VST version of Harmony Navigator.

Making HN a VSTfx plug sending midi to some VSTi would be a nice way of integrating HN with your DAW/sequencer. Although not all DAWs have the flexible midi routing required AFAIK.

I think in all the main DAWs you can route midi in a simple way.

VST and\or AU would be much better in my opinion.I had to go through 2-3 days of troubles to set up IAC and environement in Logic9 wich I never had to worked with before.Videos for setup are incomplete,there should be one for each DAW.But we would'nt need videos if we had VST and\or AU.

We see the point, but there are certain constraints involved with VST/AU plugins. They would have to be drastically reduced in functionality:

- Just palettes, no progressions, no songs, no harmonizer

- Requires a built-in audio synth, as most DAW do not process MIDI output of VST/AU units (= fixed sound presets)

- Problems rendering accompaniments/figures due to that (plain chords only)

- Limited GUI possibilities (no keyboard, copy/cut/paste, etc)

The VST/AU platform was designed to link audio processing units to a DAW. These units often resemble hardware-like user interfaces with knobs and sliders only. A full featured graphical user interface is not supported.

The question is whether such a unit would be even remotely as helpful as the standalone application is now when it comes to prototyping a song, which is the actual purpose of HN.

If you have any suggestions or ideas, we would much appreciate your input.

I just received another plea today from a user who wishes he could use HN as a VST/AU unit.

I must be missing something really important, as I still don't get the idea what a VST HN is supposed to be good for. Perhaps it's just the warm fuzzy feeling of having all one's plugins nicely loaded side by side.

As Christian pointed out, the things one could do with a HN plugin would be extremely limited: Palette clicking in chords-only mode and a small progression notepad/editor.

Although it is possible to playback a progression in synch with the transport, it still can't do anything beyond driving MIDI to the single track it was loaded into (if the DAW supports this). It has no means to control what's going on on the other tracks.

Is that really what you want to do? I mean, we could do that, if there was enough demand for it. I just want to understand what the intended workflow is.

Awesome idea. Heck, I'd like to see a VST of Synfire. No more Rewire! No more virtual MIDI cables! No separate projects! You wouldn't need to have a separate file for HN and Synfire--that data would be stored with your DAW project. But of course, you should still have the option to save the Synfire or HN project as a separate file if you need to.

Consider NI's Maschine. Its a sequencer, and it runs as a VST and a standalone app. Running Maschine as a VST has many advantages, including not having to fiddle with Rewire, virtual MIDI cables, and separate projects.

We see the point, but there are certain constraints involved with VST/AU plugins. They would have to be drastically reduced in functionality:

- Just palettes, no progressions, no songs, no harmonizer

I do not see why you would need to limit it like this. On some level, HN and Synfire are sequencers; if Maschine and other plugins can do it, then HN and Synfire should be able to as well.

- Requires a built-in audio synth, as most DAW do not process MIDI output of VST/AU units (= fixed sound presets)

I think there are issues with AU, but most Mac users work around that, I think. I do not think you would need a built-in audio synth at all.

- Problems rendering accompaniments/figures due to that (plain chords only)

- Limited GUI possibilities (no keyboard, copy/cut/paste, etc)

Most hosts allow an option for keystrokes to pass-through to VSTs. I know Ableton and Reaper do.

The VST/AU platform was designed to link audio processing units to a DAW. These units often resemble hardware-like user interfaces with knobs and sliders only. A full featured graphical user interface is not supported.

Not a problem. See Maschine, above.

The question is whether such a unit would be even remotely as helpful as the standalone application is now when it comes to prototyping a song, which is the actual purpose of HN.

I think the ability to not have to fiddle with Rewire, virtual MIDI cables, and separate projects would make it worth it.

I think this is a very interesting and good idea to explore. There may of course be other issues, but again, this might be very cool. :)

Although it is possible to playback a progression in synch with the transport, it still can't do anything beyond driving MIDI to the single track it was loaded into (if the DAW supports this). It has no means to control what's going on on the other tracks.

?

I think--if Synfire or HN were a VST--there should be an easy way to map Synfire instruments to DAW tracks in a similar manner as we do currently--with direct addressing or devices.

[quote]I think--if Synfire or HN were a VST--there should be an easy way to map Synfire instruments to DAW tracks in a similar manner as we do currently--with direct addressing or devices.

