Reaticulate - articulation management for REAPER - 0.5.13 released (2024-02-19)

[_Stevie_]

Ah right, creating an item beforehand... I’ll look into automating this with a script.

[tack]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

Ah right, creating an item beforehand... I’ll look into automating this with a script.

Do you think right-clicking should create an item under the cursor if one doesn't already exist?

[_Stevie_]

You can read my mind

Yes, that would be really good. Unless someone chimes in and says "this is a real bad idea".

[Vadium]

Originally Posted by Shootkin

Thanks so much for your excellent work! I'd like to take the liberty of asking you for a small FR: is it possible to remove the gradients from the buttons so this would perfectly fit to my completely flat theme? Thank you

only as option! because current gradients are very sweet for many people (and me - I like it so much)

[_Stevie_]

Just a quick thought on user experience:

have you thought about "splitting" the articulation buttons in 2 areas?

When single left clicking on the note symbol, it would insert the articulation
and by clicking on the name, it will only switch the articulation.

I'm just asking in terms of touch screen usage. Right clicking on a touch screen is problematic and for double clicking you really have to get the timing right.

[tack]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

I'm just asking in terms of touch screen usage. Right clicking on a touch screen is problematic and for double clicking you really have to get the timing right.

What about if long-press was possible as an alternative to double-clicking?

I'm not sure I like the idea of having different click targets for insert vs activate. I'll think on it a bit more but I think long-pressing could be a solution?

I'm surprised you're having difficulties with double clicking though. I'd have thought 500ms was plenty of time to click twice.

[_Stevie_]

Long press sounds great!!! Sold me

[vsthem]

OK! It's functionally working now with two switches I setup in TouchOSC. (I wanna get two switches working flawlessly before making it work with all the articulations).

But....

When I look at the Bank/Program Select (which I want to be able to reference/edit), it is showing two events per each time I press the button. It does not do this when I bypass reaticulate.

I've attached a screenshot of the bank program select. In this example, I hit buttons for Long, Legato, and then back to Long. You can see that there are three pairs of 2 events.

Any suggestions to avoid this?

Thanks again for your help! I know you're doing this as a hobby, and I don't take your help for granted.

[tack]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

Long press sounds great!!! Sold me

I was actually originally inclined to do that instead of double click but I vaguely recall someone (maybe Vadium) talked me out of it.

Unless it's causing you some real frustrations, I'll probably wait for the 0.5.0 prerelease cycle for that feature. Mainly because I did some major changes to rtk (the gui library I'm building along side Reaticulate) in my dev tree that make this functionality a little annoying to backport.

[_Stevie_]

No pressure, I just wanted to give some feedback in terms of daily usage.
I can definitely cope with that for the moment, no need to drop everything for that :P

Thanks!

[tack]

Originally Posted by vsthem

Any suggestions to avoid this?

Based on the presence of that 0-1-0 event at the front, I think you are still sending Program Changes from TouchOSC. You really should send a CC (of your choice, I use 119) and bind that to the "Activate articulation by CC on default channel." This might solve your other problem too.

You can then double-tap the button in TouchOSC to insert, or explicitly use the "Insert last activated articulation into MIDI item on default channel" action if you prefer.

Originally Posted by vsthem

Thanks again for your help! I know you're doing this as a hobby, and I don't take your help for granted.

np

[_Stevie_]

You might jump in on this one:
https://forums.cockos.com/showpost.p...64&postcount=8

[Vadium]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

Just a quick thought on user experience:

I'm just asking in terms of touch screen usage. Right clicking on a touch screen is problematic and for double clicking you really have to get the timing right.

as a case, if a tablet supports multygesture, pressing by 2 fingers? (and by 3 fingers for a reset)?

[_Stevie_]

I guess that's an issue with Reaper and the API. The API doesn't recognize multitouch, IIRC.

[Vadium]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

I guess that's an issue with Reaper and the API. The API doesn't recognize multitouch, IIRC.

but if make multitouch events conversion to mouse action inside a tablet?

long pressing makes averall work loooonger)

[tack]

Originally Posted by Vadium

only as option! because current gradients are very sweet for many people (and me - I like it so much)

Thanks, I think the gradient looks pretty nice too.

[_Stevie_]

Same, it looks super stylish to me.
And I agree, let's first take care of the functionalty. GUI stuff can always be changed later on.
And for a pre-release Reaticulation looks super professional already.

[tack]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

And for a pre-release Reaticulation looks super professional already.

Mind you it's been in development for juuuuussst about two years now. I'm doing a Google style pre-release strategy here, clearly.

(Gmail was in beta for something like 5 years.)

[_Stevie_]

Haha! Good thing wants to have it

[tack]

Current behavior of my local dev branch: long press insertion, new MIDI item created under cursor if none exists, and I added a little animation for insertions (which looks a little clunky in the low frame rate of the animated GIF but you get the idea).

[_Stevie_]

OH MY GOODNESS!!!

Checking it out!

EDIT: oh wait, you wrote "local devbranch" lol...

