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Screencasts about using GO

L.Palo

New member
Hi!

The Scope and Scoped buttons in the panels makes it possible to toggle only some of the stops on and off not touching the state of stops not within the scope (those selected to be affected to begin with). So this is exactly what they are all about (seems to me).

I'll try to create another screencast demonstrating what the user can do with them (nothing to do in the odf actually).

Kind regards

Lars P
 

scush

New member
Just a thought.

If there were also panels creating Rank's, Stop's, and Tremulant's. It could make .organ redundant ?.

After watching the video's I now feel that my computer is only half decent.

Thanks Lars you made yesterday a good one.

John
 
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L.Palo

New member
Hi!

Yes, it has crossed my mind that now so many things can be done from within the GUI so that in the future it will perhaps be possible to completely design organs from within the GUI.

Anyway, I've uploaded a video that shows a possible use of Scope and Scoped to http://youtu.be/QOvSGlDk-PQ. I'll do a demonstration of Full later and one about saving and exporting/importing combinations.

In the last video you can clearly see that the audio and video is not in sync, so my computer do have some troubles with it's performance when I'm recording the videos. It certainly feels much laggier to play when screencasting with the (PA) default, but it's the only way to get it to work at the moment. Good thing that in normal usage it's very responsive.

Kind regards

Lars P
 

L.Palo

New member
So, here comes two new videos. First one, http://youtu.be/0XYJGsFy2Xs, show the usage of Full for panel general, divisionals etc. The second, http://youtu.be/9hFNI_uo7Xo, talks about saving the configurations and combinations as well as exporting additional lists of them if the first saved (and automatically loaded when opening the sampleset) won't be enough for your needs.

This is a very powerful feature of GO that gives you possibility to expand your combination library to the end of your harddrive! For practical usage, it's almoast limitless. Okay, every combination file can store 1000 free combinations in the setter (list), at least 10 divisionals for every keyboard and 30 generals (besides what the sampleset producer put there), four alternating crescendo pedals setups of 32 steps each as well as all the MIDI settings and other configurations for your organ. And you can have as many of them .cmb files your harddrive(s) will allow!

GrandOrgue is truly great!

Kind regards

Lars P
 

e9925248

New member
First to the questions:
* Adding "appel d'anches" & Co to GO in the future is possible.
At the moment: If the ranks are already on a seperate windchest, you can use its swell (on the floating panel, each windchest has a swell by default) .
* GUI edition of the ODF in GO is very, very, very unlikely - the whole GO code is not suited for this, it causes troubles with combinations and so. Everything except stops/ranks/pipes and tremulants is already present by default - so you only need a base ODF contain the stops.

Comments, Suggestions:
* In my option, the Barton organ was too quietly in the screencast.
* Add Full: GO honors the ODF settings. Barton ODF contains, that invisible stops are not stored - Graham could have choosen to store them by default.
* GO also features presets and (since a few commits) instances:
Code:
GrandOrgue -i name1
will start a GO using completely different settings (Instance name: name1). This is useful, if you want a clean GO environment or eg. want to use different audio settings.
 

L.Palo

New member
Hi! It seems that I cannot edit the posts at this time, but I've uploaded a new version of the Full & 2nd touch video to http://youtu.be/Jv6kvKPXxsw. If I can I'll edit the previous post and remove the old video.

Kind regards

Lars P
 

wehtam721

New member
I'm backing up a few posts here, but in response to the naming of the panels (as Lars suggested) I think that "Crescendo Pedal" would be the best label for what is now "Crescendo Swell" and I would probably choose "Combination Setter" for the "Setter" panel. I'm a native speaker of English and as they were the labels were understandable without much trouble, but "Crescendo Pedal" and "Combination Setter" would be clearer.

