** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:54 am

Don't think it requires much. I made this exact device in Max/MSP. And am developing this thing in Scope. That's what the midiQuest was for. Still I got to many problems in SDK to overwin. For e.g. some vars need not output there value at any time. But only when I want it to.
In due time..

When it's finished. It will be a free device!

cheers,
Casper

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 3:02 pm

Yeah,Casper u are da man!!!

Excuse me but do u have a vst/dx version of that harmonizer u made for max/msp?Or,it's possible to use "plugs" done with max/msp as vst plugins (such as synth edit and similar)?
I've read something about max/msp but i don't know it really.
Regards and let us know about the plug!!!!!

[ This Message was edited by: kwild on 2005-06-10 16:11 ]

Kermit Jagger · Post by **Kermit Jagger** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 3:09 pm

still no harmonizer into the plug-in universe (vst,dxi,scope)

As VST you've Clone Ensemble http://www.cloneensemble.com/cl_main.htm and Akai Decca Buddy http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/src ... pid/705589

[ This Message was edited by: Kermit Jagger on 2005-06-10 16:09 ]

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 3:14 pm

Hmmm Kermit i know that plugs and,excuse me but they sucks a lot!
Anyway clone ensemble is not what i call an harmonizer.I've use it in the past to do some chorus on the vocals but nothing more...
Ciao!

Casper · Post by **Casper** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 4:22 pm

On 2005-06-10 16:02, kwild wrote:
Yeah,Casper u are da man!!!
Excuse me but do u have a vst/dx version of that harmonizer u made for max/msp?Or,it's possible to use "plugs" done with max/msp as vst plugins (such as synth edit and similar)?
I've read something about max/msp but i don't know it really.
Regards and let us know about the plug!!!!!

Max/msp is a module based developement env.
A realy awesome combo with SFP.
But I don't want to make a Max/MSP ad here.
It is possible only to create a Vsti with Max. (Pluggo designed) That's not what I want though. It has to be either a Steinberg module architecture (SDK) based(C++).
Or (and this is my goal) a SCOPE based midi plug.
I can tell exactly how this harmonizer is build. But because of my lack of SCOPE 4.0 SDK it takes so much hours in finding out the handy tricks or even for the right module. I'm currently occupied with this midi quest. All help is welcome.

What I need to know is how I can control the
order of calculation. For instance.

(A + B) - (C+D) = C.
What goes wrong in SCOPE SDK is that the moment A+B is being caculated , C is being updated after that. I want it to do the subtracktion and then update (1 time) in the end. Only then will this baby rock! I got all the midimessages i need. It's this final problem I (or we) have to solve.

I need some kind of "set" option before outputting this value. Like a box you first put something in and nothing happens. Then you push the button and the bottom will fall out with the var.
My last option is C++. Hope I don't need that.

More about this harmonizer.
This term is being interpreted in different way's. So the question is I think: What do you expect it to do for you?

My Max/MSP and SFP setup work like this:

(Sequencer Midi Out Channels 1-16) to
Scope Midi Source 1

then routing it to Midi Dest 2
wich inputs in Harmonizer(Max) then sending out Midi Source 2 to Midi Dest 3 (back into sequencer)

In the sequencer I have to split the channels and route them to the correct vsti.
I hope you all can see my desire to create this plug in scope SDK.

You would end up like this setup:

Midi Source 1 -> Harmonizer -> Midi Dest 1.
Done.
Options I can do now wich have to be a part of the scope plug for sure.

Basicly I guess there are two kind of harmonizing plugs. The ones that add notes on top of your notes.
And the one I want , the correcting note type. I find this more usefull for a number of reasons.
A) this type of plug can stay small AND it applies to 16 midi channels at once.
B) you'd be able to "step up and down" the stairs with your static midi loop.
Say you have C (ceg) , and you set this harmonizer to "scale MajorC" then a nice control is that you can alter this (ceg) to (dfa) just by turning the knob to +2.
To be clear: "scaling mode MajC)
The knob list to show what happens to (ceg) when turning
0 ceg
1 x (is not important right now)
2 dfa
3 x
4 egb
5 fac
6 x
7 gbd
8 x (important but not right now)
9 ace (no tennis)
10 x
11 bdf
12 ceg

So this plug is not about making a chord. You make the chords. This plug creates all the other options you can do in a certain mode (Major ,Minor ,Pentatonic,Halftone etc.)

I think the adding type of plugin is useless compare to this one. But that's a matter of opinion.

Wow look at the time! I'm going to have some sleep now.
Hope someone could awnser my fist questions on top of this long (maybe boring) story.

Cheers, and goodnight

Casper

[ This Message was edited by: kwild on 2005-06-10 16:11 ]

Casper · Post by **Casper** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 4:24 pm

What happend to my quote lines ?? oh well..
Sleeeeep....

Casper · Post by **Casper** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:59 am

It's always right under ones nose

I was looking for the valuesender.
Seen that module for 1000 times. Perhaps this could be the solution i was searching for. Let's built.

Casper

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 2:26 pm

On 2005-06-10 17:22, Casper wrote:
...
What I need to know is how I can control the
order of calculation. For instance.

(A + B) - (C+D) = C.
What goes wrong in SCOPE SDK is that the moment A+B is being caculated , C is being updated after that. I want it to do the subtracktion and then update (1 time) in the end. ...

I may be completely on the wrong track, but if you need just one single update at the end of the calculation, why don't you replace '= C' with '= E' and assign it back to C afterwards in a 'C = E' statement ?
One dummy var and an assignment are probably no performance killers

cheers, Tom

Casper · Post by **Casper** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 12:49 am

I see I made a mistake in that simple formula

That last "C" must be a "E".
But then the promblem still exists.
The "Control to midi" module is just not the right one to do this harmonizer with.
It outputs it's value in a "OR" like manner.
If i'd change "value" or "control" then it updates 2 times. I only need 1 time. I can't create a noteoff and a noteon message without double messages in between. I've tried almost everything now.

It's a pitty creamware didn't implement the "midimessagebuilder.pep" in a module.

Sorry guys , this harmonizer won't be I guess..
Back to C++ ,

cheers,

Casper

[ This Message was edited by: Casper on 2005-06-13 01:50 ]