Sonic Pi and PureData together (update for Raspberry Pi)

[soxsa]

We got to discussing PureData in unrelated thread so I thought I’d break it out from General Purpose Drumkit

I’ve had a reasonable look. I love the UI, minimalist, low resource use (I’m guessing), annotations on the page. Looks like a world of experimental synthesis. But as for using it as an real instrument - not so sure. I got it working with SPi via MIDI but not OSC and that’s a difficulty for a software-based synth.

Pretty much every interesting patch I tried failed due to multiple layers of dependencies. Historically there seems to be pd-extended with lots of good features built in, but last maintained 2013, so that’s ruled out. I feel that working with PD would have the feel of early-days linux, chasing round to find libraries that work.

No disrespect to PD express or implied - just I’m not planning to use it in my setup. Currently SPI + VCV Rack looks like the dream team. Happy to be shown I’m wrong.

[holz]

Well i guess PD i easier to grasp but maybe not as powefull as VCV, i am talking about automatonism in PD

[soxsa]

I know and thank you, I will have a look at that next. All these things need a investment of time to really understand what they can do. I just know some things that are showstoppers. VCV Rack have got their eco-system of modules really tight.

I was recommended the Helm synth too, which also looks very good but - no standard build for Raspberry Pi as I could see.

EDIT spent a little time with Automatonism today, and it’s a great concept. Off the bat thoughts, I bet it’s capable of making some great sounds. But for a modular it’s a little basic for instance the envelope generator doesn’t have a a retrigger input, so it’s odd playing with a keyboard. Some ‘linux fun’ required to get it working on the Raspberry Pi. The concepts you’d learn on this would transfer over easily to Rack btw, just using the bog-standard modules.

[robin.newman]

Although it doesn’t show in the list, if you just download helm on a raspberry pi it automatically selects an arm based version for you which works.

[soxsa]

Ah yes it does! @robin.newman thank you! Now we’re talking - worked right from go, no linux fun. Looks like a really practial tool this one.

Pushing it a little cpu-wise on the Rpi but seems with the Helm window minimised it takes some pressure off. Gotta watch that core temp

While you’re here, do you know of an RtpMidi app that works on RPi without drama? Connecting with multiple usb-midi cables seems daft.

[robin.newman]

I had a play with rtpmidi some time ago, but I haven’t used it much. Seem to remember some problems trying to use it with RPi. Probably me, because I’m not really into Windows machines.

[soxsa]

Just to cap this off, as part of getting Sonic Pi working on the Raspberry Pi with the Dec 2020 update that uses pulseaudio Raspberry Pi, Pulse Audio Workaround with USB soundcard I got PureData working on it too. Previously neither the sound nor the MIDI input were working. I even found a decent synth patch that actually works.

For the sound, see the USB card workaround. For the MIDI it’s the aconnectgui utility.

In PureData, set it to use Jack for the Audio and ALSA for the Midi.

In aconnectgui (ALSA Sequencer) hit the ‘connector’ icon, and drag from Midi Through Port-0 to Pure Data Midi-in 1.

[soxsa]

See how much of this you can stand. Choir by SPi, Ipcress File noises by PD

[soxsa]

Old topic, but I’ve recently returned to look at Pure Data in more depth as another interesting thing to learn, and another string to the bow sound-wise.

Even though it works fine on Windows, and I do have spare Windows laptops around waiting to be repurposed,I really wanted to run it on Raspberry Pi. Because I think it’s nice not to have to have a big bloated OS, and expensive PC to run these audio apps. Same reason I don’t want a Range Rover to drive to the shops. I got the lowest spec 2Gb RPi 4 for this, but also a pisound card to make it more of a box unit, which is appealing.

Bit of a learning curve with Pure Data, as the information is distributed around quite a bit, but getting there. The trick seems to be leverage other people’s hard work so fixing up interesting sound generators in a useful shell. For instance, various people have kindly ported Mutable Instruments great-sounding (and open source) software Plaits, Clouds etc. Fantastic.

Here’s a few pics of the setup - there’s the pisound box, midi going in, a proper 1/4" cable coming out (imagine that!) and my Akai MidiMix, which is made for controlling DAWs but I got as it has the most knobs and faders per £. Then a pic of a Plaits patch I’ve been working up today, with all the controls working of the midi CCs.

So… this is going to be another sound source to trigger from my Sonic Pi hub, or alternatively play direct from a keyboard.