Lets Talk Tuner ... and then a lot about M4L

[Angstrom]

To the Ableton Employee who designed the GUI of the new tuner well done
You designed a good interface. It's simple and it works. It's nice and big so I can see it, and the colour changing and the floating dot with the note name in is good. All the crazy tinfoil hat guys will appreciate that you put an option to change the tuning reference to A=432hz and for that hilarity alone it's a win.

Now, lets point out something glaringly obvious like a glamour model in a bikini.



The pitch histogram view. You put a really nice pitch tracking histogram in this thing, freakishly good. It tracks pitches and shows my vibrato and hammer-ons in real time. Now, come on ... come on ... make a like Bitwig and give me a mod destination output from this thing. Modularise your application and forget that M4L bullshit. Give me a mod output from the pitch tracker. Be the Ableton you could have been.

[H20nly]

give me a mod destination output from this thing. Modularise your application and forget that M4L bullshit. Give me a mod output from the pitch tracker. .

What do you mean here?

[tedlogan]

give me a mod destination output from this thing.

This idea is so good it needs to be placed in the Hall of Extremely Good Ideas. Wow, modulating stuff with my guitar...

Ableton, make it so!

[tedlogan]

give me a mod destination output from this thing. Modularise your application and forget that M4L bullshit. Give me a mod output from the pitch tracker. .

What do you mean here?

Imagine bending/hammering/playing up and down your guitar strings - altering the histogram's values. These changes in values could modulate anything in theory...LOVE this idea.

This needs to be suggested on the Beta site. If you're not submitting it Angstrom, then I will make it my duty to do so.

[TomViolenz]

Excuse my ignorance: so can this change the pitch of audio? (like DJ software does)

And why the f*** does this tuner get its own Live device, but the LFO and Envelope generator are limited M4L solutions?!

[Angstrom]

give me a mod destination output from this thing. Modularise your application and forget that M4L bullshit. Give me a mod output from the pitch tracker. .

What do you mean here?

What I mean is: In L9 Ableton brought in melody-to-pitch, an offline function which doesn't respect pitch bends or any other modulations - so is pretty useless when compared to Jam Origin's MIDI guitar plugin ... which tracks pitch in real time and vibrato. But now Ableton bring out a device which can track pitch in real time, and vibrato, and other more extreme pitch modulations. It would be very good if there was some sort of value output which could be sent to other devices (mod-out).As a comparison -in Bitwig each device is built on a native "modular" system and each has a sort of 'mod-out' button allowing the values generated by devices like an LFO to be sent anywhere else in the application. In this case of Ableton's new Tuner I would suggest that a 'mod-out' from the pitch tracker would be very good to send to the note pitch in of Operator.

In the past Ableton was famed for its easy routing, everything was clear and drag-and-drop. Complex routings handled visually. During a beta they even made Audio To and Midi To routing devices, but these were abandoned due to issues relating to latency calculation. Around that time they partnered with Cycling and instead chose that system as their modular framework. However, the simplicity of a 'plug out' or a 'MIDI to' is self explanatory the Cycling system is more of an IDE

With a mod-out button : "You click the out and click the destination"

With Max4Live : "you open a new max set and save it, then close it then open it, you type ~n and look for an item called API squarble warble2. Use a boolean typing matrix to defarbulate the instantiation of the classes. Unfortunately theres a bug in Max7 so you cant access defarbulation , bug in 7.2 the bug is fixed... step 9, unpack the cheesinator, extract 3 bivalves of oversample juice... BTW If you cant understand this simple instruction you are an idiot and should die. etc"


my point being. M4L is complex and deep, I like "send modulation to" button. Me like play music.

[H20nly]

I like "send modulation to" button. Me like play music.

ah... now Mongo understand. Mongo like

Thanks the explanation guys! That does sound like a great idea Angstrom

[siliconarc]

During a beta they even made Audio To and Midi To routing devices, but these were abandoned due to issues relating to latency calculation. Around that time they partnered with Cycling and instead chose that system as their modular framework.

i had no idea they shelved a native solution! was that in the Live 8 beta?

[Angstrom]

Ah. Lets say I misremembered that. Like a person who might have signed an NDA and then realised his memory wasn't very good and forgot which bits were in a private beta, not the public one. If that guy started blabbing he'd be an idiot and you ought to disregard anything he says, because he's probably mistaken with that terrible memory of his. If it did happen, it was a long time ago.

[stringtapper]

In the past Ableton was famed for its easy routing, everything was clear and drag-and-drop. Complex routings handled visually. During a beta they even made Audio To and Midi To routing devices, but these were abandoned due to issues relating to latency calculation. Around that time they partnered with Cycling and instead chose that system as their modular framework. However, the simplicity of a 'plug out' or a 'MIDI to' is self explanatory the Cycling system is more of an IDE

With a mod-out button : "You click the out and click the destination"

With Max4Live : "you open a new max set and save it, then close it then open it, you type ~n and look for an item called API squarble warble2. Use a boolean typing matrix to defarbulate the instantiation of the classes. Unfortunately theres a bug in Max7 so you cant access defarbulation , bug in 7.2 the bug is fixed... step 9, unpack the cheesinator, extract 3 bivalves of oversample juice... BTW If you cant understand this simple instruction you are an idiot and should die. etc"


my point being. M4L is complex and deep, I like "send modulation to" button. Me like play music.

I think you're actually a bit off here, Steve. The truth is M4L isn't the modular framework. Like, at all.

