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DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

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Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#31

Post by CharlesW »

conradfr wrote: post #20
CharlesW wrote: post #19

If the goal is widespread industry adoption, I'd recommend the approach of extending a professional, standards-based interchange format already supported by major DAWs: AAF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Authoring_Format https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd0000...

The README extensively references AAF.

Yes, which is why the Yet Another Standard approach is so mystifying. Bitwig is surely aware that AAF has wide support and could easily be extended to support everything they want to do.

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#32

Post by spacechild1 »

gravitronic wrote: post #17
elihu wrote: post #16

One thing I'd like to see is native support for some notion of pitch other than 12-tone equal temperament. Looking at their example, I see this: ...which looks like it's basically just a representation of the underlying midi. One way they could represent other pitches is for "key" to allow a floating point value rather than an integer. So, for instance, 65.5 would be a quarter-tone (50 cents) above note 65. According…

At this layer of note information, fact is the data will be either sent to a MIDI device or a plugin as a MIDI event, so you might as well keep it in the native format and not convert to a frequency.

You don't need to convert to frequency, you can use fractional MIDI pitch values. E.g. 60.5 would be a quarter tone above middle C.

In fact, the VST2 and VST3 SDKs support microtonal offsets per note event (measured in cent). Unfortunately, only few plugins and hosts support it.

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#33

Post by elihu »

gravitronic wrote: post #17
elihu wrote: post #16

One thing I'd like to see is native support for some notion of pitch other than 12-tone equal temperament. Looking at their example, I see this: ...which looks like it's basically just a representation of the underlying midi. One way they could represent other pitches is for "key" to allow a floating point value rather than an integer. So, for instance, 65.5 would be a quarter-tone (50 cents) above note 65. According…

At this layer of note information, fact is the data will be either sent to a MIDI device or a plugin as a MIDI event, so you might as well keep it in the native format and not convert to a frequency.

MPE exists, and can handle microtuning of pitch. MIDI 2.0 supports per-note pitch bend. Old multitimbral MIDI synths can be used in an MPE-like fashion by using the one-note-per-channel and pitch bend trick. Modular synthesizers (and virtual modular synthesizers like VCVRack) use control voltage directly, which has no built-in assumptions about how or if the voltages are quantized.

Microtonal music, or even just plain regular traditional music that's tempered to be more in tune with itself, should be trivially easy to do with electronic instruments, and yet due to some historical decisions to base the one near-universal music protocol we've been using for the last 40 years on a piano-centric representation, it's a lot harder than it ought to be.

I think we should not disregard microtonal music just because it isn't cleanly backwards compatible with a protocol that's over 40 years old.

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#34

Post by duped »

elihu wrote: post #16

One thing I'd like to see is native support for some notion of pitch other than 12-tone equal temperament. Looking at their example, I see this: ...which looks like it's basically just a representation of the underlying midi. One way they could represent other pitches is for "key" to allow a floating point value rather than an integer. So, for instance, 65.5 would be a quarter-tone (50 cents) above note 65. According…

This is built into MIDI 2, fwiw

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#36

Post by gravitronic »

spacechild1 wrote: post #32
gravitronic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this layer of note information, fact is the data will be either sent to a MIDI device or a plugin as a MIDI event, so you might as well keep it in the native format and not convert to a frequency.

You don't need to convert to frequency, you can use fractional MIDI pitch values. E.g. 60.5 would be a quarter tone above middle C. In fact, the VST2 and VST3 SDKs support microtonal offsets per note event (measured in cent). Unfortunately, only few plugins and hosts support it.

I mean, you could, but that would get really gross when implementing certain scales that are nowhere similar to the MIDI tuning (like working out the fractions for a 13-note scale)

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#37

Post by ok_computer »

londons_explore wrote: post #21
gravitronic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this layer of note information, fact is the data will be either sent to a MIDI device or a plugin as a MIDI event, so you might as well keep it in the native format and not convert to a frequency.

I feel like we're only months/years away from software and file formats being obsolete for this for this sort of thing, and instead songs are composed by humming a tune to ChatGPT and have it add all the other instruments, some nice vocals, and output the MP3. If you want to make changes, you give ChatGPT the MP3 file and say "switch out the trumpet for a piano and make the singer a guy".

This is a hilarious take and juxtaposition with MP3 (lame encoders anyone?) and some far fetched gtp application. It would be a musak equivalent of the bored ape nft’s.

Like midi note transcription or waveform modeling will be cool machine learning tools. An end to end composition and mastering bot may make something passable like other current derivative music out there, being generous by saying passable.

Show me the leaps and bounds in self-driving cars that were only 3-5 years away 8 years ago.

There is still need for better daw, music transcription, and audio file formats in the next century. Lol humans want to make art in their free time not play around with pretend chatbot personalities.

P.s. people still record to TAPE and it sounds awesome even though there are albleton plugins

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#38

Post by couchand »

unshavedyak wrote: post #27
johnnyworker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who makes music as a hobby that's about as enticing as outsourcing sex. I don't care if the machine can do it better.

That's an interesting point. I don't get much value from art personally (not that i don't see why people value it, i do!) , so the idea of AI generated art isn't disgusting to me. Music however.. i adore music. A big (but not essential) thing i love about music is the story that got the artist to that point. Pain, joy, emotion is transferred. Yea, often it's not essential so maybe AI Music has a place in my life, but…

... music is art, no?

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#39

Post by moleperson »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #22
conradfr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The README extensively references AAF.

Indeed. This is a Bitwig project. I think the default for Bitwig engineering should be "assume extreme competence."

What's wrong with Bitwig engineering?

Re: DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs

#40

Post by dmicah »

sctb wrote: post #18
dmicah wrote: post #11

It would be nice if Bitwig would support existing plug-ins formats like AU.

Do you encounter many AU-only plugins? From what I can tell, the limitations of VST/AU/AAX are more pressing and Bitwig are working to address that with CLAP: https://u-he.com/community/clap .

There have always been plug-ins, especially by small developers on the Mac, which are AU only.

Apple Silicon macs can now run iOS / iPadOS AUs as well, so there are a ton of plugins from that world that are not available as VSTs.

Apple Logic can't load VSTs, so typically on the Mac it makes sense to just have AUs. Ableton Live on the Mac can load VSTs or AU, but there isn't really a reason to keep the VSTs around.

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