Cthulhu VST

[SpeedKing]

One thing I dont like about step sequencers is that they play too precise cords. Does any of these two offer the ability to play looser cords? Rob Papen has a guitar type arp that does this.

Abletons Grooves can randomize velocity and timing on midi clips, but I dont think it will loosen up a static clean cord. It will moove the whole cord instead of spreading out the individual notes. I sometimes assign midi clips to controllers and use session view tracks as step sequencers. You can do a lot with that, by using all the midi plugs in clever ways.

Hmm, can you explain what you mean by 'looser chords'? Do you mean loose in terms of not occurring precisely on a beat, or loose in terms of staying strictly within the confines of the 3 notes that you give to a chord within a time range?

[ikeaboy]

One thing I dont like about step sequencers is that they play too precise cords. Does any of these two offer the ability to play looser cords? Rob Papen has a guitar type arp that does this.

Abletons Grooves can randomize velocity and timing on midi clips, but I dont think it will loosen up a static clean cord. It will moove the whole cord instead of spreading out the individual notes. I sometimes assign midi clips to controllers and use session view tracks as step sequencers. You can do a lot with that, by using all the midi plugs in clever ways.

Hmm, can you explain what you mean by 'looser chords'? Do you mean loose in terms of not occurring precisely on a beat, or loose in terms of staying strictly within the confines of the 3 notes that you give to a chord within a time range?

Yeah I'm interested in that answer too. Also in session view do you map single clips to keyspans for transposing midi clips through scale plugins or do you reckon one clip per chord is the way to go (that is if I'm guessing correctly at how your using session as a step sequencer. The covert ops guys, hoffman I think, had an amazing step sequencer rack, pre M4L - all midi plugs, that I couldn't make head nor tail of tbh!)

[ze2be]

Ok, when you play one cord on a keyboard and record it to midi, all the notes gets slightly different timing, note lenght and velocity. This sounds warm/real/human. A step sequencer creates these robotic sounding cookie shaped cords. Its even more present with strumed guitar cords. Hold the cord with one hand and play the notes by struming the strings up or down. The slower the struming, the wider note spread.

Regarding Session clip midi maping, I use both. Single clip maping for percussion, and range maping for melody. I use the Note Lenght plug to modulate note lenght, Velocity plug to modulate pressure, Random plug can be used in clever ways on fills and rolls, etc. These plugs use very little computer resorces, so I have a rack of Scale plugs that can be chain selected on the fly. I dont use the Cord plug very much because it creates these robotic/static "cookie cutter" cords. Instead I edit the midi notes and create cords in the clips to my likings in advance, and also add the Groove quantization with a tiny bit of randomization. From there on I usually record straight to audio. You can get different cords by chain steping through multiple Scale plugs. The Random plug can be used to slightly randomize notes or to randomize drum hit density.

Looking very much forward to Live 9 and Session Automation!!

[ikeaboy]

Ok, when you play one cord on a keyboard and record it to midi, all the notes gets slightly different timing, note lenght and velocity. This sounds warm/real/human. A step sequencer creates these robotic sounding cookie shaped cords. Its even more present with strumed guitar cords. Hold the cord with one hand and play the notes by struming the strings up or down. The slower the struming, the wider note spread.

Regarding Session clip midi maping, I use both. Single clip maping for percussion, and range maping for melody. I use the Note Lenght plug to modulate note lenght, Velocity plug to modulate pressure, Random plug can be used in clever ways on fills and rolls, etc. These plugs use very little computer resorces, so I have a rack of Scale plugs that can be chain selected on the fly. I dont use the Cord plug very much because it creates these robotic/static "cookie cutter" cords. Instead I edit the midi notes and create cords in the clips to my likings in advance, and also add the Groove quantization with a tiny bit of randomization. From there on I usually record straight to audio. You can get different cords by chain steping through multiple Scale plugs. The Random plug can be used to slightly randomize notes or to randomize drum hit density.

Looking very much forward to Live 9 and Session Automation!!

Thats really interesting and you've got me thinking about how i can 'humanise' chords in my own music. Yeah the same velocities throughout an entire track worth of chord progression is a bit dull (although not all my gear is velocity sensitive). You didn't go in for the beta test then? Audio to midi is just lovely for singing new parts, it's not perfect and thats fine with me because it's perfect haha!

[SpeedKing]

Ok, when you play one cord on a keyboard and record it to midi, all the notes gets slightly different timing, note lenght and velocity. This sounds warm/real/human. A step sequencer creates these robotic sounding cookie shaped cords. Its even more present with strumed guitar cords. Hold the cord with one hand and play the notes by struming the strings up or down. The slower the struming, the wider note spread.

Regarding Session clip midi maping, I use both. Single clip maping for percussion, and range maping for melody. I use the Note Lenght plug to modulate note lenght, Velocity plug to modulate pressure, Random plug can be used in clever ways on fills and rolls, etc. These plugs use very little computer resorces, so I have a rack of Scale plugs that can be chain selected on the fly. I dont use the Cord plug very much because it creates these robotic/static "cookie cutter" cords. Instead I edit the midi notes and create cords in the clips to my likings in advance, and also add the Groove quantization with a tiny bit of randomization. From there on I usually record straight to audio. You can get different cords by chain steping through multiple Scale plugs. The Random plug can be used to slightly randomize notes or to randomize drum hit density.