[tack]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

EDIT: oh wait, you wrote "local devbranch" lol...

Yeah, nothing's committed yet. I spent the weekend implementing the new GUID approach and I need to do a generous round of code cleanup first before I dare push anything into public view.

I think the new approach will work ok. I feel like there are loads of corner cases here, and I'll need to take care testing, but identifying banks by a new GUID attribute and dynamically assigning MSB/LSB does still feel like the right way.

Version 0.5 will have a new option (under the edit popup menu) to import banks from clipboard. Banks now look like this:

//! g="Vendor/Product" n="Patch"
//! id=3afd2094-ba9b-4bde-8b15-4da6caedf3a0
Bank * * Some Patch
[...]

The GUID is generated by Reaticulate if it doesn't exist in the user's reabank file (and the file written back out).

Then the MSB/LSB here is decided by Reaticulate. The * means Reaticulate can decide entirely on its own. If actual numbers are specified, they're actually more suggestions than requirements: Reaticulate will use the supplied MSB/LSB as the starting point. And then it will just increment them until it's able to find an available MSB/LSB not already in use in the current project. (This shouldn't be an issue for existing projects where today we have to manually manage the MSB/LSB assignments to prevent collisions.)

The goal is users shouldn't have to know or care about this MSB/LSB business. Import a bank and go. It should Just Work. Except in rare cases, MSB/LSB is just invisible.

I think this change is more likely to break things than the previous gutting I did in 0.4.0. I'm not sure how yet, but it does feel like there be dragons here.

[_Stevie_]

That's awesome Jason, really looking forward to test this. We will fight the dragons, no worries!

[Shootkin]

Originally Posted by tack

Thanks, I think the gradient looks pretty nice too.

I do not insist. But the option would be very useful. With my theme, gradients are not sexy at all

[_Stevie_]

Not sure if this is a bug in Reaper, but when moving PC/bank events in the ME, the actual name gets lost.

[Klangfarben]

Originally Posted by _Stevie_

Not sure if this is a bug in Reaper, but when moving PC/bank events in the ME, the actual name gets lost.

This looks to be a Reaper issue in the pre-release. On my end, when you move the PC events it is actually changing the PC to a different one, and a different name.

Definitely a Reaper bug.

[robgb]

Originally Posted by vsthem

OK. Installed it. Love the simplicity and look of it. So far though, I have not been able to use my touch OSC to trigger Reaticulate. I was using Touch osc to send keyswitches before.
Thanks!

Are you on a Mac? If so, think about getting OSCulator. It can work as an alternative go-between with TouchOSC and Reaper and is much easier to deal with than setting up articulation switches in the TouchOSC editor.

[Kitarraman]

Tack, I have a problem. I've started a new project and, from time to time, Reaticulate doesn't add the program change in the MIDI Editor, other times it leaves the instrument mute after I hit a keyswitch on Reaticulate's GUI. I was afraid that was a problem caused by the pre-release version so I "reverted" to the stable version but the problem still exists. I managed to troubleshoot this by removing the Reaticulate.jsx from the FX List and inserting it again, but that hasn't worked all the times

[tack]

Originally Posted by Kitarraman

Tack, I have a problem. I've started a new project and, from time to time, Reaticulate doesn't add the program change in the MIDI Editor, other times it leaves the instrument mute after I hit a keyswitch on Reaticulate's GUI. I was afraid that was a problem caused by the pre-release version so I "reverted" to the stable version but the problem still exists. I managed to troubleshoot this by removing the Reaticulate.jsx from the FX List and inserting it again, but that hasn't worked all the times

This sounds like a slippery one.

Has anyone else noticed similar weirdness?

Are you able to try to distill things down to a specific set of reproducible actions? Even if it's inconsistent and it takes 20 times before the problem manifests it would be helpful.

When it's not adding PCs in the editor, are notes selected? Is the edit cursor on the edge of a MIDI item?

In terms of the instrument being muted, perhaps it's chasing CC7 to 0? Or is it muting by some other means?

[Kitarraman]

Originally Posted by tack

Are you able to try to distill things down to a specific set of reproducible actions? Even if it's inconsistent and it takes 20 times before the problem manifests it would be helpful.

I'll try to find a set of reproducible action (hoping that it won't conflict with the game jam schedule)

Originally Posted by tack

When it's not adding PCs in the editor, are notes selected? Is the edit cursor on the edge of a MIDI item?

First time it ever happened, I had a bunch of notes selected. But ever since I noticed it, I made sure I had no notes selected. One of the last times it happened I had a blank MIDI Item, I was laying down the first absolute keyswitch for that track and I had to restart Reaper to make it work (I'm starting to wonder if all this is being caused by Reaper 5.985)

Originally Posted by tack

In terms of the instrument being muted, perhaps it's chasing CC7 to 0? Or is it muting by some other means?

