Some context Velpro is a Mac and Windows application that lets you adjust the velocity curve of each MIDI note, which is a changeable setting that controls how hard a note will play. Think of it as a measure of…
How it works A MIDI Velocity Curve Changer is an application, plugin or physical device that changes the MIDI signal between a source and a destination. More specifically, it transforms the note velocity value to comply with what you program…
The latest version of VelPro has been released a couple of weeks ago. It’s now even easier to edit your MIDI Velocity curve. We’re now at version 1.2 thanks to all your feedback and feature requests! Let’s walk through the new features of this release: “Apply curve to notes…” dialog Copy/paste a curve to any number of notes at once with this new dialog that lets you select all the notes on the keyboard that you want the current curve to be applied to. The option is shown in the “three lines” (aka “Hamburger”) menu, along with “Apply to all black/white keys” options. Display numeric scale on vertical axis if desired If the musical terms like “piano” or “forte” don’t really mean much to you, you can now switch to a numerical scale showing the actual velocity values with a switch shown in the View menu. Precise coordinates display and snap to grid when hovering and dragging a point No need to guess the values anymore. You can now see the precise x and y velocity values of a point when hovering the mouse. Also, the points now snap to a grid so that you don’t end up in between two velocities, not knowing which one will be applied. Compatibility with Apple Silicon If you own a recent Mac, chances are that it’s not an Intel processor anymore, but an ARM-based Apple Silicon chip. This release makes it possible to run VelPro on this new family of computers. Learn more There is now a Youtube video explaining new users how to use the basic features of VelPro. Also, of course, owners of previous 1.x versions get the update at no additional cost. Learn more about how VelPro can help you make your own MIDI velocity curve and buy it here!
The latest version of VelPro has been released today. Please welcome version 1.1! This version includes fixes to the bug that prevented users to hear some changes they made to the velocity curve until they reloaded the device. But most importantly, it introduces a handful of new features: The most requested feature of all: Presets for your devices You can now create as many setups as you want for a given device, simply by clicking the “+” button on the top-right corner. Give the new preset any name you want, and start modifying the curves. If you were using version 1.0, your settings will automatically be migrated to a default “Init” preset in the new version. Speaking of Curve edition: Here is undo/redo There are no reasons to fear editing your curves anymore, since you can now easily get back to the previous state by pressing Ctrl+Z (Command+Z on Macs). Multi-client for Windows And finally, for the Windows users who felt like Mac users where privileged, you can now connect several applications to VelPro through additional Virtual MIDI ports. When a device is disabled, a new “Instances” section will appear on the top-right corner, allowing you to define how many ports should be created when the device is enabled again. All those ports will received the MIDI transformed by VelPro at the same time. A very big thanks to all the users that have kindly tested the 1.1.0 version and reported their findings so that everyone can have the smoothest experience with version 1.1.1. Of course, owners of the 1.0 version get the update at no additional cost. Learn more about VelPro and buy it here!
I know it’s cold news, since it’s been a while already, but it’s still important to mention: Earlier this year, another project we did a lot of contracting work for saw the day of light. Orb Composer has been released by our friends at Hexachords after years of developing their artificial intelligence engine. If you’re a composer or simply a music lover, you can very quickly put a song together with Orb Composer : It will generate many things for you, based on all the AI packed in its engine. It doesn’t render sound by itself, but creates all the chords, instruments and notes, if you tell it to. Of course it doesn’t have to be all automatic, as you can customize any parameter that you don’t want the AI to change. Once the notes are created, you can use the template projects for your DAW to do the routing between the application and your favorite tool. With good instrument synthesizers, it really is a music powerhouse! I strongly recommand using the given templates, as doing all the routing by yourself could quickly get boring. Interface The base interface in itself is pretty simple: And the first video tutorial is a perfect way to get an idea of what it can do. As you can see in this video, the user interface allows you to drag and drop building blocks into your piece, like sections, chord progressions, chords : or instruments : Simple yet powerful It looks pretty basic, but once you master the foundation and want to go more in depth into the tweaking, you can too. Like creating a special parenting relationship between clips : Or changing all the properties of a clip : This is just scratching the surface of what it can do. And the team […]
Here it is. The latest version of Autotheory has been released after long months of hard work and a 3 months beta period. This version, while still maintaining all the features of the previous one, lets you be even more creative than before, with new included tools. Check out this quick overview: Video doesn’t exist anymore. The first thing you’ll notice after watching the video is the new user interface. It looks cleaner and lets you access the new features without compromising on simplicity. You will then probably notice the sequencer at the bottom. Autotheory now lets you record up to 8 scenes of different lengths. It synchronizes with your DAW using Midi Clock. The chords and melody part of each scene can be exported by simply drag-and-dropping the “export” button onto your DAW: Speaking of melody… the black keys of your right hand are now assigned to fully customizable arpeggiators: There are plenty of other features for you to discover. Check their website and youtube channel for more!.
