help with a patch faking random follow action

[chapelier fou]

Hi,
i am using a lot of random follow actions, mainly on rhythms. As it takes too much place on my launchpads and f**ks up the scenes above, i had the idea to create a patch to fake them and constrain to have the process contained in one clip. It would change my life on stage.
the idea is to use the message "call move_playing_pos" in a long clip actually made of several clips (acting horizontally instead of vertically in the session view).

anyway here is my first attempt, it kind of works, but i am not very familiar with timing in max and it's buggy. I am concerned about the accuracy i can manage to have. Help would be very welcome. (now just on 1st clip 1st track, 4bars)

louis

<pre><code>
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yqjlDll2rYSIAAblwzD7uewlUuOIoa7vp+yxYvXZ
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
</code></pre>

[broc]

It seems like a good idea, but the implementation is highly problematic due to inaccurate timing (delay) of the Live API.

Anyway, here are some comments about your patch.

1. Keep in mind that the value of move_playing_position is relative to the current position. So you need positive and negative values.

2. Since you are polling the transport with 16n, each beat selection [sel 4] will send 4 bangs instead of 1.

3. To compensate for the API delay, the trigger should be sent in advance by "some" milliseconds.

So you may continue experimenting a bit but don't expect great results.

[chapelier fou]

Hey thank you broc !

1. Keep in mind that the value of move_playing_position is relative to the current position. So you need positive and negative values.
i am not sure... it seems that it keeps in the range of the clip length, doesn't it ?

2. Since you are polling the transport with 16n, each beat selection [sel 4] will send 4 bangs instead of 1.
i told you i wasn't so familiar with the timing.... i noticed that, the result is the same though. I'll correct it.

3. To compensate for the API delay, the trigger should be sent in advance by "some" milliseconds.
That what i was afraid of...i think i could be cool for audio, but may be critical in midi clips, where it could lead to miss notes. As it should be mainly for drumracks....

Anyway, do you have an idea why it switches to the "next" bar one 16th note before the end of the bar ? i didn't find a solution. Just tried to correct it in an experimental way (as i am not familiar yet with the way note lengths are expressed in the anglo saxon way).

[chapelier fou]

(as a side note :
although i am a poor programmer, almost everything i tried to do appears to be impossible with the API....
i must be damned, but the 2 or 3 idea which would have improved my liveset workflow are undoable...)

[broc]

Anyway, do you have an idea why it switches to the "next" bar one 16th note before the end of the bar ?

For exact sync with Live's transport you may need the quantize attribute, eg. [metro 4n @quantize 4n @active 1].

[chapelier fou]

ha ! thank you.
i remember once reading something in max documentation about the metric timing system, but i didn't find it anymore...