The VST platform is strictly hierarchical, i.e. the host tells the VST what to do and it doesn't work the other way round. A VST plugin can not control anything outside itself. It can receive and send audio and MIDI to/from the host, only if the host decides to do so.

There is no way a VST could tell the host to route some of its MIDI to a particular track, let alone to add/remove a track and load/unload a synth. I wish it was different.

If we went for the direct addressing scheme, we would end up with exactly the same solution we have now.

BTW: Doesn't Maschine load its own synths/samples? I didn't get around to have a look, but it being a groovebox, I would assume it has full control over the sounds it uses (that is: it outputs audio streams).

There is no way a VST could tell the host to route some of its MIDI to a particular track, let alone to add/remove a track and load/unload a synth. I wish it was different.

If we went for the direct addressing scheme, we would end up with exactly the same solution we have now.

Maschine can output MIDI or audio quite easily whilst running as a VST. Same with Kore.

Maybe you guys could try out the demo.

Again, Synfire and HN are, on some level, fancy MIDI sequencers. (Not to minimize their awesomeness.) So, I see no inherent problem running them as VSTs. For each instance, you would be limited to probably sixteen channels of MIDI out, but that would still be very much worth it.

BTW: Doesn't Maschine load its own synths/samples? I didn't get around to have a look, but it being a groovebox, I would assume it has full control over the sounds it uses (that is: it outputs audio streams).

Yes, that's one way you can use Maschine. HOWEVER, You can even setup Maschine as a sequencer within a sequencer. All (or some) of Machine's sound's can be set to "MIDI Out", and they can drive VSTs on other DAW tracks. I imagine a Synfire/HN implementation would work the same way.

The midi output from a VST is still capable of 16 channels so it's possible to route the midi to 16 separate tracks (depending on the capabilities of the DAW). I think that 16 instruments is more than enough for HN projects.

In fact I was using HN2 yesterday and had a major struggle to get the instrument assignment to work as I wanted to. Most things in HN2 you can work out without reading the manual - but assigning instruments via midi ports is not intuitive. Yes, I should and I will read the manual and hopefully get on top of it...

To be clear I don't use General Midi instruments (I have only SoundBlaster Audigy) - do anybody really use GM nowadays? Can you buy them? NI put Bandstand on the scrap yard.

I'm working with VSTi exclusively. I'm think of getting NI Kore to be able to create my own GM banks based on my VSTi's.

The other obvious way of solving the VST problem is to make HN into a VST host...

General MIDI is a very basic standard only to get started quickly with sound selection over MIDI. In one or another way, we will certainly improve VST/AU support. Be it direct hosting, or bridging over the network.

Music Prototyping means things are changed rapidly and radically within minutes: Entirely different instrumentations, harmonic ideas, song structures and even musical styles. DAWs are not good at that. Their timeline and content is static. Once a couple tracks are glued together, switching to a new idea gets cumbersome. Therefore I don't like the idea that the user is forced to fiddle with a separate VST/AU per track manually in order to get a result. Theses units should respond to a common control protocol, so the host or another application could configure them programmatically (not just maintain their current state).

I envision a sound server. Some remote computer or 19" rack mount device in the LAN that hosts half a million sounds in a database, 8TB of sample data, all under control of Synfire Pro. You would turn that device on in the morning and forget about it the rest of the day. It might even sit in a separate room :D

In conjunction with an instrumentation knowledge base and a good phrase library, one could fire up the draft for a movie soundtrack in less than an hour, probably.

I envision a sound server. Some remote computer or 19" rack mount device in the LAN that hosts half a million sounds in a database, 8TB of sample data, all under control of Synfire Pro. You would turn that device on in the morning and forget about it the rest of the day. It might even sit in a separate room :D

That's not a million miles from what NI Kore 2 is supposed to be....

Therefore I don't like the idea that the user is forced to fiddle with a separate VST/AU per track manually in order to get a result. Theses units should respond to a common control protocol, so the host or another application could configure them programmatically (not just maintain their current state).

I like the idea...The problem is that a VST host with dynamic allocation of instruments doesn't exists... Although NI Kore can run in stand alone mode and you can set up "GM" banks I don't think you can remotely via midi add instruments.

So until you add this kind of capabilities into HN the users are left with a pretty fiddly situation...

I envision that HN becomes a VST host together with some kind of category based patch browsing (similar to Kore).