For a couple of months now, Soundtoolz.com has been selling TranscriberTrack, a Windows and Mac app developed by Springbeats that facilitates the work of musicians wishing to learn and transcribe their favorite songs. It lets you load any song you like by simply dragging the file onto the app: You can then use the integrated 8-band EQ to emphasize the instrument you want to listen to specifically: Record yourself while looping on a specific section: Tapping the tempo lets you align the loop on the song’s bars. Slow it down while keeping the correct pitch and record yourself at lower speed: Speeding the playback back up also adapts the speed of your recorded performance. Apply VSTs to your recorded track to match the original performance: You can try and purchase it online from the official website, have a look!
Building a BitCrusher app with the latest versions of JUCE is fairly simple for a C++ developer, even if she’s never used JUCE before. I’m walking you through the different steps of the process in an article in the January 2017 issue of Linux Magazine France. The only caveat is… that you should be able to read French! (and buy the magazine, of course) 😉 French version Construire une application de BitCrusher est un jeu d’enfant pour un développeur C++ avec l’aide de la dernière version de JUCE, même sans aucune connaissance de JUCE préalable. Je vous guide à travers les différentes étapes du processus dans un article publié dans le numéro de Linux Magazine France de Janvier 2017 (numero 200). A l’issue de l’article, vous aurez une petite application graphique vous permettant de déformer le son des fichiers audio que vous y déposerez. Bonne lecture!
Last November, we attended the Audio Developer Conference in Goldsmiths University of London. It is an event organized by the company behind the JUCE library that we, at Springbeats, use to develop audio applications for our clients and for ourselves. Two days of conference on topics related to audio programming, right in central London, which, by the way, is a pretty cold place to live in 😉 Clear trends If you look at the program, you’ll probably notice for yourself the trends of this year: Machine Learning Embedded systems Embracing new techs / practices / standards It is funny to see how machine learning invades every field, even sound related ones where you might not expect it. The demos that were made looked pretty convincing so I’m guessing many companies will start integrating this type of technologies in their products in the coming year. Embedded and mobile systems seem to have reached a more mature state, where the latency and power restrictions no longer hinder the possibilities in terms of mobile audio. Not really a new trend, but we also see the expressiveness of controllers improve over the years. Roger Linn stated it in his talk, and the products from ROLI are a good demonstration as well. Overall impression The organization was flawless, and the event gathered twice more attendants than last year, with all the big names of the industry, and many many small developers like us. My general impression of the talks was that they did not go into enough technical details for my taste, probably because of the allowed duration for each talk. I heard from small developers, and it was my impression too, that there was not much material for plugin developers. But in the end, I’m curious to see how it evolves, and will want […]
A few months ago we released our very own Virtual MIDI Cable Driver for Microsoft Windows. Some users quickly reported that it was not recognized on the latest versions of Windows 10 (build 1607), because Microsoft now requires a different certification level than the one we had. We’re now proud to announce that we did what was required from Microsoft to solve the problem, and that is now working very well on those systems too 🙂 So if you had downloaded the previous version and encountered this kind of error: Be sure to checkout the latest release. Uninstall the previous version, and install this one instead. But what does Springbeats Virtual MIDI Cable do exactly? Glad you asked. It’s a Windows driver which installs 8 new MIDI devices on your system. Each of this device can be used to carry MIDI data from one application to the other. Just like a cable would do if you were dealing with hardware instead of software. A typical example would be to route MIDI notes from your MIDI controller, that were first transformed by an application, to your DAW. You’d then be able to record the transformed notes. This is how AutoTheory works for instance. It takes the notes from your USB MIDI keyboard, changes them, and lets you get these changes in another app, via our Virtual MIDI Cable. The good thing is : it’s totally free for personal uses! More than that, it is also opensource. The only restriction being you can’t embed it with your own app if you’re a developer, without our agreement. Checkout the product page to read more and download.
