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Here’s a little video walking you through the new feature : CLIP CLOUD.

This shared online Clip Library (available in version 1.04 – check the downloads page) allows you to store/download Clip files in a community library, just like the Online Modules library within Modul8, but for generative Clips.

Note: Media files are not uploaded, so keep it generative.

Clip Cloud is available to all users, however only registered users of GENER8 can upload content.

If you wish to get full access why not register your copy of GENER8 > it helps to support development & server fees etc.

As the format of the GENER8 Launchpad follows the style of Ableton’s session view, it only seemed logical that attaching an Ableton MIDI controller to would make perfect sense, and for the most part, it has.

Novation’s Launchpad controller, a simple and reasonably inexpensive device provides us with a 64 pad grid along with some other navigational buttons. I have included support for the 1st 3 versions (Launchpad, Launchpad S, Launchpad Mini). Any users with any other versions please contact me if you’d like me to expand the range.

Launchpad shown here in Trigger Mode before I put in the Record Arming (pad-48) & Mode Select button (pad-8).

While we like the eternal ‘8’ theme in MODUL8, there are 10 layers (2 banks of 5) which means our Clip view does not quite fit onto a 64 pad device, and so I decided to go with a 2 page set-up which is navigated by the cursor keys enabling to flip between banks A & B. This leaves us with 3 columns. The far right column I utilised for function buttons, and the other 2 I’ve left free so you have 16 pads free for assigning to you own favourite midi mappings.

All mapping is done within the USER 2 mode, so your Novation can still be used with Ableton while running GENER8.

FUNCTIONS

KEY for notation: Pad numbers reference
(top left = pad-1) > (top right = pad-8)
(bottom left = pad-57) > (bottom right = pad-64)

– Works in ‘User 2’ mode.

– View A or B Groups (</>round buttons)

– Scroll pages (up/down round buttons)

– Works in three ‘modes’. Trigger/Select/Media (pad-8 to select mode)

1. Trigger Clips (Trigger mode – YELLOW)
2. Select or create clips & layers (Select mode – RED)
3. Select media from the Media Set. (Media mode – GREEN)

– Arm Timeline recording. Red = Armed (pad-48)

– Start/Stop Clock. Orange = Running (pad-56)

– Tap BPM (pad-64)

– Row trigger buttons will trigger rows in trigger mode.

 

MEDIA MODE

In media mode, the launchpad becomes a virtual media panel. The central 16 pads will light up indicating which media slots contain media. Press the row trigger buttons to change media pages. Access ’SP’ media by toggling bottom row trigger pad.

Support for the new ‘Media Sets’ is yet to be included.

If pads become unresponsive, or you need to refresh – press ‘User 2’ button.
: D

NOTE: GENER8 will check for midi controllers on start-up. If you forget to attach your controller first, open the Launchpad preferences and hit the RESET CONTROLLERS button:

I’ll be back with a video tutorial at some point…

A little tutorial covering the new ‘(at) Strobe’ module, which can be found in the online modules library.

In this tutorial I explain how to use the Stobe module and sync it up to LFO’s, MIDI clocks, and run strobe from sound triggers. Plus some other stuff.

This is not a GENER8 module, but will respond to LFO messages from GENER8’s. So if you are using GENER8, you won’t need the the other modules shown in this tutorial. An explanation on this can be found here.

One of the powerful but hidden delights of GENER8 is a sequencing method which can quickly produce small Clip sequences in a live situation: Follow Actions

So, here’s a short tutorial to help you master it.

Some salient points to remember:

• Each Clip can have its own ‘Follow Action‘.
• A Clip’s ‘Follow Action‘ will occur a set number of beats after that Clip has been triggered.
• There are a number of different types of ‘Follow Actions‘ which can be applied: Increment, Random, Other, etc.

