Grid Pro Manual - Gesture Slider
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| Grid Pro Manual |
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| Getting Started |
| The Basics |
Advanced Features
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| Optimizing Grid Pro |
One of the standard interface objects in GRID Pro is the Gesture Slider. In the first section of this manual, you interacted with the Gesture Slider in it's simplest manual mode, known as Manual Mode. However, the Gesture Slider is far more powerful than a regular slider. In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Gesture Slider to:
- Sync a parameter to a controller source, such as MIDI or audio analysis
- Adjust the range of values a slider will give off
- Record control data into a gesture and then use that data to drive the GS
- Copy, paste, save, load, and edit recorded gestures and more!
Contents |
Targeting and the Inspector
In order to modify a Gesture Slider using the slider inspector, first you will need to make it the target slider. To target a slider, simply click anywhere on the slider you wish to modify. Once targeted, the slider will switch from the default gray to one of four colors indicating the current slider mode and that the slider's properties can now be modified using the Slider Inspector located in the top right of the GRID Pro interface.
Clicking on the status bar along the bottom of the slider will let you target a slider without adjusting the value.
From the Slider Inspector, you can switch the targeted slider between it's four modes - manual, sync, record, and wave. Each mode is represented by a tab along the top of the inspector and to switch slider modes, simply click on the desired tab.
Manual Mode
When in Manual Mode, you can directly set the value of the Gesture Slider by clicking in the slider portion of the GS. Once clicked, the value of the slider will instantly jump to the value corresponding to the point in the slider area that you have clicked on. Holding down after the value has been set will cause the value of the GS to follow your mouse position until you release the mouse button.
Full screen scaling
A slider in GRID Pro will typically be between 200 and 300 pixels wide. While this is enough space to give feedback about the value of the slider, you may want more precision than 200 or 300 discreet points. To achieve more accuracy when setting slider values, the Gesture Slider can optionally allow you to use the entire width of the screen to control the value of any slider. Typically this will give you about 4 times more accuracy when setting slider values. To temporarily engage Full Screen scaling, hold shift when clicking on a slider.
When Full screen scaling is active, clicking on a slider will set the value of the slider to the point that you have clicked on. If you continue to hold down after the value is initially set, your mouse will jump to the relative horizontal position on the screen, going from left to right. For example, if your GS ranged from 0 to 100, and you clicked to set the value at 50, your mouse would jump to the middle of your screen. If in the same example you set the slider to 25, you would be 25% of your total screen space away from the left side of your screen.
Setting range handles
Each Gesture Slider comes with two handles for setting the high and low values for a slider. These envelope points limit the range of values that the slider can be set to. This is useful if you wish to prevent a slider from being set to certain values. Also, when used with Full screen scaling, you can get even greater accuracy within a desired range.
Sync Mode
When in sync mode, the value of a Gesture Slider will be tied to one of the many controllers in GRID Pro. This is a great way to extend your control of GRID Pro beyond the keyboard and mouse to other hardware devices like a digital turntable or a MIDI controller. Sync mode also lets you make a Gesture Slider audio responsive by syncing it to one of the three bands of audio analysis. For a full listing of controllers in GRID Pro visit the controllers of this manual. For now, all you need to know is that controllers are broken up into three catagories: analysis, hardware, and data.
How to sync a slider to a controller
Syncing a slider to a controller can be done in three easy steps:
- Target the slider by clicking on it.
- Click the sync tab on in the Slider Inspector (or use the keyboard short-cut cmd+2)
- Select the type of controller you wish to sync to (analysis, hardware, or data) then simply click on the controller you wish to sync to.
When switching into sync mode, a GS will automatically sync to the last controller used by that GS. The first time you activate sync mode, the slider will sync to the horizontal mouse positon.
