Let’s talk about the midi de-dupler in here:
I cannot figure out how to use this midi routing thing. Got something that looks like this but no understanding of how to hook this into the de-dupler.
Sorry, I missed the live-stream today evening, @Robert_Mathijs .
What program are you using? On windows, this is very easy. There are a few MIDI loop utilities like loopMIDI, LoopBe1.
I’ve found this page, that describes how it can be setup with MacOS: Virtual MIDI Ports | Dialog Audio
What you actually need is a MIDI device where what you send into its INPUT is immediately forwarded to its corresponding OUTPUT. I think this can even be achieved by putting a MIDI cable between your input and output MIDI slots. Allthough it’s more convenient to have this done by a virtual (software) device.
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Ahhhh I see, the input into the output with a virtual cable. Gonna try that tomorrow!
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Let me know if you have any questions!
Btw. I have thought about the question in the first live-stream yesterday, having a tool to judge how well you played. For the LinnStrument I started creating this web-app: LinnStrument Light Guide (fannon.github.io)
I’m considering whether it would make sense to have something simpler, less opinionated for 4x4 drum pads. But I’m still not sure how useful it would really be. But if you have any good ideas, that would be very welcome. Maybe you have an idea for something that could even help you with the course / e.g. be additional material for it? I’ll write up some thoughts / idea in the next post.
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This is how I could imagine such a web-app to be useful:
- You’ll need to use a DAW (like Reaper) so you get real-time latency, multiple tracks and the necessary MIDI routing
- You’ll need 2 (virtual) MIDI loopback devices
- In the web-app you’ll see a 4x4 grid visualization, indicating your played notes and the guide notes. It will give you visual and text feedback on how well you played against the guide notes
- Optionally, the web app will send back the guide notes to the instrument, so you’ll get a light guide on your MIDI controller as well, if it supports it.
- In the web app, you need to configure: Your Instrument Input, your guide note input and a forward MIDI device where your instrument input is copied to. Optionally, configure the light guide MIDI device (if supported).
- On the DAW, you may have a backing track (optional) and a guide note track (mandatory). The guide note track needs to send it to the midi loop device for guide notes. Then you’ll setup your actual instrument, which will use the forward port from the app.
With this you can now play in your DAW like you’re used to and the app will visualize what you play, what you should be playing and how it rates against each other. The app can give you aggregated statistics how well you did within a timeframe. It also can do a recording of what you played and the guide notes, just in case you want to compare them and didn’t record in the DAW. In some DAWs you can select multiple MIDI tracks at the same time, so you can visually see how the played vs. guide track compare.
Yeah, it’s not exactly easy to setup, especially learning about the MIDI loopback devices and understanding why you need them (one unfortunate reason is that you cannot use the same input in two programs).
But it would be made easier if you provide a template, e.g. for Reaper. Or maybe even full projects with backing track, guide track and play track from start. Using the web app to get statistics is optional, but could then be rather easy setup if MIDI device name conventions are kept.
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Hey thanks for taking the time thinking this through!
I’ve been thinking about something similar in the past. Obviously because I felt that the one thing my website was lacking was “Melodics” style guidance. Back then I also had this idea of lighting up the pads on the midi controller so you know which pad to hit and when you hit it, other pads light up and that way you can lean a pattern.
I kept circling back to this thought that Melodics seems to have figured this whole visual guidance (and also the feedback of right and wrongly timed notes) out with their app.
I also figured that after the beginning stages, a student probably wants to stop looking at the pads or any other visual guidance for that matter and simply has to hear what is being played and feel how the hands hit the pads. In the end that’s how you get a drum part that actually works musically.
So the usual guidance would be there for beginners, which means it has to be easy to set up (because when things get complicated you lose potential customers vert quickly), which is sort of what melodics seems to have “solved” with their app 
I will send you some more numbers in a private message (don’t want my customer data out in the open), so you also have an idea of the “market” for as far as I know, which will probably make things more clear for you in terms of whether building this is worth the trouble.
All “reality checks” aside, this is ofcourse in essence a great thing to have for beginning finger drummers.
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Having a stand-alone desktop app with real-time audio and visualization is indeed very nice, but quite an investment to make. Since there’s already Melodics as you stated, that market is already rather saturated I imagine.
Since it’s hard to compete with that, it feels like something like mostly using the DAW (which you should learn anyway) and a smart way to complement it could maybe help, but that will for sure have a higher learning curve.
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