B-Keeper:Drum Tracker for Ableton Live available to download

[Venetian]

Hi,

B-Keeper is a drum tracker - it takes microphone input from kick and snare and controls the tempo of Live to stay in sync.
I've put the files on the B-Keeper website and some instructions. I'm available for help in getting this working. Would very much appreciate any feedback. It should be straightforward, but since it requires Max/MSP and an external object, bonk~, there may be there may be difficulties for people not used to Max. However, it is free as is Max Runtime and the external.

It is also available as a MaxForLive device as of January 2011

http://www.b-keeper.org

If you could leave info on the projects you're working on or what you might use it for, that would be cool.

Andrew

[machine+1]

Thanks Andrew!

Keeping an eye out for the Max4Live version.

[Venetian]

any feedback or queries, please leave them here. I'd be interested to hear from people who've had a chance to try this out.

Regards,
Andrew

[bulo]

Very very interesting!
I'm trying it right now, only with my laptop internal sound card and microphone.
Unfortunately I have problems.
Live receives the start and stop message from Max very well, but not the good tempo.
But, once B Keeper has started after my taps, its tempo stays the same, it doesn't change when I tap.
If I click on the p ableton set tempo, Live's tempo goes from 121.03 to 121.40 incrementialy then it stays at 121.40 until I click it again... and same thing happens.
And what about the click from Live to Max? What is it for? How to set it up for a test like the one I'm doing? I'm using Live 8 on a macbook. Do I have to send the Live's click by an IAC port, or soundflower for audio?
I'm a little bit lost.
Another question: what to do with bonk- ? Just put it in the right folder?

I'm very excited by your patch, but for the moment I canno't get what I'm supposed to by.

Thanks for your help.


(Will try Techtronica, maybe it would help)

[Venetian]

yeah, the way to test it:
like you did -> check max to live is okay.

then 2. check live is sending click to max. Best download the example demo for it - technotronica.als on the website. So this has two click tracks - one in Midi - a simple Midi message to Max, and better an audio one - you send a click via the soundcard i.e. out spare output and back in to say input 8. There is a box to decide which you use - set for audio first.
That has to light up the click in on B-Keeper. It relies on this to know what Live is doing. So if it works - you should have Kick and Snare lighting up for hits, and the click flashing when Ableton plays. Without it as you say, it just does nothing. I think I put an error message in for that now?

and 3. check you have bonk external in the MaxMSP4.6 folder
I'll put up an easy drum file to load soon (files are channel 13 on the B-Keeper main page). That allows you to test it better than tapping. Then maybe it would be easier when hooking up a drum kit.

It's not that difficult but does require these few things.

Andrew

[bulo]

Yep.
I found some texts about B-Keeper on the net and it helps a lot as they contains several important informations that are not include (or maybe not clear enough for my limited english) with the help file. It's about simple things like the fact that b-keeper absolutely needs an approximation of the tempo before starting; or that its task is not to follow large tempo variations but human "irregularities". And of course, for trying purpose I tapped very different tempos to see if it works well, I didn't predefine an approximation... I just did everything wrong.
Etc... several things like that.
Technotronica also helps.
For me it's not yet ok, but I'll try in a real situation tomorrow with all the gear.

[Venetian]

yes, this is designed for drummers to play with ableton syncing automatically. So it needs a tempo to start at rather than discover one by analysing audio (you could do this but I deliberately haven't).

The main things to set are the driver channels, test audio is coming in, test the click is being received from Ableton (that needs to be sent out, I prefer a jack lead connecting one output of soundcard to an input which is then the click channel for B-Keeper).

I'm willing to help anyone with troubleshooting

andrew.robertson at elec.qmul.ac.uk

[Echand]

Hi

I wouldn't mind giving this a try, but I can't seem to locate bonk~
It appears to be offline.
Has something else replaced this tracker that others are using?

Thanks,

[Venetian]

bonk: http://crca.ucsd.edu/~tapel/software.html

the maxForLive version of B-Keeper is now on the website

v.easy to run - but you do need the demo of MaxForLive, and put bonk and the BeatSync72 and start7 java classes into the max searchpath - i.e. insode applications/max5/ somehwre - eg java->classes

I've not yet tested windows machines . any feedback on that working appreciated.

also, do try loading the example soundfiles before testing with a drummer.

cheers,
Andrew

andrew.robertson at eecs.qmul.ac.uk
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewr

[neve]

Amazing, i was looking for such a plugin for nearly one year without much success, and now i find this
Thank you very much !

Oh, i am a Live7 user, will it work with v7 too or does it require L8 ?

[Venetian]

yes, you'd need the new MaxForLive environment to have it as a plugin.

Worth doing as is too hard to set up in Max/MSP without some knowledge of Max I think. The plugin simply sits on a stereo track where the kick and snare are routed. Then it can access the transport of Ableton and compare to that.

You still need to:

install Ableton8 + Max5 demo (with MaxForLive functionality) - http://www.ableton.com and http://www.cycling74.com
get the bonk object - place in applications>Max5>cycling74>max-externals (http://crca.ucsd.edu/~tapel/software.html)
get the B-KeeperForLive and place Java classes in applications>Max5>cycling74>java>classes (http://www.b-keeper.org)
load up example set
test using the drum files on the links page of http://www.b-keeper.org

let me know how you get on. I've still only just put the maxForLive object up

Cheers,
Andrew

[neve]

Ok, thank you for the explanation.
So, i guess i will wait for Live9 then, if i can't use it with my v7 version : it will make me the best reason to update to v9

That plugin really seems to be outstanding, perfectly what i need for my analogue hardware/vst plugins setup. Thank you so much for creating it, Venetian.

[machine+1]

I'm really interested in trying this out but I can't use the template because I don't own Ableton Suite. Could you please post an example set that doesn't include Live Suite instruments. I can't load/save the current one because it uses Operator. Maybe substitute Simpler for Operator?

[Venetian]

I've uploaded the live set using Simpler to the http://www.b-keeper.org

we've had a couple of nice articles:
http://www.gizmag.com/b-keeper-sequence ... ped/17620/

would be great to see how the drummers using ableton fare with this. i appreciate that in the past it's required a fair amount of max/msp tinkering to get it to work, but by moving to maxForLive we avoid all the unnecessary communication via MIDI map.

I've added some instructions on setting up the B-KeeperSimpleSetup

let me know if you try it out!

Thanks,
Andrew

http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~andrewr

[neve]

Is there any plan to release it as a VST one day ?
(It would allow users without M4L to give it a spin, and also it would make it available for other hosts).
I guess it is not so simple, but it woul dbe great and i think many people could be interested into such a tool ?