I said muting, but what actually happens is that Reaper just stops receiving any MIDI signal, either from a MIDI Item or my Master Keyboard

[tack]

Originally Posted by Kitarraman

but what actually happens is that Reaper just stops receiving any MIDI signal, either from a MIDI Item or my Master Keyboard

Did you confirm this by adding a ReaControlMIDI logger in front of Reaticulate? If that's not showing any incoming MIDI, I'm struggling to imagine how Reaticulate could have gone wrong enough to arrange that. Definitely all manner of craziness is possible on the other side of the Reaticulate JSFX, but if nothing is coming into it, it smells like there may be smoke coming from a different fire somewhere.

[Kitarraman]

Originally Posted by tack

Did you confirm this by adding a ReaControlMIDI logger in front of Reaticulate? If that's not showing any incoming MIDI, I'm struggling to imagine how Reaticulate could have gone wrong enough to arrange that. Definitely all manner of craziness is possible on the other side of the Reaticulate JSFX, but if nothing is coming into it, it smells like there may be smoke coming from a different fire somewhere.

Mmmh, no... I didn't actually think of doing that. I just restarted Reaper and it worked again

[tack]

Originally Posted by Kitarraman

Mmmh, no... I didn't actually think of doing that. I just restarted Reaper and it worked again

Before you restarted, had you saved your project? Or did you leave it unsaved for fear it might leave it in a broken state?

I'm interested to know if the brokenness survives through a project save. Maybe next time it happens, you can save the project out to a different file and reopen it. If you can delete everything except the broken track and pass the project along, it'll give me something to chew on. I can peek into Reaticulate's internal state and hopefully suss it out. (All that's assuming the problem is indeed Reaticulate. First test would be the ReaControlMIDI logger in front of it just to be sure the problem isn't elsewhere.)

[Kitarraman]

Originally Posted by tack

Before you restarted, had you saved your project? Or did you leave it unsaved for fear it might leave it in a broken state?

I'm interested to know if the brokenness survives through a project save. Maybe next time it happens, you can save the project out to a different file and reopen it. If you can delete everything except the broken track and pass the project along, it'll give me something to chew on. I can peek into Reaticulate's internal state and hopefully suss it out. (All that's assuming the problem is indeed Reaticulate. First test would be the ReaControlMIDI logger in front of it just to be sure the problem isn't elsewhere.)

Yes, I did save (had to actually, I added some music notes before the crash happened). Probably I've been able to understand what's not working: I've been loading my Orchestral Templates (I last saved them, like, two months ago) and in case I don't replace the reaticulate.jsfx, Reaticulate won't send any messages to the instruments. Tell me hower I can help you narrowing the problem down

[tack]

Originally Posted by Kitarraman

I've been loading my Orchestral Templates (I last saved them, like, two months ago) and in case I don't replace the reaticulate.jsfx, Reaticulate won't send any messages to the instruments. Tell me hower I can help you narrowing the problem down

I guess it's an RTrackTemplate file? Can you send me one of them along with the applicable reabank(s) that go along with it? (Even if it's not an RTrackTemplate but a full RPP that's fine, assuming you're able to share it.) My email address can be found here. Thanks!

[Kitarraman]

Originally Posted by tack

I guess it's an RTrackTemplate file? Can you send me one of them along with the applicable reabank(s) that go along with it? (Even if it's not an RTrackTemplate but a full RPP that's fine, assuming you're able to share it.) My email address can be found here. Thanks!

Coming right up, check your inbox in a few minutes (had to load it on Google Drive, once you've downloaded it, let me know so I can save some space on the cloud)

[tack]

Originally Posted by Kitarraman

Coming right up, check your inbox in a few minutes (had to load it on Google Drive, once you've downloaded it, let me know so I can save some space on the cloud)

Thanks! We can take this to email then. I replied over there. (Please check your spam folder. Gmail tends to dislike me for reasons unknown.)

[tack]

Looking to poll the audience on this one:

Suppose you have an item on track 1 open in the MIDI editor, but track 2 is selected (and therefore its banks are shown in Reaticulate's UI).

If you insert an articulation by right clicking (for example), would you expect the articulation from track 2 be inserted in track 1's item (current behavior) or that it be inserted at the edit cursor on track 1 (creating a new item if necessary)?

[Kitarraman]

Originally Posted by tack

Looking to poll the audience on this one:

Suppose you have an item on track 1 open in the MIDI editor, but track 2 is selected (and therefore its banks are shown in Reaticulate's UI).

If you insert an articulation by right clicking (for example), would you expect the articulation from track 2 be inserted in track 1's item (current behavior) or that it be inserted at the edit cursor on track 1 (creating a new item if necessary)?

What's the use case scenario you had in mind for this feature? At the moment, the current behavior works fine for me (happened a few times that I changed the MIDI Item I was working on and forgot to arm the correct track, luckily both had the same keyswitch placing, so mp harm was done there)

[Vadium]

Hi Jason,
I have a Reaper crash if Reaticulate run on startup option is on - even if I not insert this one to tracks. Crash happen if I suddently double-click on the tempo digit or attempt to save a subproject - please, check it:

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread....68#post2203068