Also, related to the earlier posts about .cmb files, it would be nice if a MIDI controllable way to switch between these were available so that if you were playing a particularly long piece, you could switch between one or the other if you ran out of physical pistons on the console. I don't know how the code is set up for the program in general, but since GrandOrgue will already import and export combinations, it seems like it might not be too difficult to automate this process. Maybe an optional section in the ODF could be added to give the number of combination action levels desired (the number of .cmb files total that you'd like to have) and then below give a file path to each one in much the same way that you do for pipes? Like I said, I don't know how possible this is (or, if it's possible, how labor intensive it would be to do). It's a feature that I'd like to see, though, as it's pretty widely available on real instruments and I think I'd get a lot of use out of it. In any event, it would be less cumbersome than having to navigate the menu to import new settings for .cmb files that you access all the time. The regular import/export would be fine for rarely used combinations.

I hope that everyone is well. I've been enjoying reading all of the new posts lately and I think that it's great that the GrandOrgue community now has access to these video tutorials! Thanks for taking the time to put the work into this!

Take care,
Matt
 

e9925248

New member
Also, related to the earlier posts about .cmb files, it would be nice if a MIDI controllable way to switch between these were available so that if you were playing a particularly long piece, you could switch between one or the other if you ran out of physical pistons on the console. I don't know how the code is set up for the program in general, but since GrandOrgue will already import and export combinations, it seems like it might not be too difficult to automate this process. Maybe an optional section in the ODF could be added to give the number of combination action levels desired (the number of .cmb files total that you'd like to have) and then below give a file path to each one in much the same way that you do for pipes? Like I said, I don't know how possible this is (or, if it's possible, how labor intensive it would be to do). It's a feature that I'd like to see, though, as it's pretty widely available on real instruments and I think I'd get a lot of use out of it. In any event, it would be less cumbersome than having to navigate the menu to import new settings for .cmb files that you access all the time. The regular import/export would be fine for rarely used combinations.

Please help me understanding your GO usage:
You put the register combinations in generals and map them to the pistons on your console. The number of pistons is limited, so you want to switch during playback?

The functions is already present:

The GO setter can also be used as 100 banks a 10 generals. All slots support a scope - so they can also be used as divisional replacement.

Just use the __0 - __9 as general. Above are the bank selection functions (+10, +100, -10, -100).
 

wehtam721

New member
Hi 'e',

Thanks for your reply. As always, I appreciate the help and the reply. First, let me explain my setup/thoughts a little bit better than I originally did. I have built a large console to use with GrandOrgue. It has 4 manuals and I've built in 22 general pistons and 30 divisionals (5 divisonals for each of 6 divisons) and I run an ODF that I built on my own which is a combination of several others that are freely available for GrandOrgue. The issue isn't that I don't have enough physical pistons on the console, but rather that I just use a lot of them (mainly the generals). I play a lot of orchestral transcriptions which can be long and require a lot of subtle and frequent registration changes. There are times when I use more than the 22 generals for one piece or when (because of the manuals that my hands are currently playing) I can't reach any of the generals that haven't already been programmed. That's why I sometimes need to switch the settings of the manual pistons while playing.

I must admit that I'm a "newbie" at using the Setter panel and haven't looked at it very much before today. I investigated the solution that you presented in your previous post and I see the following complications:

- Using the Setter panel, I would only be able to use 10 of the pistons on my console to control stops whose settings could be altered during playback since there are only 10 available buttons in the Setter panel
- Say that 005 is currently selected on the Setter panel but that the next piston I need is number 013. I'd have to push the piston programmed to the +10 button, then the piston for the __3 button, but any stops stored to 015 would be activated right when the +10 button is pushed and would stay that way during the time it takes me to push the piston for the __3. As a possible work around to this, I could setup 10 pistons to control the Setter panel and the others to control ODF defined generals. Then as long as I was on one of the ODF defined generals when I had to push the +10 button, the intermediate settings wouldn't be heard.

I hope that this explanation makes sense. It's a bit tricky to explain clearly. Let me know if there's something I can explain a little bit better and I'll try again. Also, let me know if there is some additional functionality of the Setter panel that I'm missing (which is completely possible).

