I’ haven’t use my V5 for a little while, just updating it regularly from Vangelis branch in case I’d have some time to fool around with the new stuff. It seems you have made tremendous improvements lately, looking forward to try them out! (Sequencer, graphical chaining, etc)
Just a quick question for my understanding, regarding zynbleton. I have some zynpad sequences within old snapshots (pre-zynbleton vangelis, and pre-quite a few Vangelis features: snapshots are from last summer/fall, when Mutated Instrument stuff was released). As far as I understand, they are converted to zynbleton (with more or less reliability?) and no way back to zynpad then. Do they remain in zynpad format until I save the snapshot again? Meaning : if I open them with Vangelis and see they don’t work in zynbleton, can I still burn an Oram, copy and paste my snapshots to the Oram image and recover my patterns from there (for backing them up through midi export or whatever)? Simply opening them with zynbleton Vangelis to check them doesn’t trigger a format update of the snapshot that can’t be reversed, does it?
The sequence data is stored within the snapshot. If you don’t save over the existing snapshot then the data will not be changed. I would recommend that you back up your data though. You never know whata may happen with a bug or faulty machine.
We made vangelis compatible with old snapshots. The sequence data is converted to the new json format and tries to layout in a sensible manner, but we can’t guess what all users may want so it is likely to need some tweaks. Something you can’t do is move sequences around but you can copy and paste stuff which shoud ease things a little.
Having said that, I think there has been a regression in the legacy compatibility code. I plan to retest and resolve such issues.
I have two questions on Zynseq, two potential bugs and a suggestion for future development.
Despite exploring the Pattern, Pad and Phrase screens in depth, I did not find a way to disable certain pattern blocks for a given repetition of a phrase. Let’s say, for instance, that I have two phrases, an A verse and a B chorus, with A containing patterns for piano, pad, bass and lead in the same row. Let us also suppose that I have set in the Phrases menu three looped repetitions of the AB sequence, but want the instrumentation of the verse to build-up as follows: 1 - Piano + Pad, 2 - Piano + Pad + Bass, 3 - Piano + Pad + Bass + Lead. How do I accomplish this, without making three copies of the A phrase with different provision of patterns?
Once I have copied a pattern to the clipboard, how and where can I paste it and reuse it? In the Pad screen? In a new empty pattern? Within an existing pattern at a given cursor position? (that would be extremely useful, but I have not managed to perform it)
Bug? I already raised this question, but the Midi recording point of notes in the pattern view does not match the current cursor position, and seems to remain stuck at the last played step. If so, I think that it should be improved (worth of a bug ticket on Git/webconf?).
Bug? When I Midi-insert chords in a pattern, at a set cursor position, their notes appear scattered across random subsequent steps, close to the last stopped play point, instead of forming a column of vertically aligned bars (worth of a bug ticket on Git/webconf?).
(Iterated) suggestion for improvement: beyond basic programming - like rhythm with chords and a simple melody, which is perfectly doable by ear.-, composition in whatever musical genre (including Jazz and Rock) requires a visual overview of layered horizontal parts, indispensable for harmony management and voice-leading control. While I know that a new Arranger screen is en route, and perhaps already in the workings, I again recommend it as warmly as possible, because the current pad launcher + phrase menu setup entails a rather toilsome workflow, for anything of even average musical complexity. As I earlier pointed out elsewhere, I do also strongly advocate for some kind of score representation, of the music written in the pattern editor. Letting my imagination run, I propose that such a Score sub-screen be reachable from both the pattern view and the Arranger (up to a maximum of four concurrent parts/chains). In the beginning, it wouldn’t even have to necessarily feature editing functions, but just synced visualisation.
The automation in the launcher is intentionally simple. We don’t want complex mechanisms for loops and mutes, etc. This may be implemented later in a return of the Arranger. Within the launcher we can add concesutive phrase loops and a single outer loop (which is currently suboptimal but works). We can define which phrases trigger on each loop and how many times the loop is repeated. I think this is as far as we want to go with this so, to do what you want will require duplicating phrases and disabling / removing sequences within those phrases. We had considered not providing this level of looping and requiring users to use the duplicate for everything but it was an itch we had to scratch. You use the phrase jumps available and you use copies as required.
Copy and paste of patterns is at full pattern level, i.e. the whole pattern is copied and then pasted to the pattern you have open in pattern editor. There was some work done by @jofemodo to do some actions on parts of patterns (selection of events) but I don’t know if that was implemented in the copy / paste. Any enhancement would require a feature request.
The MIDI recording point is either live, i.e. record as the sequence loops, or it is manual advance. In manual mode, each MIDI note will be recorded at the current cursor position and the cursor position is advanced one step. The cursor can also be advanced by pressing the sustain pedal. Holding the sustain pedal whilst entering notes will allow chords and/or longer notes, e.g. press pedal, C, E, A, release pedal will add a Cmaj chord. Press pedal, C, C, C, release pedal will create an event for note C for 3 steps. I don’t undertsand your description of a bug.
The last point about arranger, score, etc. is getting beyond our current aspirations. I agree that there are some composition workflows for which the grid launcher view is suboptimal and I look forward to reviewing what will be required to meet those requirements. I have generally referred to the arranger view as being disabled with a view to return to it but I want to see what we have when the dust settles on the laucnher workflows so that we can be more targetted on alternative workflows. We don’t want too much duplication / overlap or confusion and we don’t have aspirations of implementing Cubase on zynthian. I could see quite a different implementation that we had or what we might currently envisage. The design of zynseq was quite interesting but its full potential has been recognised by few. There may be advantage persuing that further ot we may want to take a different path. We review our successes and failures and learn from both. So, no immediate plans to persue any of the points in that last bullet point but you can continue to wish and dream my friend.
