timing accuracy generating MIDI from geometry

hello TD mens magna

anyone generating synced MIDI sequences inside TD?
i’ve been developing a geometrical sequencer made in TD, but it seems that the fluctuating nature of the TD clock is preventing me to achieve a steady rock solid sequencer.
the point of my sequencer is to generate rotating geometry and extract timing and pitch into Ableton Live.
right now the path follows like this;
1 - Ableton generates sync signal, TD gets it via Ableton CHOP
2 - TD generates geometry that rotates synced with Ableton
3 - TD generates MIDI that gets sent to Ableton to produce audio
the current problem is that the timing of the MIDI events that arrive on Ableton is not perfect at all, generating a cold random machine “feel” that is not pleasant to the ear.
Initially, the approach was to rotate geometry on SOP level, then extract it to CHOP, and do the logic to generate the timing events. I’ve changed into rotating the extracted SOP to CHOP geometry in CHOP level via Tranform CHOP, and accuracy improved a lot, but still not perfect, as in “music software perfect”.
right now i’m in a deadend, considering going to Max/MSP to make the sequencer, that is going to set me back a month or so, just to learn the proper jit.* stuff needed to do this.
any ideas from the clockwork masters?

cheers!

If the part of the problem you’re experiencing is related to a draw time you might try running a second instance of touch to handle your CHOPs, logic, and timing which has it’s display flag off, then use a different instance for rendering.

Your processing instance could run at a higher refresh rate and focus on doing all of your operational bits and communication. It would stream data back to ableton, and over to a second instance of touch that’s doing the rendering work.

Hi Matthew, thank you for your reply

That’s exactly what I’m doing, the render network is receiving data from the generator network via sharedmem.

Also, the generator is running at ~180 fps when the real-time flag is off, and has the display parameter off

It has occurred to me that maybe scaling the geometry up before the logic operation that extracts the timing might help, will try that

Will also post the networks here, and the live project, if anyone wants to take a look :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Rui

Hello!

today I cranked up the FPS of the generator network to 960, and it seems to be much mor stable, almost there. Still has some hiccups when i’m moving around the mouse in the OS UI - not happening when controlling the system with iPad and Lemur.

here goes the files, if you want to try it out, you just need to setup a internal MIDI connection from TD to Ableton Live.

any suggestions are very welcome.
geoMusic.rar (476 KB)