Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#2The original motivation of Bezie was to build a simple tool to enable finer control over bézier curve automation. It evolved from a MIDI clip generator into a MIDI controller. Bezie opens up new possibilities with cubic and quadratic bézier curves. Bezie runs as a virtual MIDI controller outside of your DAW, not as a VST. This makes MIDI mapping extremely simple and no different than mapping from a hardware controller. Bezie also has several unique features including: vertical & horizontal envelope inversion, copy & paste, grid control and concurrent envelope rendering. Bezie is built with Electron, React and Redux and takes advantage of node-midi for virtual MIDI and SVG for the automation UI.
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#3It looks very solid, but it in my opinion it has to be very impressive to persuade me to use a third party tool instead of the automation tools that are integrated with my DAW.
I'm not trying to degrade your product, which, again, looks great, but you just targeted an area that is handled quite well in most DAWs already.
Have you considered turning this into a mobile app? Having this run on an iPad next to my keyboard with immediate access may be a better use case than alt-tabbing between my DAW and Bezie. And of course there are countless iOS DAWs that could make use of your advanced automations.
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#4It looks very solid, but it in my opinion it has to be very impressive to persuade me to use a third party tool instead of the automation tools that are integrated with my DAW. I'm not trying to degrade your product, which, again, looks great, but you just targeted an area that is handled quite well in most DAWs already. Have you considered turning this into a mobile app? Having this run on an iPad next to my keyboar…
Now that's an idea I like. Somehow be able to have the virtual midi as an app on my IPad that can sync over wifi or even with the IPad plugged into my mac book. Be able to control the envelope automation, or other automations, with touch.
OP, have you looked at BitWig's midi controller API? I wonder if something could be done with that. I use BitWig.
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#5This is pretty cool. Back when I was DJing I would have definitely bought this (and may yet, if I put my setup together again).
I'd suggest showing this working with Traktor or Serato - Ableton can functionally do something like this already (with Max/MSP) in which case you're competing on UI. This sort of thing is basically impossible in Traktor, last I checked, so you're bringing a much bigger improvement to those users. The live DJ market also benefits much more from improvements to their MIDI controls. If you make a demo video like Ean Golden does with the Midi Fighter [1] or NI does with Traktor [2] I think you'd see significant interest.
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#6This looks very similar to Xfer LFO Tool - how do they compare?
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#7It looks very solid, but it in my opinion it has to be very impressive to persuade me to use a third party tool instead of the automation tools that are integrated with my DAW. I'm not trying to degrade your product, which, again, looks great, but you just targeted an area that is handled quite well in most DAWs already. Have you considered turning this into a mobile app? Having this run on an iPad next to my keyboar…
Funny - I've actually had several people ask me if this will work on mobile or tablet. I guess I can conclude that there's interest in that. I think it could definitely be an interesting project and next step for Bezie - Thanks!
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#8Do you have plans to support automating MIDI notes or some sort of notes transformations, or is it out of the scope of this tool?
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#9This looks very similar to Xfer LFO Tool - how do they compare?
Bezie has some overlap, but the use case is a bit different. There are a couple of VSTs like LFO Tool and MIDIShaper that allow you to create a fixed width shape and toggle how many bars it should stretch over. In Bezie, if you select 8 bars, you'll literally get 8 bars to automate. As an example, if you wanted to map a couple different parameters to play with a song transition or drop, it'd make sense in Bezie, not so much in the others.
Re: Show HN: Bezie – Virtual MIDI controller for complex automation
#10It looks very solid, but it in my opinion it has to be very impressive to persuade me to use a third party tool instead of the automation tools that are integrated with my DAW. I'm not trying to degrade your product, which, again, looks great, but you just targeted an area that is handled quite well in most DAWs already. Have you considered turning this into a mobile app? Having this run on an iPad next to my keyboar…
Now that's an idea I like. Somehow be able to have the virtual midi as an app on my IPad that can sync over wifi or even with the IPad plugged into my mac book. Be able to control the envelope automation, or other automations, with touch. OP, have you looked at BitWig's midi controller API? I wonder if something could be done with that. I use BitWig.
Haven't checked that out - I'll take a look. Thanks!