My playhead/cursor does not advance after entering note from midi controller, neither after entering note or by pressing the pedal. (i normally record live-midi or enter by the way of the encoders, so i have actually not tried this way before)
Thank you @riban for your open and generous reply, also on the matter of what possible routes for development the whole sequencer + arranger Zynth section might (or mightn’t) take.
It seems that I missed the interesting ability to choose between step or live Midi recording of patterns: for how dumb the question may feel, how do I toggle this function? And good to know that I can enter chords pressing the pedal, which is useful for the piece I’m writing .
I agree, and that is precisely why I finally decided to take the plunge, and experiment hands-on with this somehow neglected but technically very ingenious and arguably challenging area of the Zynthian features.
As for the (impossible? difficult? coming some day?) implementation of a score editor, my current idea, for a self-contained and open-source virtual orchestration solution, is a Raspi computer with a small portable screen and MuseScore, linked to two synced Zynthians, either directly via MIDI or uploading through Webconf chunks of SMF Midi data exported from score, for populating the sequencer patterns with already checked musical segments.
Keep up with your remarkable sequencer project mate, and I will keep on dreaming about the day of a 7”-Raspi 6-V6 release with full authonomous DAW functionality .
On a V5:
In pattern editor, press the “record” button to go into step record mode. Press the “play” button to start looping the pattern (*). If in record, the pattern will be in live (looping) record mode.
On a V4:
Short press encoder 3 to toggle playback. Bold press encoder 3 to toggle record.
On Touch-only:
Tap top right to toggle playback. There is an menu entry to toggle MIDI record. (This is suboptimal and I did implement a drop-down transport from touch top-right but disabled it for some reason. I feel like it may be a better solution for touch.
The pattern is hosted by the sequence of a launcher button. We temporarily put the sequence into loop mode when the pattern editor is shown then return it to its previous mode on exit. If the sequence was running already then the pattern will be playing when entering the pattern editor. Similarly, if the pattern is playing in the pattern editor, the sequence will be playing when exiting the pattern editor.
Thanks for the reply. At first glance, the few snapshots I loaded displayed the proper chains but all patterns seemed empty in zynbleton, though I had recorded some in zynpad.
First, when I started a clip it made strange sound (seems like looping a short part of the wav file loaded), then after upgrading today, I only get seg fault messages when I start the clip.
....
Mar 11 08:47:34 zynthianV51vangelis startx[5377]: ./zynthian.sh: line 316: 5408 Segmentation fault ./zynthian_main.py Mar 11 08:47:34 zynthianV51vangelis startx[5377]: ******************* Mar 11 08:47:34 zynthianV51vangelis startx[5377]: EXIT STATUS => 139 Mar 11 08:47:34 zynthianV51vangelis startx[5377]: ******************* Mar 11 08:47:34 zynthianV51vangelis startx[5668]: /zynthian/config/img/fb_zynthian_message.jpg is a 800x480 JPEG image, color space YCbCr, 3 comps, Huffman coding.
....
Someone else watching similar behaviour? If not, should I restart from a fresh SD card (doesn’t make sense in my eyes). I don’t have a special configuration, just the regular V5.1 one.
There was a big change to clippy. I just tested by adding a new clippy chain and populating with a couple of loops from 44.1k wav files into my 48k system. One about 10s and the other about 24s. Both play fine.
Are you using exsting snapshot or are you creating from scratch? What do your sample files look like (samplerate, word length, algorithm, duration, etc.)?
I tried to reproduce the error and successfully could do it.
I used the mono-wav file from fabla-samples “/zynthian/zynthian-data/files/Samples/fabla/808/Classic_Kick_short.wav” and tried to use it as source for the clippy. → seg fault
I made a stereo file from it with ffmpeg and tried it again. No seg fault. But strange loop behaviour when warp was on. Switching warp off, everything’s good.
Anyway, think that warping on clippy is designed to fit the sample in a number of beats, not for short percussion samples.
By default, warp is disabled for samples shorter than 1 beat. And enabling warp is not allowed for samples shorter than 1/4 beat. We could work around this limitation if it’s not OK.
My Zynthian running Vangelis (which I shut down last night), didn’t come back up today. No display, no web interface. I have a backup SD card that I keep on Oram, so I am using that now. Is there a recommended way to get the Vangelis install back to a functional state without wiping?
I have experienced the various segfault errors that many have experienced, and that often prevents it from shutting down in the cleanest manner. But, other than that, everything seemed completely routine. I used it last night and shut it down when I was done. It was when I came back to it that I noticed the issue. So, unless my memory is really failing me, the last update went fine. It could have been done yesterday, but before I was done using it.
Edit: Also, to be clear, I don’t believe that I have had a segfault or other shutdown error in the last few days, so I am not meaning to suggest that happened. I just meant that shutting it down always seems routine, except for those occasions.
Are you on a V5 kit, or it is a custom installation on a Raspi + Monitor + something to control?
Anyway: if your setup looks silent, but you can reach its webconf page through an SSH server (try zynthian.local or zynthian.lan, or even the direct IP address if you can detect it remotely), you should be able to check the status of the current software version, and possibly switch to a different one or perform a further update. I do not recommend to revert to a previous release, since it is prone to break the system.
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