Just look at any number of threads over the last six years where experienced Max users who got into M4L are trying to figure why they all of a sudden can't work with multichannel audio and MIDI. That's a Live limitation, and always has been.

M4L doesn't solve the modularity issue you bring up. If anything it has served to make the limitations more glaring because people can't do the things with their M4L devices that they want to do.

I agree that having that modular system between all tracks and devices (both native and M4L) would be great and something I'm very intrigued about with Bigwig. But I don't think that Ableton chose Max as the modular framework, and if they did then they didn't do enough to enhance Live itself to allow that framework to be truly modular.

[siliconarc]

it was a long time ago.

*understood*

[Angstrom]

But I don't think that Ableton chose Max as the modular framework, and if they did then they didn't do enough to enhance Live itself to allow that framework to be truly modular.

Oh I know the limitations are Live's rather than Max having functional limitations, and I agree. But if you think of how M4L exposes the usage limitations in practice, my point is - it's a bad choice for the problems we have. It is not intuitive, nor does it have the UX facet of Learnability : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learnability So in a creative environment an IDE is not a good choice.

There's a good reason I don't pause writing a song to open up VisualStudio and write a flanger.

Lets compare a use case again:
here look at how we inform a novice user of a functional limitation within a creative process

(Hypothetical) Drag and drop.
A new User thinks "I want to send this LFO signal on track one to control the synth on track 2".
Action: I'll try clicking LFO 'mod-out' ... this act illuminates in the status bar to say "choose destination", so I navigate to track 2 synth filter cutoff and click that parameter. But The status bar now turns red and reads "can't connect different tracks". I have now learned that I cant connect different tracks in a simple learnable intuitive way. Limits are OK, if I know them.
Outcome: I learned a limitation quickly and easily. Learnability in action.

Real - Max for Live
A new User thinks "I want to send this LFO signal on track one to control the synth on track 2".
Action: I'll try opening Max, uhm, an instrument? No, I'll put a midi effect on there. Open a blank max midi effect with the little spider icon. Now ... its an empty screen so . Uh. Wait, I'll find a tutorial. ... Continues for several days until the user discovers deep on a forum that Max/Live cannot connect modulation between two tracks. Or can it, some user says different, but they are on a mac, and they have a newer version of Max. So confusing.
Outcome: I became frustrated and confused. I have conflicting information from a variety of sources, I think I need to read more.


My point being, when Ableton chose to use Max as their modular environment (and this is exactly what happened according to people at Ableton) rather than develop their own I think they were blinded by some developers having a long standing love of Max and were blind to the actual features the Ableton users needed, and the usability they expected. I think Ableton chose the wrong option because Gerhard and Robert had a longstanding love affair with the Cycling as a development aid. If anyone would like to draw conclusions about the Bitwig split, the timing, and the difference in direction of the two companies this would be the place to start making those assumptions.

I don't think Ableton should have partnered with Cycling, any more than they should have partnered with VisualStudio. An IDE is not a creative tool in the same way a modular synth is.

[stringtapper]

I don't disagree that they didn't quite go far enough with the Max integration. There are a lot of things that need to change within Live in order for the full potential of M4L to be realized.

But I'm very glad that they partnered with Cycling 74 because I'm one of those who likes to make weird shit in Max to make noise with and being able to do it in Live and not have to mess with building a sequencing engine from scratch is the big selling point in that regard.

They need to implement native solutions for talking between devices and tracks and they need to make all of the pre-rolled M4L content (for people who don't want to create but just use) more accessible.

[Machinesworking]

I think the thing that really doesn't make any sense is how they pretty much abandoned all their UI standards when they decided to add more or less an object oriented programming language to their super simple intuitive user interface™.

I really have no idea how this pairing made any sense in terms of their original selling point VS the big dinosaur DAWs like Logic, Cubase, DP, Sonar etc. ??

So now the selling point is something like, "You can get started right away making loops and writing melodies in Session View, and if you want to delve deeper into the program, take a course in Max/MSP and after a year you can write a basic synth as powerful as the original VSTs from 1996!"

Seriously there's an uncanny valley between Live's original intuitive interface and Max 4 Live. Compare this to some relatively simple problems you might run into in DP, Logic, Cubase etc. To get up and running learning 90% of what Cubase, DP, Logic do would take you about a year, in Live, you can get the basic program in a couple months, but to use Max 4 Live at 90% will take you several years. I see how it appeals to certain people, but not all of us are programmers.

[login]

I think the thing that really doesn't make any sense is how they pretty much abandoned all their UI standards when they decided to add more or less an object oriented programming language to their super simple intuitive user interface™.

I really have no idea how this pairing made any sense in terms of their original selling point VS the big dinosaur DAWs like Logic, Cubase, DP, Sonar etc. ??

So now the selling point is something like, "You can get started right away making loops and writing melodies in Session View, and if you want to delve deeper into the program, take a course in Max/MSP and after a year you can write a basic synth as powerful as the original VSTs from 1996!"

Seriously there's an uncanny valley between Live's original intuitive interface and Max 4 Live. Compare this to some relatively simple problems you might run into in DP, Logic, Cubase etc. To get up and running learning 90% of what Cubase, DP, Logic do would take you about a year, in Live, you can get the basic program in a couple months, but to use Max 4 Live at 90% will take you several years. I see how it appeals to certain people, but not all of us are programmers.

The nature of Max, it's not Live's "native" modular enviroment, its more like a plug in for running max inside Live.

I kind of agree it goes in a different direction to Live, but it's there for giving options, and I think specially for people that uses Max but needed more integration with a DAW for live performance.