I know I’m not the only one with this problem: You have this giant MIDI keyboard that doesn’t produce sound on its own, and most of the time, playing it doesn’t do anything. You have to launch logic, or mainstage, or ableton, or digital performer, open a new project, setup a new patch, and then start playing. In music classes, this can be a distraction, and compositionally, it can get in the way between you and your creativity.

I’d keep MainStage open all the time, but there are times when I don’t want a secondary keyboard sound when I’m using Finale or Logic. Ideally, anytime I’m not using Finale or Logic, I’d like MainStage to be running.

I’ve written a simple OS X application in applescript that checks every 30 seconds to see if Logic or Finale are running, and if they’re not, launches MainStage in the background. It takes up very little CPU and can run continuously. Here is the code:

If you’re on mac you can open that code in the script editor by clicking
here. (Thanks to Mac Developer tips for that trick.)

Download
I have created two downloadable versions, a regular version and a silent version that does not appear in the dock.

Note that the silent version is VERY silent, i.e. you do not see it in the dock, nor in the force quit window. A quick way to kill it is to run “killall applet” in the terminal, though this will kill other applescripts you have running as well.

A more precise way to kill it is to run this command in the terminal:
ps -ax | grep -i “keep mainstage”

Get the first process number listed (usually 5 digits) and then run:
kill XXXXX (where XXXXX is the process number)

You can point to either of these apps in your System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items to have them run automatically when you start your computer.

You should set MainStage’s startup action in preferences to “Open Most Recent Concert”. I have a simple concert with just a piano that I keep open.

Included in the download above are instructions on how to make the silent app run in the background again if you modify it.

Known Bugs with 1.0:
For some reason you have to force-quit the non-silent version, quitting alone does not work.

MainStage has an annoying behavior of grabbing focus once a concert has loaded. The script hides MainStage after it does this, but you will still see it briefly pop up when it launches.

The script will not launch Mainstage if you have Logic or Finale running but with no documents open.

The script may launch Mainstage at annoying times (such as shutdowns or software updates). I’d recommend just shutting down with mainstage running, and clicking “don’t save” if it asks.

Camille, the programmer of OSCulator, got his program working with the Velocity-sensitive Guitar Hero drums. Download OSCulator here:
http://www.osculator.net/wp/

I’m still using JunXion to receive MIDI from the Rock Band Drums. Check out my other tutorial for setting JunXion up.

I created a Logic environment with a switch that is triggered by the MIDI note that the Rock Band pedal is sending via JunXion. It transforms the closed high hat to the open one when the pedal is released. I’m also using another transformer to amplify the velocity of the MIDI drums by 30, because the GH drums are pretty quiet otherwise.

Download the Osculator file, the JunXion file, and the Logic file here: gh_rb_setup.zip

Props to Camille for his help, Maeve for me stealing back a loop from her song, and Samantha and Fred Tesche for Dark Matter.

iGog is developed by Wave Machine Labs, the same people who created the flagship drum replacement program, Drumagog. It is $5 and available in the iTunes store and also here.

I downloaded the demo and tried it out. The mic trigger mode is amazing! I made a demo of it on youtube:

It goes crazy when you sing into the mic too, which I forgot to demonstrate. The program saves MIDI, WAVs, and allows you to loop and sequence, so it’s a great program to have on the road or to create realistic sounding drum loops.

The only drawback with this app is that it requires headphones for mic triggering mode, and performance degrades in pad mode if you use speakers, which limits the possibilities for live performance. Mic triggering only works with one instrument at a time – it would be nice if, like Drumagog, it used frequency analysis to trigger multiple samples at once. Still though, for now the sequencing and looping make up for that.

With sequencing, I would like to see an undo function, or a track editor – once you’ve recorded, it’s added permanently, so it’s easy to mess up a good sequence with a bad take. If you’re recording on different instruments, then this is easy to fix later in the MIDI file with a piano roll, but it would be a handy feature on the road.

I always wanted to create a similar drum pad app using the iPhone’s accelerometers. I would have used the three axises to trigger different samples, so that you tap on the top for bass, side for snare, and back for hi hat. I’m pretty sure this app works better than my app ever would – it also works if you tap on the iPhone body. If they could combine accelerometer data into this app though and separate samples per axis, and also allow you to transit MIDI or OSC over WIFI, this would be the ideal drum trigger.

Still though, what an incredible app, and a great value for $5! In-app purchase of free and pay per download drum kits are also available.

The session was an amazing experience, recorded by LA’s top musicians on the same scoring stage that they record Lost and Fringe, at L.A. Sound Gallery (formerly Evergreen Recording Studios) by Frank Wolf. My scores were conducted by Eimear Noone and myself.

Since graduating in August, I have moved back to Burbank, CA with three of my classmates and we are all pursuing careers in Film Music. Currently I am working for Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, whose composition credits include the films Run Lola Run, Perfume, and The International.

Head Case will be screened at Columbia College Chicago’s Advanced Practicum screening, on the 8th floor of 1104 S. Michigan Ave. on October 2nd at 5:00 PM.

One track is available for download, A Man’s Image Opening.

The movie will be screened at the DuSable Museum of African American History on October 23, 2009 at 7:30 PM.

Thanks to this post by Camille, developer of OSCulator, I finally got the Wii World Tour drums to work with velocity sensitivity. Unfortunately, as the video demonstrates, they don’t work too well. Either they’re not sensitive enough, or bluetooth doesn’t have enough bandwidth to transfer notes fast enough.

I also talk a little bit about being out in LA for our summer semester program.

Osculator can be downloaded here. It is free to try and costs $39 to buy. It’s a great program, though I’m disappointed with what seems like hardware limits on the drums.

Edit:
Looking at the ActionScript, I realize I was wrong, after a minute auto-resume times out and the site will go back to playing from the beginning. This was a feature programmed so that auto-resume only jumps between pages. I’m debating turning off the one-minute time-out. What do you think? Is auto-play acceptable if the volume is turned down? When you come back to a site days later, do you want it to resume playing music where you left off?

That sucks. The 3.0 SDK is still too restrictive. Imagine the amazing 3.0 apps that would come out if you could manipulate the output of your library. A real scratch interface for DJs. A live BPM counter. Reaktor-like stutter and loop apps. A pedometer that syncs music to your step. All of these ideas are things I wanted to try with the 3.0 SDK, and none of them are possible.

Likewise, accessories that come out are more or less going to be limited to one application. You could make a MIDI interface but it’s only going to work with your app. You could make a keyboard accessory, but it’s only going to work with your application. You’d have to copy and paste what you typed from your application to other apps. Even if you allowed other developers to use your keyboard framework to allow it to work in their applications, the keyboard still wouldn’t work in native apps like Safari, Mail, SMS, etc.

Apple, the iPhone is an amazing device, and you’re still being far too restrictive with it! Opening up the library to at least read access, allowing device makers to write drivers for their accessories, and giving users and developers at least limited shared file system access would do wonders for the potential for the iPhone.

If you want the music to start automatically call this swf instead:
http://jordanbalagot.com/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://jordanbalagot.com/jbplaylist.xm&autoplay=true
Sometime in the future I’ll make a separate playlist that only has more web-suited background music.