Setting range handles
Each Gesture Slider comes with two handles for setting the high and low values for a slider. These envelope points limit the range of values that the slider can be set to. This is useful when you want to constrain the range of values for a slider. Range handles can be positioned by simply clicking on the handle and dragging it to the desired location. Range handles can be also be set by clicking on the slider while holding down a modifier key - option for setting the low handle, cmd for setting the high handle.
Here is an example of how this could be used with sync mode - if you wanted the audio analysis controller to drive the playback speed of a movie. The desired behavior would be "when the audio signal is loud, move the video forward, when the audio signal is low, stop". However, unless the range handles were used to limit the range of speed values to 0 to 4, the resulting behavior would be "when the audio signal is loud, video goes forward, when the audio signal is low, play in reverse."
Invert and Scale options
In addition to setting range handles for a slider, sync mode has two other options for (reshaping) control data to get a desired slider behavior. These options are Invert and Scale, which can be turned on (Yes) or off (No) in the slider inspector.
Invert - Flips the controller values before setting the value of the slider.
Let's look back to the example from the range handles. The desired behavior there was "when the audio signal is loud, move the video forward, when the audio signal is low, stop". But what if we wanted the opposite behavior, so that when the audio signal is high, the speed drops to 0. To get this effect, we would need to some how reverse, or invert, the values coming from the audio analysis.
Scale - By default, incoming controller values will automatically be scaled to fit the new range defined by the range handles of a particular slider. This scaling can be disabled in the slider inspector on a per slider basis. When scaling is turned off, values outside of the defined slider range will be clipped at the high and low range handles of the slider.
Using MIDI in sync mode
Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is a popular system designed to transmit information between electronic musical instruments such as a keyboard, drum pad, or a computer. There are three basic kinds of MIDI data that GRID Pro can use - velocity (notes), controllers (ie. sliders and knobs), and pitch-bend. You can read more about the MIDI standard in the hardware sources section of the manual.
Most MIDI devices have lots of notes and sliders and knobs. When syncing a Gesture Slider to a MIDI device, you need to specify which note / slider / knob on the MIDI device you want to sync to.
To sync a Gesture Slider to a MIDI device:
- Target the slider by clicking on it.
- Click the sync tab on in the Slider Inspector (or use the keyboard short-cut cmd+2)
- Select the hardware controller type, then click detect_midi - this will cause the Gesture Slider to go into a "listen mode" until MIDI data is received.
- Move the slider, turn the knob, or press the note you wish to sync to.
You can skip the second and third steps by hitting (cmd+0).
Recording & Playing Waves
Introduction to Gesture Recording
A gesture is a high resolution recording of control data over time that can be used to automate GRID Pro. Recorded waves can be copied, pasted, edited, saved, loaded, sped up or slowed down, quantized to the clock and more.
Recording a new gesture
To start recording, first target the slider you wish to automate. Then click on the record tab of the slider inspector (keyboard short-cut cmd+3). The targetted slider will immediately start recording data from the last controller you were synced to - by default this will be the horizontal mouse position.
When you are done recording, either press tab on your keyboard or click the done recording button in the inspector. Once you've stopped recording, the slider inspector will automatically switch to wave mode. You can also stop recording by manually switching to the wave panel of the slider inspector (keyboard short-cut cmd+4). View demonstration movie
Don't worry if you mess up at the beginning or end of your gesture, you'll be able to edit out mistakes later on.
As soon as you switch to wave mode, your recorded gesture will begin playing back immediately. By default, it will be quantized to one measure of the clock (at 60 BPM, this would be exactly 4 seconds)
Adjusting playback speed
The top left section of the slider inspector is dedicated to controlling the total amount of time it will take to play through the wave once. Speed can be set either in terms of the clock (quantized) or relative to the actual record time (unquantized).
In quantize mode, the speed controls let you set the number of repetitions per a number of measures. When using quantized mode, adjusting the BPM of the clock allows you to change the playback time of multiple waves without changing their relative rates.
