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Step by step tutorial

Antescofo
#1

Hi,

can anyone from the team do a tutorial on the Antescofo interface (Antescofo reference patch)?

The tutorials included are great to understand the primitives and the different types of options but there isn’t one that describes the Antescofo interface.
Essentially a step by step guide to set up Antescofo for piano performance with input from the microphone.
This should cover:

  • Calibration. Do I check the checkbox in the [Calibration] subpatch and then click on the “calibrate $1” button when A4 is being played out?
  • Setting up a good input mic level . Right now I have to check the “Audio Input” checkbox, double click on “p observation”, checking the open checkbox and moving the second slider halfway. But I’m not sure this is the right way, I found out by experimenting.
  • Setting the analysis to be 4096 256 (which I think is the optimal for piano).
  • Explaining the difference between “score” and “read”.
  • Describing and explaining the sequence of buttons that need to be pushed in order to get up and running.

I still haven’t been able to start it up successfully on the first try, I have to try several things before I get it to work. It’s a fuzzy process so all those steps would help understanding.

#2

That would be amazingly helpful and I dare say really useful in pushing Antescofo out to a wider audience. In particular it seems there’s not a single written word anywhere on Max4Live integration - I literally bought the software not knowing if it would work. I’m a rank beginner but naturally I’d be happy to pitch in on documentation of this once I accumulate anything useful.

#3

Hey guys… I definitely agree with your remarks… We wanted to put out a separate step-by-step tutorial (on making a piece from scratch) in November but didn’t have time! For now, you can check the Antescofo and Ascograph presentation that does attempt to integrate a piece from scratch. The video is online (in English and French) here:

I agree that the current resources are good for Max geeks and definitely not good enough for people who know what they want and don’t want to waste time on details! This said, you motivated us to initiate the process of preparing a step-by-step tutorial. I’ll keep you informed!

And some hints to your questions:

Calibration: Just click on the Toggle which will activate the calibration. The rest is explained in the HELP file (and also in one of the Tutorial files). The Calibration sends out two signals: one for energy and another one for Tuning. If you don’t want to check tuning on A4 (440Hz) then you can choose the second parameter in [calibrate 1 $1] which is just a MIDI pitch number for pitch reference! But you can ignore this!

Setting up Mic level: This is when the Calibration window is helpful. In general, you set the mic level so that the main calibration signal is ABOVE 0.7 when the instrument is playing, and BELOW 0.5 when the instrument is NOT playing (including background electronics/noise).
If you use the HELP patch, then the Mic input is in [p Observation] as you’ve already noticed (which is probably not a good idea!! you have a point there). I’d set the level so that Calibration is OK as described above.

Score and Read: are the same! I made this alias to be consistent with Max eco-system (thanks to @dudas).

Setting Analysis: In my experience the best value for most instruments and setup is [analysis 4096 512]. For Piano, it’s however tricky… KNOW THAT we are preparing a brand new version (which will be v0.6) that is highly robust on Piano. Stay tuned.

Regular Chain of Commands: If you have a score that is ready, and the audio input is calibrated, you usually need to just:

  • press score to load your score and make sure it's probably loaded (see Max window)
  • Double-click on the object (to bring up AscoGraph for visualization)
  • Press start
  • and play your instrument!

Additionally: you can start from other places in the score (using [gotolabel $1] and more… see [p ScoreBrowsing]).

#4

Having begun to study the existing documentation for Antescofo, I agree with the abovecomments about the need for a step-by-step tutorial. Given the 2014 date of the last comment, have any tutorials and more composer-friendly (as opposed to tech-friendly) documentation been created yet?

I feel I will not be able to achieve more than rudimentary skills without tutorials that are both visually specific and that are supported with simple audio examples.

A on-line reference ‘library’ of commonly used Max patches for Antescofo would also be very helpful.

Thanks for any help or suggestions for how to proceed.

#5

@glenhall : The latest Max and PD packages contain additional “step-by-step tutorials” that were released recently.

The Max package especially has a set of new tutorials that are prepared by @juliablondeau a few months ago, complementing the Anthemes 2 Reconstruction tutorial released two years ago. You can access all the tutorials directly from the EXTRAS menu in Max, after Antescofo proper installation.

In addition to these, there are several tutorials prepared by our users in this Forum. I try to maintain an updated list of them on this page (a sticky post at the top level of this forum).

We are also preparing a more user-friendly online documentation of Antescofo. We’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, do not hesitate to get to this Forum for any questions or concerns… . We try to be reactive! :slight_smile:

#6

At this point there’s a lot of basic tutorials, and really the best way to learn is it to read through them as you’re making your own thing. The main online reference is also a huge help. I think I’ve read it 2-3 times at this point. It’s a very very useful document.

Now, if more advanced tutorials and possibilities could be released :smiley:

#7

Thank you for your advice. I think I was reading too much and not looking enough. Thanks for the re-direction.