Musicians et al, Hyper Instrument Keyboard Link, WOW!

Tucked in amongst all these negative anti-progression postings may I share a little positive development?

Now this I do find interesting, and if you are are a SL musician I think you will also.

Today I was approached by Foolish Frost who played to me a short piece of music on the Hyper-Flute that I made for SL. As well as playing back note-sequences stored in a notecard, the instrument can also be played in real-time via mouse and HUD; and Foolish was also playing in real-time, but with a significant difference...

Foolish Frost and Botany Black have inventively created an external piece of software that will allow the hyper-instruments (currently flute and 'cello) to be played via your computer's (QWERTY) keyboard; something that is not currently possible with the current array of LSL functions.

We invite all Hyper-Instrument owners to try this out.

Here's how to do it, the set-up is very easy.

Firstly, you need to obtain the Hyper Instrument Keyboard Link software. At the moment this can be downloaded for free HERE, and works on PC's only. (Its only 213KB; a few seconds to download).

Second, you set-up the Hyper-Instrument in SL as normal (making sure that the HUD is not obscured by anything) and then run the external Keyboard Link software.

The software will cause your Second Life window to maximize on the desktop and ask you to click the upper left and lower right corners of the Hyper Instrument's HUD, (If you mis-align the HUD you can hit Esc and re-run the program to reset the placement).

That's it - You can now use the following keys to play the musical instrument in real-time!



23 567 89
QWERTYUIOP
SD GHJ
ZXCVBNML

When you are finished, hit Esc to end the external program.

This is exactly the sort of thing that holds me in Second Life, the coming together of strangers to make something happen, thanks Foolish and Botany.

Wow, awesome, thanks!

I'll try this in a bit. I'm so glad this is possible, maybe I'll gain at least a little skill with it. I remember I was in Waterhead and I was trying to play the flute, but it just sounded like a bunch of random notes. Heh, maybe this will help, thanks to everyone who worked on making it!

Something of real value on the forums.. Thanks ;0

Concur.

I concur, the development of music-making tools like this in SL is interesting, important stuff.

Awesome.


When's the mac version?

-Ghoti

When I get access to a computer with Applescript so I can make it, or when I get $100 for a cross platform software development toolkit.

Nothing against doing it, just that I have limits to what I can pull off with my tools...

Robbie, thank you. This is one more reason I am planning on buying your flute when I collect enough L.

That's awesome. I have this flute, and I look forward to trying this out.

Foolish, I'll gladly meet you 1/2 way on the cost of that SDK.

You get to keep it, and we all get the Mac vers. of the Keyboard Link. Send me an IM when you get time, thanks.

YaY! as a lover of the hyper flute and the hyper cello I am absolutely rapt this is around. Thanks Foolish and Botany!

Oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh OOOOOOH - ace!!

I best get learning how to play then huh? : )

First, let me see if the cross platform software will do what we want. Seems a lot of system want to have problems with controlling 3rd party programs.

As soon as I have answers on cross-platform compatability, we will see what can be done.

I swear. I think that the OS groups make it this hard just to tick me off.

Foolish, Laukosargas Svarog has offered to give it a go, porting & recompiling for the Mac if she can have the source?

Totally understand you not wanting to this, but thought I would mention it.

OMG, this makes me want to learn to play again! Thank you thank you thank you!

If the ability to control the notes via a keyboard exists, how about midi? That is something that might actually give me a reason me come back to SL. If I could play my midi guitar through one of your instruments, now we're talking about real time musical collaboration with anybody, anywhere in the world.

Don't take this the wrong way, I think this is an amazing development. But as someone who has spent my adult life learning to play and mastering stringed instruments, playing music on a qwerty keyboard somehow just doesn't seem right. It's my own hangup, don't take it personally and it's not my intention to marginalize your accomplishments.

So how about it, any chance of a midi interface for this?

One of my favorite things I've ever seen in an MMO was the music system in Asheron's Call 2. Monsters would sometimes drop musical instruments as loot. Each instrument would play 10 different loops based off a theme for the geographic region you were in. There were about a dozen instruments and each played different loops. The loops from all instruments were arranged to blend together in interesting ways. Impromptu bands would spring up in common areas and the variety of sounds from different arrangements of instruments was really amazing (and fun!). I've always wanted to see something similar in SL. This is the closest thing I've seen so far. Very cool!

