REMOVE PROJECTS AND ABORT PLAYING SONGS: a new feature for the open-source project The Amanuensis: Automated Songwriting and Recording
Repository
https://github.com/to-the-sun/amanuensis
The Amanuensis is an automated songwriting and recording system aimed at ridding the process of anything left-brained, so one need never leave a creative, spontaneous and improvisational state of mind, from the inception of the song until its final master. The program will construct a cohesive song structure, using the best of what you give it, looping around you and growing in real-time as you play. All you have to do is jam and fully written songs will flow out behind you wherever you go.
If you're interested in trying it out, please get a hold of me! Playtesters wanted!
New Features
- What feature(s) did you add?
Projects can now be deleted and removed from the system, without having to manually search the computer for the files and delete the project folder. The projects menu can become cluttered with half-written songs that never
went anywhere etc. and now there is a way to clean it up. This will be
especially useful in the future should a "feed" function be implemented,
which might continually queue up old projects at random for you to
continue working on. Additionally, this functionality can be used to abort any song in progress, rather than having to wait for it to play in full
and then export.
This command is executed through the Backspace hotkey, as well as playing a MIDI note of pitch 5. Previously these hotkeys belonged to the command to delete the most recently played note, but that functionality was cumbersome and largely obsolete after the implementation of the Delete hotkey, which can select notes deliberately and individually to remove them.
The way to remove an old project is to first go into the Projects menu and cue it up. Then anytime during its progression you can use the hotkey and it will immediately end and be removed from the catalog, without exporting. It can also be used during any new song that you have just begun to create, which is a convenience that has long been lacking and is arguably even more helpful than being able to remove old projects.
- How did you implement it/them?
If you're not familiar, Max is a visual language and textual representations like those shown for each commit on Github aren't particularly comprehensible to humans. You won't find any of the commenting there either. Therefore, I will do my best to present the work done in images instead. Read the comments there to get an idea of how the code works. I'll try to keep my description here about the process of writing that code.
These are the primary commits involved:
A new receive, ---kill_song was established to take cues in place of the former hotkey, in midiports.maxpat for the Backspace hotkey and in organism.maxpat for MIDI pitch 5. ---don't export was established by sending a false signal to machine.maxpat, ensuring it always thinks no changes were made to the song when it comes time to export (which prevents export). ---update_projects_menu was implemented to deliver a quick bang to p projects in Amanuensis.maxpat, simulating the command that occurs when that window is opened.
After the catalog was updated, it was discovered that the menu would not actually update, because the external catalog text file was being referenced and it had never been updated. Therefore, updating it became part of the "kill_song" process as well.
At this point, the functionality was in place, but it still required you to wait out the length of the playing song before it would actually be gotten rid of, which was cumbersome to say the least and a bit misleading. It was discovered that a surgically administered bang in p userinput? of organism.maxpat was enough to trick it into exporting immediately, with no real negative side effects. This is what ---forceExport does.
the new subpatcher kill_song, which could have probably been placed anywhere, but wound up in MIDIports.maxpat with a lot of the other hotkey functionality
Cleanup and commenting
Thanks for the contribution, @to-the-sun! Sounds like you added some cool quality of life improvements - great work!
Was wondering how you decide on which feature to add next and if you have some kind of roadmap in mind?
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I do, although it's mostly in my head. It's easy to get caught up working on new features you think would be cool, but wind up not being that important in practice, so I'm constantly reminding myself to let the music guide me. Meaning, I prioritize based simply on what would most help better songs get made using the system and I use it daily. Those recordings are automatically uploaded to soundcloud.com/to_the_sun.
Thank you for your review, @amosbastian!
So far this week you've reviewed 1 contributions. Keep up the good work!
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