Blue Cat Patchwork & Cthulhu

[DonaldM]

Been experimenting with Cthulhu arpeggiator and trying to get it to work in PT. It is not AAX compatible, so I downloaded the VST 64bit version. Cthulhu is neat little chord/arp generator that can do all kinds of creative things to a midi sequence. I downloaded the demo version to see if it might work in PT using Patchwork. Here's what I've found so far:

I can get it to work fine using Reaper inside PT. To do that there, I instantiate it on an instrument track in Reaper and then put a synth right underneath it on the same track. Works fine. I can create a midi track in PT, send it to play the Reaper instrument (Cthulhu + synth) and use Rewire to send the audio back to PT.

I also tried to host it on a PT instrument track using Blue Cat Patchwork 1.1 synth version. It hosts Cthulhu just fine. I put in a simple 4 chord midi loop, 1 measure each chord, and Cthulhu did its thing to that and I was able to run through several arp options using the built in tone generator on Cthulhu to hear what it was doing. However, what I can't do is route the MIDI output from that to another VI on a different instrument track. I set up Xpand and called up a generic pad. I didn't put any midi notes on that track. I sent the MIDI output from the instrument track Cthulhu was on to the track Xpand was on using the MIDI in/out settings on the instrument tracks. The original whole note 4 chord loop plays Xpand that way just fine, so I know the MIDI signal from that track to the Xpand track is routing just fine. However, its NOT sending the Cthulhu MIDI arp out. I'm guessing that Patchwork can't send MIDI out data?

Cthulhu itself doesn't have a MIDI out setting nor a place to tell it "send MIDI out to [blank]". Instead it relies on the MIDI routing of the host to take care of that. That's why in Reaper it worked just fine, sending the MIDI out directly into the next instrument in the chain on the Reaper instrument track.

I tried that as well in PT, but that didn't work either. Still just played the original loop I started with, but no data from Cthulhu.

I know this a bit off the beaten path...and it'd be great if they'd release this thing in AAX-64, but it doesn't look like they ever will. OTOH, it IS a nice little arp/chord generator tool for spicing up ideas, and its only $39.

Any suggestions? Essentially, I just want to be able to send MIDI out data from any VST 64bit VI hosted inside Patchwork to any other VI on another instrument track in PT. In this case, its Cthulhu. But there are others like that as well. Thoughts?

[Alexiz]

Well, likewise, I was trying to find workarounds for making the Kirnu Cream arpeggiator run in PT. Had no luck. One option I haven't explored yet, though, is trying to run it via VEPro. Not sure whether Vienna would be helpful in this matter or not. All arpeggiator plugins of the kind appear to be similar in that they require the ability to output MIDI data (sending it as input for another track) of the DAW. Cubase, for example, has this ability, so it works fine there. Pro Tools plugin architecture doesn't seem to support this, as it was indicated by Avid's representative in this forum earlier this year:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=337622

So I don't think BC Patchwork would be able to help here. And I really wish this feature would be implemented in PT. (For now, alas, it is still Cubase for MIDI work, and PT for everything else, in my case... [sigh]).

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by Alexiz

Well, likewise, I was trying to find workarounds for making the Kirnu Cream arpeggiator run in PT. Had no luck. One option I haven't explored yet, though, is trying to run it via VEPro. Not sure whether Vienna would be helpful in this matter or not. All arpeggiator plugins of the kind appear to be similar in that they require the ability to output MIDI data (sending it as input for another track) of the DAW. Cubase, for example, has this ability, so it works fine there. Pro Tools plugin architecture doesn't seem to support this, as it was indicated by Avid's representative in this forum earlier this year:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=337622

So I don't think BC Patchwork would be able to help here. And I really wish this feature would be implemented in PT. (For now, alas, it is still Cubase for MIDI work, and PT for everything else, in my case... [sigh]).

