Before I'd start thinking about coding something to use a 40h as
interface for SooperLooper (http://essej.net/sooperlooper/index.html), I
thought it's better to ask first if anyone has done this already...

anyone?

i don't think so. it'd be sweet though. brian wrote a max patch called 
EMP that's a looper. i made a pd patch once that does a similar thing, 
though it was SUPER basic.

do you play guitar? guitar looping was one of the first things i thought 
of using the 40h for, though needing 3 hands is a problem... let us know 
how you get on.

I know that there are looping patches, but unfortunately it boils down 
to my basic problem: MaxMSP doesn't run on Linux.

However, SooperLooper can handle several audiofiles at once, and 
regarding its documentation one can completely control it using OSC (it 
even delivers the current play cursor position when queried... nice!). 
I've played with mlr a bit and I think that SooperLooper can do almost 
everything mlr can - and it can record samples on the fly.

So, if noone's done that already I'll do some further investigation and 
see what I can accomplish.

@Stephen:
I don't play guitar, but as a drummer I can confirm that having more 
hands is definitely a plus! :)
...Maybe someone comes up with a foot-40h using jumbo sized buttons? 
(Although I think that would end up being some sort of 
Nintendo-jump-mat-clone, but with LEDs ;) )

rooker - check out what sean is up to here with his 40h logic board 
based pedal board.
http://forum.monome.org/topic/1213#8134

he's also brewing his own software, I don't recall the platform, maybe 
the source code could port over, ask him about it.

start playing with chuck
http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/release/
it's linux compatible,  I haven't coded in it yet but looking at the 
source code for some of the 40h apps it's a pretty typical 
straightforward high level language.

I don't know what's available for linux as far as loop players but 
converting messages from a monome into midi you send to another app 
isn't very difficult.

so easy, even a drummer can do it. :P

good luck, keep us posted!!

@tonedeft: Thanks for the link to the pedal board.
I've already programmed some things in ChucK and it's nice, but I have a 
bad feeling about its development... It seems like there's no real 
community picking it up to push it faster towards a stable release. 
(Just a feeling - no facts to prove this).

Right now I've written a small patch in pd to be able to play 1 sample 
at a time, showing the playing position and loop-count. It's quite nice, 
since this makes it possible to have 5x8 samples immediately at hand. 
It's a rather quick-and-dirty hack, because on the weekend we're playing 
live on a Festival in the Czech Republic - and I needed something *fast* 
to replace our Bassist (schedule conflicts. arrrgh!), so 40h came to the 
rescue!

It's gonna be fun: left hand playing drums, using an old Joystick - and 
playing Bass samples with the right hand. ...and 1 day to practice it. 
:)


I'll start with SooperLooper right afterwards!

Hey Rooker,

I was thinking about interfacing the 40h with FreeWheeling: 
http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/ . But sooperLooper looks very 
interesting too...

Julien

I almost forgot about freewheeling. I saw it once in dyne:bolic, but I 
wasn't interested in sample-looping back then so it didn't make it into 
my long-term memory. :)
However, I took a look at it and it really looks nice, too - the only 
thing I'm not sure is if it's possible to display loop-timing 
information on the 40h, because the MIDI I/O for freewheeling seems to 
be input-only.

@Julien:
I was thinking about making serial-pyio extendable by some sort of 
"plugins". These could either be application specific (e.g. SooperLooper 
handling) or general (similar to mapd). Since you're the better Python 
coder, I'd love to hear your ideas about how this could be done in a 
clever way.

If it turns out the way I imagine it, it would provide the framework for 
anyone to quickly write application specific code without having to 
re-code some handy functions over and over again. It's good that the 
serial-to-OSC converter offers low-level access - but I propose that 
having some extendable high level functions in a central place could 
make things easier for a lot of people.

Arrrrgh! If only I had an invisible monome and a stealth screen - then I 
could even code this at work! ;)

Hello,

I forgot to activate notification for this subject. So here is my late 
answer...

I completely agree that we need a kind of plugin system to add support 
for applications to serial-pyio. Since python is interpreted. That 
should not be too difficult, given that python is interpreted and highly 
dynamic. I have to look at it.

By the way code separation is almost done. The osc handling is agnostic 
of the kind of device. So now you can make simple python programs that 
talk to the 40h without having to start the osc part. It also enabled me 
to make a virtual monome (a grid of 64 buttons) that almost works. This 
will be useful for testing code for multiple monomes or when you need to 
test some stuff and you don't have the monome at hand. I just thought 
that we could map keyboard key to the virtual buttons to use the PC 
keyboard as an input... Can be cool too !

 > Arrrrgh! If only I had an invisible monome and a stealth screen - 
then I
could even code this at work! ;)

What do you think of a virtual monome ? :) No invisible, but more 
discreet !