GeoMaestro

Tutorial 12: mixing KeyKit tools in the Compositor

If you're just starting with the Compositor, you should first read tutorial 8.

To import a tool as a (T) box in the compositor, simply use its class name as import command. For example, wgroup imports a Group tool, wkboom2 a Kboom2 tool.

We are going to set-up the following example composition (If you feel lazy, simply import b and fetch the file tuto12.box in your DATA directory... you will not have to do anything but read the tutorial, although the saved "composition" is slightly different):

Here is how to proceed:

Box 1 is a Group tool: import wgroup
Click [REF] to have the group tool available in the graphic area, and draw a few notes in the tool, like this:

... then click [REF] again: this sets the display back to the boxes structure.
Box 2 is a Kboom2 tool: import wkboom2
Set box 2 as the current box; click [REF] and set-up a loop with simple piano notes like this:

... then click [REF] again.
Box 3 is a dummy synth box: import s -1
Thanks to this box, box 2 itself will not be heared in the resulting composition: it will only be echoed by box 4.
Box 4 is an echo of box 2: import & 2
Use the EditFields plug-in and set the "ph" reference for box 4 to
```
lrepeat(_ph_,20,192)
```
... so that box 4 will loop 20 times the Kboom2 phrase. We use lrepeat because repeat is based on the phrase length, which results in an offset (for some reason the length of the Kboom2 $.get() phrase is not the length of the loop). Try it if you want to see what I mean:
```
repeat(_ph_,20)
```
Box 5 is a Pitch Bend Shaper tool: import wpbshaper
Set box 5 as the current box; click [REF]:

To create this kind of pitch bend ramp, set Snarf to ',l1000' (at the console), click [More -> Input Snarf], click in the upper area a few times, calling "add pitch bend" in the pop-up menu, then click [Global -> Interpolation -> half cosine]

... when you're done click [REF] to exit the PB tool.
Box 6 and 7 are copies of box 1 (use the "copy current box" mouse mode). For each copy, open the tool with [REF] and make some modifications to the notes there (I did "flip" in one tool and "swapnotes" in the other)
Link all boxes according to the picture

When everything is ready, set box 1 as the current box and [EVAL]uate the composition. We have the three Group tools merged, followed by 20 loops of the Kboom2 with a pitch distortion following the curve in the PB Shaper tool.

Here is my resulting phrase:

(click in the image to get the corresponding MIDI stream)

To add some more flexibility, set

NLoops = 20

... at the console, then use the EditFields plug-in to set the "ph" reference of box 4 to

lrepeat(_ph_,NLoops,192)

Now you can try different [EVAL] by first setting NLoops at the console (try with NLoops = 4 and NLoops = 40)

-- Back to the tutorials index-- -- Back --