Tau with an Organelle?

Eigenharp
1

I recently picked up an Organelle and have been playing with Orac. I am a bit confused on how to setup MEC to take input from my Tau. I see that MEC ships with pico setups - Pd and Osc, but nothing for the Tau.

So first… is this even possible?

Do I need to create my own json based on the one in the MEC git repo? How exactly would I make that available as an option on MEC on Organelle?

Sorry if these are obvious questions, but the Organelle is new to me, and I am just learning how things work in Orac on it.

2

the pico setting should kind of work for the tau, the only issue is the key mapping will be completely wrong. (well by wrong, I mean they are just assigned in a linear fashion)

if you look at this example, you will see how I say im going to map the tau - but its wrong…

the reason is the current code, assumes the keys form a grid - but of course on the tau they do not… since the first two columns are different length to the last two.
currently the way around this is to use the ‘notes’ key, which allows you to specifically note each key individual to a real ‘note’ - this is a bit long winded, but you could probably write a quite python script to create it - according to how you want your keys mapped out.

in terms of mapping it available, you can just copy the pico one, and name it something else.
on the organelle - I simply interate thru the configs in that mec directory

3

Ok, I think I then know what to do.

I am however a bit unclear on how the ‘notes’ key is used in the json.

I see a “_notes” (with underscore) in the example, but not at “notes” - I assume you meant “_notes”. Am I correct?

Also I am unclear on the numeric relationship in the mapping. Could you unpack that a bit for me? I would normally identify a key by row and col, but in the pico example, I only see a linear arrangement and I am not clear on what that would be like on a tau.

This is my first time trying to use MEC with a Tau, so I am going to ask what are probably a lot of dumb questions. :slight_smile:

4

yeah, the underscore, simply denotes its ‘commented out’
the code looks for certain keys, like ‘notes’, ‘calculated’, ‘tau’
(so i changed it by added an underscored it wont find it)

so what we for the tau, is something like

            "tau" : {
                "mapping" : {
                    "notes": [
                        60
                        61,
                        62,
                        63
                    ]
                }
            },

i.e. we can get rid of rthe ‘calculate-wrong’ section, and insert the notes section
please note the comma after each value BUT not on the last one.

so what do these numbers mean?

ok, so at the hardware layer - the keys are numbered 1 to 84
iirc, from top right, going down, to bottom left - then the percussion keys

(so it has no concept of row/column - this is done in the keygroups in eigend)

now that layout has no musical meaning…

what we want to do is convert these into note numbers - basically like midi, where mid C=60. (*)

(so, what I can do on the alpha/pico is just calculated these, because i know the keys are layed out in a grid, but I cannot do that on the tau -as mentioned above)

so notes, simply is a list from 1 to 84, saying what note number you want to use.
above example says key 1 = 60

so you just have to figure out, what note you want for each key - which depends on who you like your keys mapped.

note: the ‘leds’ section, coming after ‘mapping’ , details hardware key numbers. (so 1 = key 1 , not note 60)

btw: I recommend you use an editor that is ‘aware’ of json format, or at least verify it before you put it on Organelle - its really reasy to get this wrong :wink:
(MEC will tell you this if you run it on the command line, but nothing will come up on the Organelle display!)

but as I said, if you start the pico config this should make a noise - if its working, it’ll just have an unmusical layout.

p.s. as you can imagine Im working on alot of different things… so I honestly can’t remember if/when I tested this with the tau … Im pretty sure it works, as Ive used it with the pico and alpha - I just can’t remember if I plugged the tau in :slight_smile:

if its not making any sound at all when you start it, let me know and I’ll give it test here.
(sorry, I do not have time , to figure out a good note mapping)

pps. i think, iirc start orac, then start MEC… as MEC needs to connect to pure data’s midi ports.

sorry, its been a while since I played with this, so this all off the top of my head :slight_smile: