acrawnsley Posted July 22 Share Posted July 22 I have just picked up Halion 5.1 in Steinberg's 5.1 update 50% off sale - and I'm looking at integrating this into my current MIDI setup to use with OM. Currently, the majority of my VI sound sets are for key-switch based VIs (VSL, Kontakt etc) and these are all driven by OMN articulations linked to key switches in their sound-sets. I have found this to work very well and efficiently when composing with these VIs and also as a good way of experimenting with articulation mapping directly in OM. The convenience of this approach is one of the major strengths of initial compositional drafting in OM. I'm not particularly concerned with final score output so articulations for my needs are about practical results in audio output which I then render to sound files. OM scores are just one more tool to this end rather than an end in themselves, so format issues are not relevant to my needs (which they might be to other users) and so articulations in OMN forms are about sound file and sample control rather than score markings. I have played around with a variety of soft synths that don't work with key switches and not been happy with how these integrate into my OM workflow - and so far have mainly been using them separately from my OM-driven workflow by combining OM-created MIDI files in a DAW (Reaper). Ideally I'd like to be able to work in a more unified way with my scripts driving VIs with sampler/synth sound sources also driven from scripting rather than overdubbed later in Reaper. Halion 7.1 looks like this will fit the bill given its extensive multi-timbral MIDI options. One option that I'm looking at is to replicate a workflow that I used in the 1990s when working with 'pure' MIDI sequencing driving hardware MIDI rack devices such as romplers and this has a certain appeal for a workflow in OM along with sample library VIs. However, since key switching is not really the optimum way to work with Halion, I'm looking for other possibilities. Program changes are one possible option and I'm aware that this is something that can be easily set up in a sound-set, even though I have not yet really used this option for my other VIs - but this may also not be the optimum way to work with software as flexible as Halion. My most likely usage scenario is to have both small sample groups mapped into programs on a MIDI port/channel in Halion with larger audio files in other Halion programs on other ports/channels for overlaying re-synthesised/granulated processing of material alongside the VI outputs. I'd like to be able to trigger such material inside the OM script with a high degree of control rhythmically and to enable intricate and cohesive control over placement with the OMN forms in those scripts. I'm wondering whether anyone has successfully used Halion as a multi-timbral instrument driven by an OM sound set - and if so, whether you could share any useful information about how to create a soundset for Halion and what might be helpful to think about when putting an initial version together? Happy to share results as and when there is something to share myself! bw Andrew RST 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephane Boussuge Posted July 23 Share Posted July 23 Designing sound sets and instruments sets – Working with VI plugins with Opusmodus (level 2) - Composer Workshop WWW.COMPOSERWORKSHOP.COM <span>This level 2 course focuses on designing sound sets and working with VI plugins in Opusmodus. It is intended for users who already have some experience with Opusmodus and want to learn new techniques for driving virtual instruments plugins directly from Opusmodus, managing the playback, articulations and controllers to enhance their composition workflow and output sound... OM works fantastically well with sound sets and controllers, program changes etc... I'm using it every day to drive a very big amount of plugins of any types, I don't have Halion but I'm sure it is not a problem. Here you can find my course on sound sets design. opmo and RST 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrawnsley Posted July 26 Author Share Posted July 26 Stephane - thanks for the response. You really help to keep this forum active! I already have your sound sets course: I subscribed to most of your courses when I first got an OM license as it seemed the best way to get started. Those courses have helped enormously - especially the series of five advanced ones and I return to them to keep learning more. In addition to being very practical, they are also a constant source of ideas for 'thinking in OM' - so thank you for all of this. The sound-set course was very helpful when I was first setting up my OM-MIDI system and I think I've mastered most of these concepts now. What I haven't used as much is the CC side of sound-sets, outside CC1, 7 and 11 - and I think I just need to spend some more time with Halion to look at the possibilities of CC mapping and then setting up a sound-set to manage CCs directly from OM. I have already come up with a really useful way of using add-text-attributes to create non-sticky articulation into scripts to trigger changes of VIs directly from OM that are not typically used in musical scores - but all of those are used to drive VIs that use key switches but where those key switches do something other than triggering an articulation change: a good example is in triggering different round-robin behaviours that would make no sense in a musical score but has immediate aural effects - and I think that this will work well for other sample-based VIs - but my initial question arose because I could not see an obvious way of doing this when the VI does not use key switching as a main trigger, as Halion does not. I'll have a look at some of the other default OM sound-sets for other ideas as well. bw Andrew RST, Stephane Boussuge and opmo 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephane Boussuge Posted August 31 Share Posted August 31 you can define controllers and controllers name in soundsets definition and use them in place of key switch to send informations to your VI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrawnsley Posted August 31 Author Share Posted August 31 Thanks, Stephane. I have started to do this. I have a few Spitfire Audio VIs and prefer using Spitfire's UACC protocol for them as it simplifies articulation switching by standardising the articulation switches across all their instruments. This uses CCs and I now use them instead of keyswitches in those sound-sets. Building other sound-sets on the same basis should be straightforward for VIs that don't use key switching at all. RST 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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