Well. Does not your midi system have the ability to relay midi keys to keyboard keys?

<grins> It's not all about one program, sometimes...

Not sure, I'll give it a try later though, I have a lesson to teach in the mean time. If this works, I'll be offering SL guitar and bass lessons in a jiffy!

I know you can control the Microsoft midimapper with a qwerty keyboard, I'm not sure if it talks in reverse though.

How many octaves do the qwerty interface and the hyper flute/cello support? Oh, and can you play simultaneous notes (i.e. chords) or is it restricted to one at a time?

I'd investigate myself but SL is not installed currently and I have no intention of reinstalling unless something amazing like this draws me back in...

No chords. and only the octaves in the keyboard. It can't shift.

So the hyperflute/cello uses samples I assume, I wonder if Robbie has plans to add at least diatonic chord sets in various keys as patches if there's no way to trigger more than one note simultaneously?

Does the software for using qwerty operate via object ID? If so, could multiple hyper flutes be triggered individually and simultaneously? Six strings, six flutes, six notes, one string assigned via midi to each flute?

Again, I recognize the importance of the accomplishments to date, and admire the effort. It's just that you all are getting so close to tools I'd dreamed of SL having someday that I can't help but ask that you push the envelope. I'd be happy to help in anyway possible, although I'm not a scripter and my technical skills are limited. As such, I'm mostly relegated to the role of cheer leader here.

I'm sure I'm not the only one salivating at the thought of having this capability in SL.

I would like to be able to play my trombone and have it play directly into SL...but I think the only way this could work is via a Shoutcast stream, and not related to a prim trombone...failing that I wanted to upload a few small bits and somehow figure out enough animation to get the slide positions correct. This should only take me about a million years

The Hyper-flute looks neat, I don't think I have heard any yet though.

Thanks for the reminder Robbie I've been reading about the Hyper Instruments for a while now and keep trying to remind myself to get one to play with. It sounds like a lot of fun for sure! Especially being able to use the PC keyboard to play, what a great idea

I read about this flute either in Slexchange or SLboutique and I was VERY intrigued. I think this may be beginning of a whole line of functional instruments.

I applaud the builder. I would like to recommend a project for him, perhaps if he has the time he may consider building a similar interface for the piano?

Another future project could perhaps figure out how to link a midi interface to an SL keyboard.

Congrats and good luck with future development. We're all in awe.

Troy

Good to see this forum post has sparked some discussion, MIDI implementation got all of my five new-feature votes, but although this is a step in the right direction perhaps, I fear we are a long way from true MIDI implementation within SL, which is a shame.


Erik, BTW there are apps out there already that allow MIDI and Audio Jamming via a network and Mac OS now has a MIDI>Network feature built into its core OS.


I have used most key commercial MIDI audio softwares and have never seen that feature, although other way around is common enough (like in Logic Pro 7) so you can play MIDI devices or virtual instruments without having to connect a MIDI keyboard controller. I believe there are quite a few open source midi apps out there so maybe *someone* has done or will do this?


2.5 octaves, (30 notes). Single-note polyphony. Although actually, I worked hard to make these instruments sound nice, so that rather than hearing abrupt notes-ends (and audio clicks etc) when changing from one note to another, notes will cross-fade over one another smoothly when changing courtesy of several in-built timers controlling the fading-in and -out of note events, therefore actually there is a higher polyphony than 1 (sorta).


I more see these instruments as solo performance instruments, so no plans for harmony / accompaniment as yet. However the Hyper-Flute Composer Edition (not the 'cello ATM) does come complete with two HUD keyboards for this very purpose, and they can be played simultaneously, there is a sustain mode option on both HUDs so that you can trigger a note on one keyboard and whilst is holds you can trigger another note on the other HUD etc etc, and they both will sound, like a duet.


I have made a video of me playing the flute if you wanna hear it? Although there are post-production edits on the video track, the audio is an untouched stream and is exactly as the Flute sounds when played in world, no additional audio effect has been added, reverb etc.

Loads more info about writing songs for the Hyper-Instruments here and here.

And finally, BTW, if any Hyper-Cello owners need an excuse to try out the Keyboard-Link software, don't forget I'm running a Song-Writing competition at the moment (winner get 10,000L$ - deadline for submission is 15th July), if you are interested, check the rules here.