Fred's Lab Manatee TouchOSC Bidirectional Editor v4.0

via synth_nyc

NB: This Bank B has entirely been created using the editor.

This is my favorite patch in that bank. It illustrates what the Manatee can do like a warm FM full body pad (that you can do on a DX synth) but with an aggressive attack and subtle spectral decay and movement that only the Manatee can do AFAIK.

Thanks to Fred’s Lab for providing me with the MIDI NRPN (and CC) specifications.

GENERIC FEATURES:
- Display parameter Name and Value
- Double click a slider or button to reset it to a default value
- MIDI data rate efficient: only sends a MIDI message if the parameter value is incremented or decremented by 1

SPECIFIC FEATURES (FW v1.06d):
- 1 Editor Page for the Part Main parameters
- 1 Editor Page for the Part Auxiliary parameters
- 1 Editor Page for the Multi parameters
- 1 Editor Page for the System parameters
- All 162 Part + 27 Multi + 48 System parameters implemented in the editor using NRPN. Part parameters are bidirectional using NRPN and SYSEX.
- MIDI Channel selection slider
- Bank (change) + Program (change) selection slider + buttons
- Buffer Init button using SYSEX

WORKFLOW 1 EDITING FROM PATCH (starting at 00:05 in the video above):
- Select a Bank & Program
- Go to the synth, press and hold the 1 button (the synth must be in Part mode)
- Start editing (the loaded patch) on the editor (the Patch is edited in the synth buffer)
- Go to the synth, press and hold the 1 button to record it in your DAW / SYSEX librarian; or save it manually in the synth

WORKFLOW 2 EDITING FROM SCRATCH (starting at 01:18 in the video above):
- Press Buffer Init to send an Init Patch to the synth
- Start editing (the init patch) on the editor (the Patch is edited in the synth buffer)
- Go to the synth, press and hold the 1 button to record it in your DAW / SYSEX librarian; or save it manually in the synth

FEATURE REQUESTS / BUG FIXES:
- Go to the video Description on Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/1110538778

LIMITATIONS:
- Go to the video Description on Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/1110538778

MOTIVATION:
- Consistent User Experience (no skeuomorphism): Color coding of synth blocks (VCO1 in blue, VCO2 in green, VCF in orange, etc..) which makes it extremely efficient and consistent across synths (rather than using different synth UI or dedicated editors).
- No 'Shift' Button: All parameters are laid out in one page if possible, on the editors.
- Parameter Name and Value: To precisely compare parameter values across synth blocks.
- Better Workflow: If possible, identical synth features are laid out one below each other or in the same order (if one next to another) e.g. VCO 1 and 2 Waves or ADSR VCF and VCA envelops enabling a faster editing / comparing workflow.
- WYSIWYH: What You See Is What You Hear. It’s utmost important that when a value is incremented / decremented by 1 (or next / previous value on a list) on the editor, the editor display changes the parameter value accordingly, so is the edited synth UI (if available and / or in the SYSEX patch if the synth has no UI) and the synth sound changes by this 1 increment / decrement. This is far from trivial, there are often many rounding issues probably due to various / different low level CPU calculations, that needs to be compensated in the editor code.
- Centralized Control: For home studios centralized around one Master Keyboard and all synths being desktop / rack.
- Physical Accessibility: All synths are editable at anytime right in front on the computer screen without having to reach up / down / left / right, etc...
- DAW Recording: It's very easy to integrate TouchOSC in a DAW if you want to record live synth parameter adjustments (and then play them back at will of course); compared to recording various synth parameters from their knobs / UI / dedicated editors.
- TouchOSC: OS agnostic; it runs on MacOS, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS and offers LUA 5.1 support with specific scripting extensions (https://hexler.net/touchosc/manual/script)

EDITOR QUESTIONS?
- NB: The editor is a TouchOSC template (.tosc file), it requires a TouchOSC license (https://hexler.net/touchosc)
- If Fred’s Lab or anyone has some questions, please contact me via my website:
https://synthnyc.com
- Not for sale / no licensing at this point