Editing waves
Using the Wave Editor portion of the slider inspector, you can easily modify the contents of a wave. This is useful for cutting off extra data from a recorded gesture, scaling data to use the entire range of a slider, changing the phase offset of a wave, and a whole lot more. The Wave Editor records all changes for each slider, allowing for unlimited levels of undo (click the U button in the Slider Inspector or cmd + z) and redo (click the R in the Slider Inspector) in case you make a mistake while editing a wave.
The various operations that can be performed on a wave can be accessed using the different handles in the wave editor. Each set of handles performs a different set of operations. When using these tools, the Wave Inspector will show you a preview of what the wave will look like after the operation, but changes will not take effect until after you mouse up.
Move selection handle
The Move selection handle can be used to move the selected portion of the wave to another part of the wave, pushing other data out of the way (but not overwriting it). When holding down on the option key, the Move tool will become the Copy tool, which will duplicate your selection and allow you to place the new data elsewhere in the wave (this will overwrite other data).
This tool is useful for adjusting the phase of a wave, simply select the area from the desired new start point to the end of the wave, and then move the selected portion to the left until your selection inpoint is at the beginning of the wave.
Time stretch handles
The time stretch handles allow you to adjust the length of a selection. It can be used to compress or stretch a portion of a wave. When using the left Time stretch handle, the right side of the selection will be locked so that you are only stretching data in one direction, and vice versa. Because the Wave Editor is displaying a fixed length of time (defined by the Speed of the wave), when using the Time stretch tool the unselected portion will automatically adjust to account for the change in length of the selected portion.
The time stretch tool can be used to remove extra data at the beginning or end of a recorded wave. Simply use the Selection handles to select the range of "good" data, then use both the left and right Time stretch handles to expand the "good" data to fill up the entire length of the Wave Editor.
Data offset handle
The Data offset handle is used to add or subtract a fixed number from every value in the selected range. This will allow you to shift data in a range up or down, without changing the difference between any two data points.
Data scaling handle
The Data scaling handle is used to multiply or divide every value within the selection by the same number. This allows you to scale all the values in the selected range, such that low values stay low, while high values get higher.
The data offset and scaling handles can be used together to "normalize" a wave. First, use the offset tool so that the lowest data point is at the bottom of the wave. Next, use the scaling tool to increase the value of the highest data point until it is at the top of the wave inspector.
Setting range handles
Like the sync and manual slider modes, wave mode comes with two handles for setting the high and low values for a slider. These envelope points limit the range of values that the wave can be set to. This is useful when you want to constrain the range of values for a wave. While you can achieve the same functionality using the editing functions, it is often useful to "normalize" the wave and then use the range handles for controlling the range of values.
Unlike the sync and manual modes where the range handles are adjusted horizontally, when in wave mode the range handles are set vertically. This is because in wave mode, the slider values are displayed vertically. The range handles can be adjusted by clicking on the range handles and dragging up or down. Range handles can be also be set by clicking on the slider using a modifier key - option for setting the low handle, cmd for setting the high handle.
Invert and Scale options
Like with sync mode, in addition to setting range handles for a slider, wave mode has two other options for (reshaping) control data to get a desired slider behavior. These options are Invert and Scale, which can be turned on (Yes) or off (No) in the slider inspector.
Invert - Flips the controller values before setting the value of the slider. When turning the Invert option on, you will visually see the change reflected in the Wave Editor. The original wave can still be seen as an outline over the slider inspector.
Scale - By default, incoming controller values will automatically be scaled to fit the new range defined by the range handles of a particular slider. This scaling can be disabled in the slider inspector on a per slider basis. When scaling is turned off, values outside of the defined slider range will be clipped at the high and low range handles of the slider.
Saving, Copying, Pasting Waves
Once you've got a wave that you like, you may want to save the wave for later use, or immediately use it elsewhere in the your GRID Pro set.
