Transport Metronome

mattmcd

I am very pleased with the Transport capabilities being added to Mobius! Any thoughts on how (and how soon) the Metronome should work? I see it as a check-box in the Globals configuration but I also see the documentation (https://mobiuslooper.com/docs/transport/) saying "While not available yet...". I've been struggling with some synchronization when using a long-lived DAW (Ableton) session where I change the DAW tempo a few times and had my "master track" set to host sync.. I personally don't actually care about synchronizing w/ the host/DAW's transport as Mobius is the center of my workflow, but without a metronome, it's difficult to use the Mobius transport (I've always use the DAW transport to "drive" Mobius.. now I'd like to invert that). I was wondering how you (Jeff) are thinking the metronome might work? You mentioned it would play a short sample. How were you thinking to "route" that? would it be a dedicated audio track? something new and first-class? I was wondering it sending a series of MIDI note-ons (perhaps with a difference for the first beat and all subsequent beats) might be an interesting approach (then DAW type users could map that to their favorite plugin to render and route the pulses)? or to have a dynamic MIDI track that can spit out note-ons?

tl;dr - any ballpark idea when the metronome will be functional? and how to control the routing of the audio or MIDI it may generate?

jeff

It's on hold right now, first for the new binding windows and now for a redesign of the way project exports work and allowing sessions to save content without exporting a project. After that I'm flexible on priorities, this seems like a good one that fits well with other things.

I'm thinking this would work two ways, configurable of course. The first would be sample mode which works the way most applications with a metronome work. There is a set of samples, maybe just two (beat 1 and the other beats) and these get triggered automatically as the metronome advances. Internally they would be similar to what are now called Samples, but would be managed differently and more tightly integrated. There would be the usual options like two measures of "count in beats" then silence, or sounding continuously whenever the transport is running. Once that's working, then the ability to upload custom samples so you could change the beat noises.

The other mode would be MIDI mode, where it isn't triggering samples, but rather sending out MIDI notes on each beat, then you could hook up a drum machine or plugin of your choice and use that to generate the sounds.

A final option would be a variant of the second. where instead of a simple 4 on the floor pattern you could upload the MIDI sequence of your choice and this gets tempo scaled to the transport tempo so the metronome can be any sequence, have swing, or whatever. You can get pretty close to that now by having midi tracks follow an audio track, but midi tracks can't follow the transport right now.

jeff

"but without a metronome, it's difficult to use the Mobius transport"

It's not exactly a metronome, but the Transport is now where generating MIDI clocks live. Before MIDI clocks had to be generated by an audio track configured with SyncMode=Out.

It takes a few steps, but if you connect a drum machine playing a one bar kick pattern on every beat, then enable MIDI Clocks in the Transport, The drum machine starts and stops with the Transport, and plays at the transport tempo. It will sound the same as any internal metronome I might build, it's just happening outside.

jeff

"You mentioned it would play a short sample. How were you thinking to "route" that? would it be a dedicated audio track? something new and first-class?"

Interesting question. I wasn't planning on that being a dedicated audio track, but it would need the same configuration for the output port. The metronome would commonly be expected in a headphone channel that is different from the main output channels.

But this does tie into my previous example about using an external drum machine as the metronome. An option could be that the metronome is not implemented with internal samples, but by being in control over one of the tracks. So you load up a MIDI sequence into a track, tell the Transport to use that track as it's metronome, and now the track starts, stops, and tempo scales along with the Transport automatically. The track would probably be protected in some way so you couldn't go over there and start doing Unrounded Multiply and messing up the metronome. But you could allow it to be muted, or switch to different metronome patterns using NextLoop.

Doing that with MIDI tracks is easy, audio tracks are harder, there's the pitch-change-on-rate-scaling problem, and they're a little harder to move around to different "song positions".

mattmcd

All of your replies make a ton of sense and I actually wasn't aware of the "You can get pretty close to that now by having midi tracks follow an audio track". If I understand that correctly, I suppose you could just make a "blank" audio track that is sync'd to the internal transport and once it finishes recording a adaping-to-loop-length MIDI track could send the precise/desired MIDI notes to the DAW for metronome "rendering".

FWIW - right now I'm personally doing the opposite - I have the DAW (in my case Ableton Live) generating the transport clock (I tap tempo into ableton) and a DAW-side MIDI track that generates the metronome audio which I send into a placeholder "metronome" track in mobius. This works fine, but it burns a track and I've had some unexplainable synchronization issues, particularly when I change the DAW tempo. Feels more natural to me to have mobius be the "clock" and I personally don't care about the DAW's tempo as Mobius is the real "clock" at the center of my workflow.

1 more thought: Ableton Live has a feature where when you Tap the tempo 3-4 times, it'll automagically start the transport. If/when mobius gets a metronome, it might be a nice feature to tap tap tap and then you hear the metronome and can start recording (vs having to do a dedicated "start transport" after tapping in the tempo)

jeff

"If I understand that correctly, I suppose you could just make a "blank" audio track that is sync'd to the internal transport and once it finishes recording a adaping-to-loop-length MIDI track could send the precise/desired MIDI notes to the DAW for metronome "rendering"."

Hmm, yes, it's kinda Rube Goldberg but it just might work.

Load a sequence into a midi track and fiddle with the MIDI device configuration until
it makes the noises you want it to make when it plays.
Go to the session editor, and for the track that contains the metronome sequence, in the
Follow section, set Leader Type to Track Number, and for Leader Track enter the number of this
"metronome master" track.
Check the boxes for Follow Record and Follow Record End.
Select the track that will be this Metronome Master track and set its Sync Source to Transport and Sync Unit to Bar
Save the Session
Start the Transport.
Record one bar in the Metronome Master track.
Profit?

jeff

"1 more thought: Ableton Live has a feature where when you Tap the tempo 3-4 times, it'll automagically start the transport. If/when mobius gets a metronome, it might be a nice feature to tap tap tap and then you hear the metronome and can start recording (vs having to do a dedicated "start transport" after tapping in the tempo)"

Sure I can add something like transportAutoStartTaps. When zero it won't auto start, when set to 3 it waits for 3 taps and averages them, when 1 it.....what is the tempo of 1 hand clapping?