In addition, in investigating the Setter panel today, it seems like it functions more like a sequencer than anything else (again, correct me if I'm wrong) and it seems like it would work great if you were just stepping though the settings in order. Therefore, I think the best name for this panel in English would actually be "Sequencer" instead of "Combination Setter" like I had previously thought.

Thanks again,
Matt
 

L.Palo

New member
Hi!

It always surprises me that the english speaking organ world still so dearly embrace the generals with physical buttons for selection as combination system. This is of course a limited system as if too many (physical) general pistons are added the console will be cluttered and more difficult to use.

For instance in Sweden we abandoned that system together with early pneumatics in favour of the adjustable or free combination system (in german setzerkombinationen) already during the organ movement. You won't have physical buttons for every combination, but in return you can have many more combinations that you either will step through (in sequence) or choose by input of combination identifier. Then again, this system only existed for a few large organs in my childhood, today it's more widely used even if here still many organs are purely mechanical without any form of combination system at all.

When playing prepared pieces we usually just write in what combination should be activated at a certain point in the piece and step forward (or backward) to never risk getting lost.

The word sequencer though is not very traditional organish... It's more part of MIDI vocabulary even if it's clearly used on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_action). In my organ term thesaurus Adjustable/Free combination is used, and in laukhuff catalogue the term (solid state) capture system is used. Symptomatically, Wicks Organ company doesn't mention it's existance on their organ term page... I guess that it's up to the majority of the english speaking GrandOrgue users to choose what label we should put on it in english.

My tip for your setup would be that you choose say four of the generals to act as the Set button, the Current and then the step forward and backward (actually, I don't remember if you need to have the Previous and Next in the programming process instead of backward and forward, needs to be tested!). Then you can program the combinations in the Setter with physical help from the console. You then have 1000 of combinations in a single .cmb file to step in between. It should be enough for most single pieces.

Kind regards

Lars P
 

e9925248

New member
There are times when I use more than the 22 generals for one piece or when (because of the manuals that my hands are currently playing) I can't reach any of the generals that haven't already been programmed. That's why I sometimes need to switch the settings of the manual pistons while playing.

Switching CMB is a task, which can interrupt playback.

The feature request should be, that you want multiple "banks" for generals/divisionals, which are stored inside one CMB.

I don't want to change the exisiting generals/divisonals - they simulate a free or fixed combination without banks.

Reading the various posts in this forum, I came to the conclusion, that there are two groups out there: general <-> combination sequencer users.

So adding controls to better access the 1000 setter combinations as banked generals (or scoped as divisionals) is probably the easiest thing to implement.

What controls would you suggest/need?

Combination 1-20? next/prev Bank?

Current Bank display [By the way: Is there any standard to send text to MIDI displays?]

- Say that 005 is currently selected on the Setter panel but that the next piston I need is number 013. I'd have to push the piston programmed to the +10 button, then the piston for the __3 button, but any stops stored to 015 would be activated right when the +10 button is pushed and would stay that way during the time it takes me to push the piston for the __3. As a possible work around to this, I could setup 10 pistons to control the Setter panel and the others to control ODF defined generals. Then as long as I was on one of the ODF defined generals when I had to push the +10 button, the intermediate settings wouldn't be heard.

This is not true. +/- does not recall anything. Only next/prev/current/__0-__9 recall combinations.

You only have 10 generals at a time, but this allows you put them on multiple locations (eg. below each manual), so that they are always easy accessible.
 

wehtam721

New member
@ Lars
I don't have anything against using general/divisonal pistons or having some type of sequencer. Both have advantages and disadvantages. I would say that finding organs here that have this functionality is getting more common, but I certainly don't expect to find it on instruments. While I know some people oppose the device all together, I think that the bigger reason more of them don't exist is that even if organists wanted a sequencer to be added to existing organs, they might not be able to get funds from their church to support making the change.