Looking very much forward to Live 9 and Session Automation!!

Ohhh, I gotcha. I know when I messed with Cthulhu last night there was a 'late' option that I messed with with the arpeggiator. And in the step sequencer it allowed you to choose if any note or set of notes would be 'late', and it let you choose by how much (to give it a non-sterile feel). But I didn't mess with the 'late' option at all in terms of when it just does chords. I'll have to look into it.

However, I'm betting that you'll only get the option to have the whole chord ring 'late', and not individual tones that make up a chord. But who knows, I'll find out tonight.

[ze2be]

I'm betting that you'll only get the option to have the whole chord ring 'late', and not individual tones that make up a chord. But who knows, I'll find out tonight.

Cool, let us know then.

You didn't go in for the beta test then?

Nope, to little time for that, but it will be out when I do have time for it anyway.

[SpeedKing]

I'm betting that you'll only get the option to have the whole chord ring 'late', and not individual tones that make up a chord. But who knows, I'll find out tonight.

Cool, let us know then.

You didn't go in for the beta test then?

Nope, to little time for that, but it will be out when I do have time for it anyway.

Yeah, totally forgot to check last night when I was messing with it!

I'm writing myself a note now though (as I'm currently at work) to check when I next mess with it, which hopefully is tonight.

[StefanoMDj]

WTF this is a great vst!
39 dollars i think it's also affordable!

[SpeedKing]

I'm betting that you'll only get the option to have the whole chord ring 'late', and not individual tones that make up a chord. But who knows, I'll find out tonight.

Cool, let us know then.

You didn't go in for the beta test then?

Nope, to little time for that, but it will be out when I do have time for it anyway.

Hey ze2be, I can confirm that the "late" function only applies to the arpeggiator. So, making the chords sound looser as you described it, well I don't think it could be done with this VST.

However, one thing you can do with this VST is to find a chord pattern you like, then you can write that MIDI that you're hearing into to a new regular MIDI track. Then once it's written, it's just regular MIDI, you could fiddle with the beginnings of each voice of the chord and manually make it sound not-as-tight. That would be completely possible, but would just require an extra step or two of writing the MIDI then adjusting it by hand.

[ze2be]

However, one thing you can do with this VST is to find a chord pattern you like, then you can write that MIDI that you're hearing into to a new regular MIDI track. Then once it's written, it's just regular MIDI, you could fiddle with the beginnings of each voice of the chord and manually make it sound not-as-tight. That would be completely possible, but would just require an extra step or two of writing the MIDI then adjusting it by hand.

Yup. Its what id expect I would have to do anyway. Its a nice vst, I might get it!

[The Northern Contingent]

The other way to get looser chords is print the MIDI pattern from Cthulu to a Live clip, then apply any groove pattern you like to it. Remove all the groove values to 0%, then increase the Random value up to taste. When you are happy with it, apply the groove. If you combine this with a Velocity MIDI effect to add variation to each note in the chord, you can achieve quite 'human' sounding results with very little effort.

[vido]

I may be wrong but I think the pattern sequencing capabilities of Cthulhu are on par with Catanya so you wouldn't really need both. I agree with your other point, give somebody with poor musical ideas all the songwriting tools in the world and, nine times out of ten, they'll just develop more complex bad music. It's about vision and taste IMO.

Yeah, definitely a lot of overlap with both plugs. The one thing I like about Cthulhu is that the arpeggiator is a 4 voice arpeggiator while Catanya's is 3, if you look at their sequencer.

Just judging from the videos though, it looks like Catanya's sequencer patterns are still far and away what exists in another VST (ie: Cthulhu). Well, programming the arpeggios from scratch is pretty much the same, but Catanya has 700+ pre-programmed choices you can click on to hear and tweak or use as a template. Cthulhu might have a cool database of pre-programmed sequences too, but it just didn't appear that it was as robust at all as Catanya's. At least not yet, who knows what updates could be in the future. But, also, when I get Cthulhu I might be shocked at the number of patterns that are built into their programs (I hope I am).

At last something available to mac! 7 aliens still hasn't delivered a mac-version of catanya. I don't understand why they haven't put in just a bit of effort to make it happen. I'm sure they would have sold thousands overnight...

[vido]

I'm on a mac and need some help. When I choose "MIDI from" I only get the two options "pre effects" and "post effects", no option directly from cthulhu.

What am I doing wrong?

[vido]

I'm on a mac and need some help. When I choose "MIDI from" I only get the two options "pre effects" and "post effects", no option directly from cthulhu.

What am I doing wrong?

Posted in the forum at xferrecords and got an answer immediately: use VST not AU. I've been using AU's in general instead of VST's because it's seemed easier to organize. Now I'll start using VST's instead...

[regretfullySaid]

The looser chords, thing, has anyone mentioned using a Live Arpeggiator (on the track before the instrument, not the one Cthulu is on)?
Turn off the sync and set it around maybe...100ms
change the arp order to random,
turn on the repeat to 1 so it only plays once instead of repeating,
you could stick a Velocity after it and set it to random with the min and max values to taste.