Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
102 lines (76 loc) · 3.83 KB

index.md

File metadata and controls

102 lines (76 loc) · 3.83 KB
Raw
layout
page

PatchMaster

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

-- The entire Ig Nobel awards ceremony welcoming speech

PatchMaster is a MIDI processing and patching system. It allows a musician to reconfigure a MIDI setup instantaneously and modify the MIDI data in real time.

With PatchMaster a performer can split controlling keyboards, layer MIDI channels, transpose them, send program changes and System Exclusive messages, limit controller and velocity values, and much more. At the stomp of a foot switch (or any other MIDI event), an entire MIDI system can be totally reconfigured.

PatchMaster lets you describe songs, which are lists of patches that connect instruments. Those connections can send program changes, set keyboard splits, transpose, send volume or other controller changes, and let you apply any Ruby code you want to the MIDI stream in real time.

Song lists let you organize songs into set lists for live performance or in the studio.

Any incoming MIDI message can trigger an action such as moving to the next or previous patch or song. For example, you can tell PatchMaster to move forward or backward based on controller values coming from foot switches or an instrument's buttons.

Any array of MIDI bytes can be stored as a named message which can be sent via a trigger, a key press, or from any filter.

A software panic button turns off any stuck notes.

PatchMaster is cross-platform: it should run on Mac OS X, Linux, JRuby, and Windows. It requires Ruby 1.9 or above, and has been tested with Ruby 2.0.

PatchMaster is by Jim Menard. It is a rewrite of KeyMaster. The Github repo is here.

Requirements

  • The midi-eye gem, which will be installed automatically if you install PatchMaster as a gem. midi-eye in turn requires (and will install automatically):
  • The sinatra gem, if you want to use PatchMaster's browser GUI
  • Ruby 1.9 (because UniMIDI requires it) or higher (including Ruby 2.0)
  • Curses (comes with Ruby, but I'm not sure about JRuby)

Installation

To install as a gem, type

{% highlight bash %} gem install patchmaster {% endhighlight %}

Running PatchMaster

{% highlight bash %} patchmaster [-v] [-n] [-i] [-w] [-p port] [-d] [patchmaster_file] {% endhighlight %}

Starts PatchMaster and optionally loads patchmaster_file.

-v outputs the version number and exits.

The -n flag tells PatchMaster to not use MIDI. All MIDI errors such as not being able to connect to the MIDI instruments specified in pm_file are ignored, and no MIDI data is sent/received. That is useful if you want to run PatchMaster without actually talking to any MIDI instruments.

To run PatchMaster from within an IRB session use -i. Reads ./.patchmasterrc if it exists, $HOME/.patchmasterrc if not. See the documentation for details on the commands that are available.

To run PatchMaster using a Web browser GUI use -w and point your browser at http://localhost:4567. To change the port, use -p.

The -d flag turns on debug mode. The app becomes slightly more verbose and logs everything to /tmp/pm_debug.txt.

More Information