For the terminology, I was merely suggesting what I thought might be best. I'd be happy to hear from others also about what they think would be best. I know the word "sequencer" has a meaning in the MIDI world also so maybe that isn't best. I don't know. I (personally) haven't heard the terms adjustable or free combination, but that's probably just me. I have heard "(solid state) capture system" used, but it seems to me that this could be a name for any solid state combination system and not necessarily one that allows for combinations to be programmed and stepped through in sequence.

@'e'
I understand the trouble with importing/exporting .cmb files and agree with your conclusion that the feature request should actually be for multiple "banks" as you suggested. I also think that this could be accomplished through modifications to the Setter panel and I understand your reasoning for wanting to keep the current functionality of generals and divisionals the same.

I might suggest that for the Setter panel, maybe having Combinations 1-30 (which is the number of generals provided by the generals panel) to keep things consistent. Buttons for Next/Previous bank would then make more sense than the +/-10, +/-100 buttons. Maybe instead, buttons for Next/Previous, +/- Bank, +/-, 10 Banks might be better and serve the same purpose. Thoughts? Would it cause a problem that 1000 (the number of settings the setter will currently store) is not divisible by 30? As far as a standard for sending text to MIDI displays, I don't know about that, but displaying the current bank would be helpful if the setter was changed to function this way.

Regarding +/- buttons not recalling anything, I went back to my console and tested this again using revisions 1026 and 1125 and found that in both revisions the +/-10 buttons and the +/-1 buttons did recall the information stored to the next setting. For example, pressing __3 to select setting 003 recalls those settings, then pressing +10 immediately recalls the settings for 013. I don't know if this is something that's only happening on my system or if other people can confirm this. If the setter panel was to work like having multiple banks, the "next bank" and "previous bank" buttons shouldn't recall settings.

Also (as a side note), is ASIO4ALL supported in revision 1125? It works great in 1026 (which is the only reason I'm keeping it around). In 1125, the bars move showing that GrandOrgue is producing sound output, but nothing is audible when ASIO4ALL outputs are selected.
 

e9925248

New member
I might suggest that for the Setter panel, maybe having Combinations 1-30 (which is the number of generals provided by the generals panel) to keep things consistent. Buttons for Next/Previous bank would then make more sense than the +/-10, +/-100 buttons. Maybe instead, buttons for Next/Previous, +/- Bank, +/-, 10 Banks might be better and serve the same purpose. Thoughts? Would it cause a problem that 1000 (the number of settings the setter will currently store) is not divisible by 30? As far as a standard for sending text to MIDI displays, I don't know about that, but displaying the current bank would be helpful if the setter was changed to function this way.

I would round up to 50 combinations (we need to replace divisionals too) and put the additional access method on a extra panel (working title: "Combination setter direct access").
Elements:
* 50 Buttons
* Set
* Regular/Scope/Scoped
* Full
* Bank Prev/Next
* Bank Number display [should we display 0, 1, 2 - 20 or 0, 50, 100, ...?].

Regarding +/- buttons not recalling anything, I went back to my console and tested this again using revisions 1026 and 1125 and found that in both revisions the +/-10 buttons and the +/-1 buttons did recall the information stored to the next setting. For example, pressing __3 to select setting 003 recalls those settings, then pressing +10 immediately recalls the settings for 013. I don't know if this is something that's only happening on my system or if other people can confirm this. If the setter panel was to work like having multiple banks, the "next bank" and "previous bank" buttons shouldn't recall settings.

Are you really sure, that the combinations have been recalled (that means, stops have been changed)? They just changed the displayed number without changing any stop.

Also (as a side note), is ASIO4ALL supported in revision 1125? It works great in 1026 (which is the only reason I'm keeping it around). In 1125, the bars move showing that GrandOrgue is producing sound output, but nothing is audible when ASIO4ALL outputs are selected.

Could you please try this too:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ourorgan/files/GrandOrgue 0.3/r1088-win/
 

wehtam721

New member
That sounds good. For the bank number, I would probably opt for 1,2, - 20 personally but that's just my preference.