Step 1 – Prepare your Clips

To do any kind of sequence of Clips, we’re going to need some Clips to sequence. So let’s get started:

1. Spark up Modul8, make sure you have a ‘New Project’ so things don’t get confusing.
2. Open up the GENER8 Launchpad and Editor modules (these are the core modules and you’ll need to run these together).
3. Once the Launchpad is ready, create yourself a few Clips on the 1st layer. To do this simply click on the preview panels on the empty Clip holders. NOTE: It’ll be useful for the sake of this tutorial to create your Clips in the same clip-slots as the image below.

 

Step 2 – Assign Media to your Clips

You can skip this step, but the final result will obviously be more effective with media!

1. Chuck some of your favorite media in your Media Panel. (select a few files from a Finder window and drag/drop them into the Media Panel)

2. Activate a GENER8 Clip.

3. Select a media for that Clip from the Media Panel.

4. Activate the next GENER8 Clip (make sure the Clip trigger has stopped flashing – a useful tip when you are assigning a lot of media’s is to turn off the quantize to speed the process up)

5. Select the next media for the second Clip. 🙂

6. And so on, repeat until all your Clips have media assigned to them.

Tip: You can also change the media assigned to a Clip in the Clip Inspector (top left – Trig pane). There is a value for ‘Media’ number there.

Step 3 – Create a Follow Actions

As I mentioned before, there are quite a few different types of Follow Actions, but first, we will have a play with the ‘Increment’ action.

1. Select the topmost Clip by clicking on the media preview of the Clip in the Launchpad (it doesn’t need to be active, you can do this on the sly during your performance.)  Selected Clips have an orange square around them.
2. Okay, the Clip Inspector will now be open on the top left of the Gener8 Launchpad, and will be displaying the properties of the selected clip. Select the ‘TRIG’ pane to view the Follow Actions settings.
3. Next, set the Follow Actions menu to ‘Increment’. You will see a further setting appear, we’ll leave this at the default setting of ‘1’ for now. Time for some explanations…

How Does a ‘Follow Action’ Work?

Okay, now we have a Follow Action in place (in the above instance it’s an ‘Increment’ action), the next time this Clip is triggered, it will send out a secondary trigger which will occur a set number of beats after the initial Clip is triggered. You have options for which Clip is triggered next, and how many beats will occur before the ‘follow trigger’ happens.

You can only:

• Trigger Clips in the same layer.
• Delay triggers by whole beats.

Everything else is pretty much game, but remember – changes to a Clip’s Follow Actions settings will not take effect until that Clip is re-triggered.

Step 4 – Let’s make a Follow Loop.

We have an Increment action on our 1st Clip, let’s see if we can make a simple sequence which works in a loo

1. Select Clip 2 and make a further ‘Increment’ action for this Clip, only this time let’s set the ‘INCR.’ value to ‘2’.

2. Now select Clip 4 and again make another ‘Increment’ action. This time we will set our ‘INCR.’ value to ‘-3′.

3. Re-trigger Clip 1 and sit back while your sequence plays…

So, how is this working?

Our 1st Clip has an increment value of 1, which means it will trigger the Clip ‘1’ space below it, which is ‘Clip 2′.

Clip 2 has an increment value of ‘2’, so it will trigger the Clip ‘2’ spaces below it: ‘Clip 4′.

Clip 4 has an increment value of ‘-3′, so it will trigger the Clip 3 spaces above it: ‘Clip 1′.

Clip 1 has an increment value of ‘1’, so…. are you getting the idea?

Positive incremental value trigger Clips below the current Clip. Negative incremental values trigger Clips above the current Clip. Zero values simply re-trigger the same Clip.

Play around with the settings.

The most enjoyable way to learn something is through play, so have a go at changing the values until you’re happy with how they behave.

• Change the ‘beats’ value to adjust the timing of the Follow Action.
• Change the style of Action to get familiar with the different results.
• Make sure you make some other pages to see how far this can go.

What are all these settings?

Okay, explanation time again. Here’s a little run through all the options.

• Increment – Triggers to a specific Clip by using a numeric value (positive = move down, negative = move up, zero = re-trigger).
• Random (All) – Triggers any Clip on the layer, on any page.
• Random (Page) – Triggers any Clip on the same page.
• Other (All) – Triggers any Clip on any page except itself.
• Other (Page) – Triggers any Clip on the same page except itself.

