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Keith McMillen combines Leap Motion and Web MIDI


Keith McMillen Instruments shared this short demo of gestural mixing, using their K-Mix programmable mixer, a Leap Motion controller and Web MIDI.

MIDI Gestural control really seems to be taking off recently enabled by wireless BTLE MIDI, improvement in gesture recognition technology and advances in sensors. In this case, KMI is using a Leap Motion controller and Web MIDI to do gestural mixing. 

Leap Motion allows you to get a staggering amount of detail and data from the movement of your hands, fingers, and joints, but in this project, we’re only interested in three things:
1. which hand we’re using
2. what finger we’re using
3. is our hand is closed to a fist

by ANDREJ HRONCO

KMI has a great series of blog articles about Web MIDI.  Here is a summary and links to that series. 


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K-Mix API, Part 2 – Controlling K-Mix with Leap Motion and the Web MIDI API | Keith McMillen Instruments

If you’ve ever fantasized about mixing with your hands similar to how you control a Theremin or in the movie Minority Report, your dreams are now closer to reality! With the latest K-Mix update, which enables sending MIDI message to fully control K-Mix, combined with the the K-Mix API and the incredible Leap Motion controller, I’ll demonstrate how you can control K-Mix with only your hands and fingers, without touching K-Mix at all!. K-Mix used with the K-Mix API brings a new meaning to the term ‘Programmable Mixer’


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K-Mix API, Part 1 – Web MIDI Control Surface | Keith McMillen Instruments

One of K-Mix’s most powerful features is its ability to be programmed and controlled from any DAW. With the power of Web MIDI in your browser and the K-Mix API, K-Mix becomes the first audio mixer that’s fully controllable with JavaScript. In Part 1, I’ll go over the basics of using the K-Mix API and using K-Mix as a control surface for a web app.


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Making Music in the Browser: Web Audio/MIDI – Amplitude Modulation | Keith McMillen Instruments

Amplitude Modulation is a simple concept that can yield harmonically rich and bizarre timbres not easily achieved via other methods. In this article we’ll expand on the topics introduced in Simple Synthesis – Amplitude Modulation and play around with the concepts behind AM Synthesis. Modulation sources do not need to be low-frequency oscillators or envelope generators.


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Making Music in the Browser: Web Audio/MIDI – Envelope Generator | Keith McMillen Instruments

In our first Simple Synthesis Addendum we learned how to connect a VCO to a VCA and control their ‘frequency’ and ‘gain’ AudioParams using a MIDI controller via the Web MIDI API. Good stuff! We now have a simple synth we can play. In this post we’ll learn how to shape our notes by building a Envelope Generator with configurable attack, decay, sustain and release using the Web Audio API’s scheduling methods. We’ll also give our Envelope Generator a ‘Mode’ setting, which will give us the ability to create some really long envelopes to play with.


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Making Music in the Browser: Web Audio/MIDI – VCO/VCA | Keith McMillen Instruments

Emmett Corman has a great introductory series on the basics of synthesis (using modular synths), called Simple Synthesis. I thought it would be of value to those without access to the hardware to be able to explore and interact with the concepts that Emmett covers directly in the browser, using the Web MIDI and Web Audio APIs.


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Making Music in the Browser – Web MIDI API | Keith McMillen Instruments

This opens up a huge variety of possibilities for not only art and music in the browser, but also allows any hardware that uses MIDI as its communication platform to control and be controlled by your browser. MIDI.org itself says “the Web-MIDI API is the most significant advancement of MIDI since… MIDI itself!”


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Manipulating MIDI with Pure Data | Keith McMillen Instruments

Working in technical support for KMI, I am often confronted with requests for functionality from some of our devices that we didn’t include for one reason or another. There’s a variety of tools that you can use for this task, such as Max, Bome’s MIDI translator or Pure Data. All of these software environments can do wonderful creative things with MIDI information, but one of them has a defining characteristic; Pure Data is free, open-source, cross platform software. This means that you can make a solution by yourself, today, for free, that can run on Mac, Windows, Linux and even on a Raspberry Pi. In this article (and maybe more) we’ll look at the basics of manipulating MIDI in Pure Data to give the SoftStep2 four triggers on each pad.


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Sequencing the SEM: MIDI to CV Conversion | Keith McMillen Instruments

The best way to unlock the hidden potential of any semi-modular synthesizer is by sequencing. This post will describe the necessary steps to use the QuNexus as a MIDI-to-CV converter along with Ableton Live to control the legendary Oberheim Synthesizer Expander Module.
Before you begin, make sure you have an SEM


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Interfacing with MIDI Hardware Using M4L: The Meeblip Anode | Keith McMillen Instruments

With the advent of small, portable, MIDI enabled analog synthesizers, computer musicians now have the option of controlling a lot more than VSTs. If you have a USB MIDI interface (or other means of getting MIDI from your computer to 5 Pin MIDI connections), you can leverage the sequencing power of Live to control all of the MIDI enabled parameters on your synth. In this article, we’ll look at how to create a MIDI device using M4L that allows us to access all of the parameters on the Meeblip Anode, as well as how to add modulation sources to allow for more sonic options.