As far as combinations go, I'm certain that stops are actually changing. See the attached video. I start with nothing, call 000, then 003 then 10+ and -1 several times. I do this via touchscreen in this video. This is the same behavior that I have experienced in all three revisions that I've tested today.

I tried revision 1088 with ASIO4ALL and experienced the same problem. In experimenting today I also figured out that I have other options which work just as well for me as ASIO4ALL used to so I don't need a solution to this anymore. If you want me to test anything out though I'd be happy to.
 

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e9925248

New member
As far as combinations go, I'm certain that stops are actually changing. See the attached video. I start with nothing, call 000, then 003 then 10+ and -1 several times. I do this via touchscreen in this video. This is the same behavior that I have experienced in all three revisions that I've tested today.
There is a bug in GO on WIndows, which causes this behavour - GO under Linux (which is my plattform) behaves correctly. I'll look into this.

I tried revision 1088 with ASIO4ALL and experienced the same problem. In experimenting today I also figured out that I have other options which work just as well for me as ASIO4ALL used to so I don't need a solution to this anymore. If you want me to test anything out though I'd be happy to.

Between r1025 and r1088, I didn't spot any ASIO related change, which could cause this. As far as I know, Panos uses ASIO4ALL and he tried r1088 too, but remember no such problem report.
 

wehtam721

New member
I'm guessing the ASIO problem is most likely local to my machine and, like I mentioned before, I am able to use the new revisions without a problem using a different output which works just as well as the ASIO4ALL did so don't worry too much about that problem. I'm not concerned about it. If anyone else runs into trouble, however, feel free to let me know and I'd be happy to help troubleshoot it if I can.
 

L.Palo

New member
Hi!

Now I've put together a short screencast about configuring multi channel audio output in GrandOrgue. It's available at http://youtu.be/o5idBBIx0GM.

I really recommend testing this feature if you can! It sounds great! One use case that immediately comes to mind is to put a positif (like that in jeux d'orgues 2) that's really a ruckpositif to output the audio to the rear speakers instead of the front. It's really an eye (or rather ear) opener. There are many more possibilities for using this feature too so be sure to check it out!

P.S. I've got a cold so my voice is perhaps not in the best shape on this screencast.

Kind regards

Lars P
 

e9925248

New member
It can do much more:
You can even mix audio groups with different volumes, eg. to hear a rank on multiple speakers. You can even route specifc pipes in a different way (eg. all low pipes to a bass channel in addition to the normal channel).

The only restriction is, that GO only supports multi channel setups (on sound card entry with any number of channels).

PS: Regarding your suggestion the mailing list:
You can select multiple changable entries (in a plattform dependend way) and change them at once.
 

L.Palo

New member
Well, yes it can. This was just a short example of how to use the feature. I can do another more elaborate later. After your posting I tested creating two new audio groups (Left only and Right only). Then I under channel 1 added Left only - left and under channel 3 Left only - right, equally for channel 2 and 4 I added the Right only left and right. What this does is that if I in the organ settings set a rank (or pipe) to use Left only group it will play on the front left and the rear left speakers or if I instead select the Right only group for a rank/pipe it will play the sound from the front and rear right speakers... I does sound cool, and for modelling those organs that are divided on different balconies (to the left and right) it might even has a realistic usage!

But yes, one should perhaps have shown how to create an All speakers group that would have had it's left on both channel 1 and 3 and right on channel 2 and 4 so that a rank would play on all speakers if that group was chosen. I'll contemplate on creating a follow up screencast showing more options.

So, one can change multiple selected ranks/pipes (provided they all have, or will get when apply is pushed, the same settings and sample loading options). That's great, but my suggestion goes further than that (besides that it would be a much neater way to solve the problem). It's about creating logic from how a real organ works with its divisions on different windchests and also have another motivation to why different windchests should be modelled in the odf. Think about it, please!

Kind regards

Lars P
 
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