Microtonal MIDI player for OM

psingleton · February 19, 2021, 12:01pm

Hello,

I’m beginning to explore OpenMusic, on a new MacBook, which is therefore running Big Sur.

In general it seems to work ok, but I need to install a MIDI player that will handle microtones. I have downloaded the R-UDP player, but I’m not sure how to install it.

Is there a simple solution to this please? Or, if not a simple one, then a detailed guide as to how to go about it for new users?

I’ve looked at previous threads, but haven’t seen an answer to this yet.

Thanks for your help.

Phil Singleton

haddad · February 19, 2021, 12:22pm

Dear Phil,

For now, there is no “easy/FREE” solution unfortunately. The problem being not om, but rather finding a FREE midi player on Apple computers.

However, if you don’t want to use a commercial midi player to do that, i suggest to use QtCsound synth which is free, along with OM2Csound library. This will be non realtime but at least will play any microtone to the Hz.

Another solution (for experts) is to use fluidsynth (FluidSynth | Software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications) but this involves installing either
Homebrew or Macports and i am not sure these are yet supported on bigsur.

Best
K

psingleton · February 19, 2021, 12:32pm

Dear Karim,

Thank you for your reply. Is there a good midi player app that isn’t too expensive? There are some in the App Store for £2-£3; are they appropriate?

The other issue is that, being new to this, I need something that is straightforward to install. If I were to use a midi player, or QtCsound, is there a step-by-step guide to installation?

All the best,

Phil

haddad · February 19, 2021, 2:49pm

Dear Phil

Being a Linux user i cannot be of much help in this matter. However, the ideal setup is that these applications support IAC protocol (as most apple midi soft) which garanties the communication with OM.
Can you send me a link of these apps so i can check out their specs.

Best
K

psingleton · February 19, 2021, 3:07pm

Dear Karim,

Looking more closely they all seem to be for playback only, rather than MIDI synths - e.g. MIDIPlayer X | MethodRed

Unless I can find another solution I may have to leave OM alone for the time being - its appeal for me is the ability to work with microtonal harmony, without having to do too much setup.

Is there any possibility that MicroPlayer will be reintroduced? I think there’s a need for a simple plug-and-play option that non-experts can use, and it might encourage more people to experiment with OM.

Thanks for your help.

All the best,

Phil

haddad · February 19, 2021, 3:37pm

Dear Phil,

Yes apparently this is not a solution. Do you have Max installed? It could be a solution here.
I know there is an ongoing project to build a standalone that is equivalent to microplayer but i don;t have for the moment any new feedback about it. Will keep you infirmed here on the disscussion board.
Best
K

psingleton · February 19, 2021, 3:42pm

Dear Karim,

No, I don’t have Max. The project you mention is encouraging - I think waiting for this will be the best solution. It’s a shame, as I was hoping to work in OpenMusic right away, but I’m sure it will be worth the wait when it appears.

Thank you again,

All the best,

Phil

felipetovarhenao · February 22, 2021, 4:00am

Hi psingleton,

This week I built a MacOS standalone app for OM playback, with microtonal support. I did it precisely because some of my students have been wanting to start learning OM but have run into the same issue you’re describing.

Admittedly, the one I made is not as fancy as R-udp player, since it doesn’t use fluidsynth~ but feel free to try it. You can download it from my website, at the very bottom of the page: https://www.felipe-tovar-henao.com/projects

It’s called miniOMsynth — Hope that works for you. Let me know.

psingleton · February 22, 2021, 7:19am

Hi Felipe,

Thank you for this - I’m very grateful. I’ve downloaded your player and it seems to work so far - I’ll let you know how it goes.

All the best,

Phil

PaulOord2 · February 23, 2021, 12:55pm

Hi psingleton,
why not use the Ableton Live Samplers, they can be adjusted with a “scale” option to generate microtonal sounds. Only thing is that you provide your own sound files for the Sampler (use the Zone option). This to avoid Max and more technical spaghetti…
All the best.
Paul

smalllotus · February 23, 2021, 5:04pm

Hi Felipe,

Thank you very much for miniOMsynth.

but there’s something about your collective, choose “can’t close toplevel patchers” in the [standalone] inspector…

best,

Jerome

PaulOord2 · February 23, 2021, 5:26pm

felipetovarhenao,
I tried the standalone version but I’m confused about the in- and outputs. Does it not work with midi input (fi. IAC-Driver)? I can only play with the mouse…

felipetovarhenao · February 23, 2021, 5:52pm

Hi Paul,

You need to enable OSC communication between OM and miniOMsynth, by going to OpenMusic Preferences/MIDI and make sure the default score player is set to osc-scoreplayer. Once you do that, the playback should work.

Let me know if that works.

Best,

FTH

felipetovarhenao · February 23, 2021, 5:57pm

Hi Jerome,

Thanks for trying out miniOMsynth. Why do you recommend changing that attribute in [standalone]? I did it simply to make it easier to close the app, but maybe there’s something I’m missing. Did you download the Max project to notice this?

Best,

FTH

smalllotus · February 23, 2021, 6:27pm

hi,

when this box is not ticked, you can close the patch window, at this moment, you can’t see the patch again, you have to restart the standalone, it’s not very practical.

best,

Jerome

felipetovarhenao · February 23, 2021, 6:50pm

You’re right — I’ll have to change that for the next release. Thanks for the suggestion Jerome.

FTH

BUSEMARK304885 · February 26, 2021, 10:51am

Hi Felipe
Thanks for your miniOMsynth which I had just downloaded. I have changed my midi OM preferences to osc-scoreplayer with the default ports. When I set a score-object also to osc-player the following OM message appears:
ERROR: cannot resolve hostname “localhost”, service 3000: unknown-host.
(I use OM 6.17 under Mojave)

felipetovarhenao · February 26, 2021, 11:44am

Hi BUSEMARK304885,

Thank you for trying miniOMsynth and letting me know about this. I noticed this issue has come up before with other OM players (see this thread). A couple of things I’d recommend to narrow down what the problem is:

Try updating OM to v6.18. I’m also using Mojave so this seems to be the only difference from what you specified.
Making sure that the Force score player option is checked.
Checking if the order in which you launch each application makes any difference in you machine.

Let me know if the problem still persists, and I’ll try to see what I can do.

Best,

FTH

BUSEMARK304885 · February 26, 2021, 5:02pm

Hy Felipe

I have updated to v6.18
The osc scoreplayer option is checked in the MIDI-preferences as well as in the score object (a voice). You suggest Force score player - is that a typing error.
I’ve tried both launching orders: miniOMsynth-OM and OM-miniOMsynth
The problem still persists!
Best
Markus

felipetovarhenao · February 26, 2021, 8:10pm

Hi Markus,

This is pretty strange. Just to clarify, I did mean Force score player — in OpenMusic Preferences/MIDI, right below Default score Player, you will see a checkbox that says Force score player. I suggest checking it because one of my students wasn’t getting playback until she did this. If this doesn’t seem to do anything, I will soon be releasing v1.1 of miniOMsynth which will include (with a few extra features) a MIDI input option, although, as you might imagine, is not as ideal as OSC for dynamic and accurate microtonal playback.

Just out of curiosity, how new/old is your machine?

Best,

FTH