Here I explain the new LFO section and give examples of how to implement it within your performances. The video also delves deeper into the Filter module, and shows how to modify your filter parameters with signals from GENER8’s LFO generator.

An overview showcasing the some of many features in GENER8.

One of the things I get asked fairly regularly about is how to sync Gener8 to other audio applications (Ableton, Traktor, Logic, Reason, etc.) via MIDI clock. So I thought I’d put this simple tutorial together to explain the basics.

I don’t intend to get into the nitty gritty of producing MIDI clock signals from each and every DAW out there (there’s plenty of info on the web for that, or in your favourite software’s manual, which if you haven’t already read it cover to cover I suggest you do as you’ll be surprised by some key features that are hidden away in there). And I don’t want to delve too far into getting MIDI signals into MODUL8 itself either, but I will say a little bit:

MODUL8 receives MIDI through the IAC (Inter Application Communication) Driver, so make sure you are sending your MIDI clock signals to IAC.

Also, be sure to check the IAC driver is enabled before starting up MODUL8. You can access your system MIDI settings with the ‘Audio MIDI Setup’ OSX app.

So then, we’ll begin by assuming you can get a MIDI clock signal into MODUL8. Okay then, let’s get this going…

STEP 1

Open up MODUL8, and get your GENER8 modules running. You’ll need a minimum of the Launchpad and Editor modules. (In this tutorial, we’ll be using the 0.53 version of GENER8)

Do not open any BPM module, and if you have one running, close it! – You won’t need it while running GENER8, and it will likely clash and may cause it to bug out. GENER8 has its own clock signal, which can also be accessed by other modules (info here for developers).

STEP 2

Start your MIDI clock running in your Audio app, and output it to the IAC driver.

STEP 3

Now is the time to check if we are receiving a MIDI clock in GENER8.

The Launchpad module has its Clock section to the top right. If all is good and well, it should be looking something like this:

You’ll notice the ‘MIDI CLOCK’ button. This toggles between external MIDI clock and GENER8’s internal Timecode.

NOTE: ‘MIDI CLOCK’ button has been moved to the Preferences Dialogue – Click ‘PREFS’ to access.

Set the ‘MIDI CLOCK’ to the on position. Your clock section will now look like one of the following:

In this image, the Launchpad is listening for incoming MIDI clock signals, but cannot find any, and gives the ‘PAUSED’ message. If you see this message, double check you are sending your MIDI clock correctly, and if in doubt: Restart MODUL8.

In this image, the Launchpad has found a MIDI clock signal and tells us that its running at ‘BPM : 120.00′. If you see this, all is good. But we are still paused.

One more step…

STEP 4

A MIDI clock consists of 2 messages, the CLOCK message (which runs at 24 counts per beat), and the START/STOP message. So, although GENER8 is receiving a MIDI clock signal, it’s still waiting to be told when to Start.

Before you restart your DAW’s clock, now is a good time to check your Time Signature is correct.

The Time Signature of a piece of music is defined by the number of beats played in each bar. In most modern dance and western music this will likely be 4 beats per bar (Gener8’s default value), but if you happen to be performing to a Waltz you’ll want to adjust your ‘BAR BEATS’ value to ‘3’ (for 3/4 time).

Adjusting the Bar Beats value will also adjust your possible Quantize values too.

So, when you’re quite happy, restart the Clock in your audio app. Once this is done, GENER8’s clock should now look like this:

You may notice small fluctuations in the incoming BPM, but do not despair – GENER8 will even this out to give you a steady beat.

So, your performance should now be in perfect Sync with your audio app. Also note that any Clips using the Editors ‘Auto-Loop’ function will magically adjust to any changes made to the clock timing from your audio app. Good times. Lovely!

And while I’m at it, the ‘LINK MASTER’ option is to control Modul8’s Master Speed with the BPM. That’s this guy:-

So then people, get creative!