Copying & Pasting Waves
- When in Wave mode, click on the Copy button (labelled C) in the Slider Inspector. Optionally, use the keyboard short-cut cmd + c.
- Target the slider you wish to paste a wave into.
- Switch the slider into wave mode (click on the wave tab in the Slider Inspector or keyboard short-cut cmd + 4). If the slider is already in wave mode, you can skip this step.
- Click on the Paste button (labelled V) in the Slider Inspector (keyboard short-cut cmd + v).
Saving Waves
- When in Wave mode, click on the Save button (labelled S) in the Slider Inspector.
- A text box will appear next to the save button. Click on this box and enter the name you wish to save the wave as.
- Press return. The wave will immediately be available in the Copy Waves panel directly below the Wave Editor.
Loading a saved wave
- Use the Copy Waves panel (located below the Wave Editor) to find the wave you wish to load. The Copy Waves panel will show you a visual representation of all the Waves in your saved_waves folder.
- Click on the wave you wish to copy to the clipboard.
- Follow the instructions for pasting a wave.
Removing saved waves
- In the Finder, open the GRID Pro >> saved_waves >> folder
- Move undesired waves out of the folder
The Clock
The clock let's you set a standard time signature that can be used to syncronize various events in GRID Pro that can be quantized to the clock. The length of a measure is determined by the BPM, which is displayed in the top left corner of GRID Pro. As the clock counts, it's position within the current measure is displayed to the right of the BPM display. When the "1" lights up, it is the beginning of the measure, the "2" will light up 1/4 of the way through the measure, the "3" at the half mark, and the "4" at the 75% mark. The clock position can be reset at any time by clicking the |<- button next to the position display.
Some examples of events in GRID Pro that can be syncronized to the clock are:
- Stepping through the a sequence
- Triggering movies in the media GRID
- Playback of waves in any Gesture Slider
Setting the BPM
The BPM can manually be set by the user two ways:
- Dialing it in - The quickest way to go to a specific BPM, if you know the number, is to click on the BPM number in the toolbar and drag up or down until you arrive at the desired BPM.
- Tap-tempo - When playing along with a musician, you can tap out a the quarter notes of a 4/4 clock tempo using the return key on your keyboard. The time between the quarter notes will be averaged, so the more times you tap, the more accurate the calculation. You will need to tap at least 4 times to generate the first BPM estimate. As an alternatively method to tapping the tempo, you can directly set the length of a measure by holding down on the ` key for the entire length of a measure, then releasing. The BPM will be calculated based on the length.
Converting from BPM to seconds - to convert the length of a measure in BPM to seconds, simply divide 240 by the BPM. For example, the length of one measure at 60 BPM is 4 seconds. To go from seconds to BPM, just divide 240 by the number of seconds, and out comes the BPM. So if a measure is 3 seconds long, it's also 80 BPM.
MIDI Slave mode
The GRID Pro clock can be slaved an external MIDI clock. When slaved, GRID Pro will automatically adjust the BPM value to be in sync with the external clock. It may take one or two measures to accurately lock on to the BPM value from the MIDI clock.
To activate MIDI Slave, first you'll need to set GRID Pro to listen for MIDI clock information. In the GRID Pro preferences under the MIDI tab will be list of available MIDI sources available to your computer. Some of these options may be CoreMIDI devices, meaning that they are virtual MIDI devices on your computer. For example, you may see an option that says "To GRID Pro 1". Make sure you have any external MIDI devices hooked up before launching GRID Pro.
Next you need to start sending the MIDI clock to GRID Pro from clock source. Most MIDI clock devices send a 'start' message when you start their clocks. GRID Pro is designed to listen for this message and automatically switch into slave mode when it is received. However, if your clock source does not support 'start' messages, you can manually activate slave mode by clicking on the slave button in the clock.
If you are using MIDI clock to syncronize GRID Pro with another program on your computer, you may need to open GRID Pro before opening and configuring the other application to send MIDI clock.