Hello,
I was thinking to buy an Osmose and today I had the opportunity to spend a whole hour by myself playing one in a shop in Milan. Of course it’s been an amazing experience that reinforced my will to buy one.
But as I will need to use it a lot with software instruments, even after watching many videos and reading many sources I’d like to ask a couple of questions:
1 - is it possible to map the “Z” values (first part of the key vertical travel) to a parameter of a soft instrument? I mean, in which shape will the O. send those data to the external world? As a CC? If yes, a specific number or it’s mappable? As an MPE data (one channel per note) or a normal midi one (if yes, how?) ?
2 - In a video I’ve seen using a sustain pedal as a sostenuto but the guy in the video (Josh, I think) talks about a “continuous” pedal: will a norma pedal switch will work in that way?
Thank you.
Hi! Here the Osmose manual that answers most of your questions: Dropbox
1: Yes, it is CC74 in MPE mode and aftertouch in legacy keyboard mode (p. 37) but this can be changed (p. 38)
2: Yes, both on/off and continuous pedals are supported, by default they are mapped to sustain and macro (p. 5) but that can again be changed (p. 10, 39)
Hi NothanUber and thanks for your reply and for the manual in pdf.
At p. 37 do you mean in the MPE settings?
Yes, page 37 describes the four preset modes that cover many usage scenarios (e.g. CC74 is the default CC for timbre changes in MPE): MPE, classic keyboard, poly aftertouch and multi-channel. Then p 38 describes how to set up your own mapping if those don’t fit your needs.
OK, let’s see if I got it.
If the SW instrument is MPE enabled, using the MPE should be the best bet.
But if the SW instrument is NON MPE enabled, to be able to use the pressure data I will have to follow what’s written in the multi-channel section so I will have to setup as many instances of the same instrument as the poliphony I want and assign a different midi channel to each one of them: is that right?
Yes, if the synth is MPE capable then MPE would be the best choice. If not then you have the option to either set the Osmose to keyboard mode or poly aftertouch mode, so it will send all information on channel 1 and use channel or poly aftertouch to encode pressure information (and of course velocity), which many legacy synths can cope with.
Or you would have to start many instances of the same synth, each listening to another midi channel and best use the voice per channel mode (or MPE mode if you map the CCs accordingly) of Osmose.
If you have Bitwig, this has a mode that does that automatically for you. Or there are third party solutions like MPEfy – JB Audio
Or you can manually set this up with pretty much any multi channel aware DAW.
Thank you again for your help.
I’m on Ableton so I will have a look around for some M4L device or any other trick.
It would be nice and useful (IMHO) if the developers would introduce a sort of a “free” mode where you can choose what to send and how or, at least, in the classic and the poly settings, give us the ability to choose for “Z” to send velocity or key pressure, even in a mono channel setup.
That is already possible and what I meant with “Then p 38 describes how to set up your own mapping if those don’t fit your needs.”
MPEfy should work in Live as plugin I guess - but I’m not a Live expert, perhaps there is an easier/cheaper way…
I thought that the “adjust menu” (p. 38) was a sub menu of the “config menu” (p. 37).
Instead, if I got it, in the config menu there are preconfigured settings, while the adjust menu is the one I called “free”: right?
“fake MPE” workarounds (leveraging many instances of your non-MPR synth, with tracks set to separate channels) do work in Ableton, but they do require a ton of channels. You can group and hide them, but this won’t help if you’re on Live Lite or Intro, with their extremely limited number of tracks.
Max For Live can help configure those tracks, but it can’t bypass the need for them.
You might have some luck using the “MPE Control” device to flatten an MPE signal down to single channel, though. I haven’t tried this, but that’s sort of what it’s there for, and might prove the better solution.
small correction to above.
first part of travel in MPE is sent as channel aftertouch. (aka pressure)
second part of travel is sent as CC74 (aka timbre/slide)
as for using non-mpe synths, sure as others have mentioned above. its possible.
its possible, but frankly , it gets tedious very quick, and often consume a LOT of resources (cpu/memory) using multiple instances of plugins.
so yeah, if you have to use something without multi-channel/mpe support its possible, but its not much fun - Id look for an alternative that has MPE support 
in the past it was really common to use these workarounds, as there weren’t so many plugins with MPE /multi channel support, but thankfully that has changed.
so yeah… what you are requesting is possible… in practice, id be surprised if you actually use it, unless you have a rather specific use-case.
–
one last point… about MPE plugins etc.
most MPE controllers use Y as a different axis, one that is independently controlled to Z, also Y is often bipolar.
this is not the case with the Osmose (its an aftertouch on Z)
this means many plugin presets aren’t really designed to be used as the osmose uses Y.
they will work, but they aren’t as intended by the sound designer.
so you will likely want to ‘adjust’ to your taste/needs.
note: expressive e have been working with some plugin devs to create some presets tailored to the Osmose.