Thanks for that link...I don't recall seeing that particular thread. Cthulhu is actually mentioned in there. So, I guess the issue isn't with Patchwork but with PT itself. Although, according to the manual, you can send MIDI data from an instrument track to another one using the MIDI in/out switches on the instrument track. But, I think that just means whatever MIDI data exists on the track itself and not generated MIDI data coming out of a VI instantiated on that track. That seems to be the upshot of the thread you mentioned. That's too bad. I agree with all those who said this is a feature that would be very nice to add! There's any number of VI's that generate their own MIDI data. Be nice if we could route that to whatever we wished.

[steve_xer]

Cthulhu will be available for AAX as a free update within the next month or so. I've released LFOTool for AAX and Cthulhu is next up.

It is working here flawlessly in PT11 and needs a few tweaks to be good to go in PT 10.3 or later.

-Steve
www.xferrecords.com

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by steve_xer

Cthulhu will be available for AAX as a free update within the next month or so. I've released LFOTool for AAX and Cthulhu is next up.

It is working here flawlessly in PT11 and needs a few tweaks to be good to go in PT 10.3 or later.

-Steve
www.xferrecords.com

That's GREAT news! Thanks so much!!! I'll use the DEMO until then!

[Alexiz]

Well, this is indeed great news. Looking forward to it!
Please keep us updated -- will purchase it as soon as it's out in AAX.

[ehausler]

This is indeed great news Steve!
I didn't think it would be possible to be honest.
Hope I'm not drifting too much off topic, if so I hope you'll excuse me.

This weekend, primarily to make Cthulhu work in PT11 I asked the Blue Cat team if they could make MIDI output internally available within Patchwork. I hope they catch on, it would open up for a host of new and inspirational ways to work within Pro tools in other ways too.
I heard that Ableton Live can't host external plugins when in Rewire mode, don't know if it's true. Hope not. Never worked in Live, I just get the feeling it would be fun, inspirational and suit my workflow.

Anyone got Live 9 and PT 11 to lock together successfully on Mac, Live as slave, PT as master? If so, would you mind giving away some of your secrets and telling us how it's working for you?
Cheers
/E

[bluecataudio]

Hi there,

just a quick heads up to let you know that you can now use Cthulhu with Blue Cat's PatchWork 1.2 , thanks to its new MIDI routing capabilities:



Enjoy!

[Glenjb]

Originally Posted by ehausler

I heard that Ableton Live can't host external plugins when in Rewire mode, don't know if it's true. Hope not. Never worked in Live, I just get the feeling it would be fun, inspirational and suit my workflow.

Anyone got Live 9 and PT 11 to lock together successfully on Mac, Live as slave, PT as master? If so, would you mind giving away some of your secrets and telling us how it's working for you?
Cheers
/E

I haven't used Live with pt11 yet but I have used it rewired with PT10 in the past.

It's true that you can't use 3rd party plugs in Live while it's in slave mode. With that being said you can use all of Live's native effects and instruments, most of which are awesome.

Your audio has to be copied into live (i just export it starting from 0:00 and drag into Live at 0:00) if you want to process any audio with live and Max for live won't work while in rewire slave mode either.

You can do a lot of cool stuff with it.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by bluecataudio

Hi there,

just a quick heads up to let you know that you can now use Cthulhu with Blue Cat's PatchWork 1.2 , thanks to its new MIDI routing capabilities:

I know I'm resurrecting a very old thread, but I'm wondering if this Can this work with Kirnu Cream as well? Cream has some nice features on it too. Because of the MIDI limitations in PT, there doesn't seem to be a way to host Cream in Patchwork and route the MIDI output to a VI on another track like you can with the AAX version of Cthulhu. But it might be possible, if I understand this post correctly that you could put Cream on the PRE in Patchwork and it will route to a VI on a PARALLEL? Is that correct? But, of course, that means it would only work with any VST VI's we're hosting in Patchwork, and not the AAX ones. Can we get more detail on this, or how to vid showing it being done?

Thanks