Logic Pro X + WARBL confusion (newbie)

[aliska34]

Hey folks - I just got my WARBL and started playing around. Right off the bat, I am struggling to set up/resolve a few things. I am new to midi and midi controllers so these may be simple fixes.

1) my WARBL is playing jumbles of notes if I either play to fast or lift several fingers at once - it seems to sometimes think lifted fingers = me putting my fingers down, the result is messy midi data. I would like to fix this and get it to behave as much as possible like a NAF in terms of playing in a linear way rather than in clusters. I have set the finger sensing distance to a very low level - but it has not helped.

2) I can't get it to vibrato on command

3) how do I know I have done the sensor calibration right

4) is there any offline method of calibrating it (I have an android phone, and an apple computer)

5) There is a technique when one can roll their r's and get a very cool trill sound on the NAF - is it possible to emulate that effect on the WARBL?

Thanks in advance to anyone kind enough to douse me with some information. Over all this EWI feels great I am just new to this stuff and am not very good at reading tech manuals.

[admin]

Hi, I’m happy to help with these questions where I can. I’m going to number responses to correspond to your questions:

1. It sounds like what you’re describing is “crossing noise”, where the WARBL is picking up unwanted notes between your desired notes because it senses you lifting or lowering several fingers sequentially. Because an electronic device like this has a very fast response it can detect every valid fingering pattern and send that as a MIDI note. Some controllers advertise this as a “feature” because it forces you to practice clean fingering techniques, but I agree that it can be annoying if you’re not used to it. Some acoustic wind instruments with a fast attack do the same thing, and bagpipers focus a lot of effort on reducing crossing noise:

http://bagpipeteacher.blogspot.com/2010 ... oises.html

You’ll find that this mostly disappears with time as you become used to playing, but generally speaking, the idea is that if you are lifting multiple fingers, you lift the uppermost one first, then the others. If you’re lowering multiple fingers, you lower the bottom one first. This makes a clean transition between the highest and lowest notes in the sequence. It sounds tricky at first, but it does become natural very quickly, and it’s good practice to do this with all wind instruments, acoustic or electronic. Some instruments like NAF are very forgiving of technique because they have a slow attack and you can’t hearing all the crossing noises.

I’ve had a request to add a feature that can filter out notes of very short duration, and I may look into this possibility in a future firmware update.


2. The WARBL has vibrato turned on by default, so when you lower a finger partway, it should be sending MIDI pitchbend messages. You can verify this by watching the little “MIDI Consolel in the Configuration Tool— you should see a very fast series of “PB” messages when you lower a finger partway. Note: If you’ve lowered the finger-sensing distance too far vibrato won’t work very well, so I recommend setting that to its maximum. It’s unrelated to the previous issue, because it only affects slide and vibrato, not transitions between notes. I haven’t used Logic Pro X myself so I’m not sure where the settings are, but you’ll need to make sure that you have pitchbend turned on there, with a maximum pitchbend of 2 semitones.


3. If the calibration is correct, each tone hole in the diagram in the Configuration Tool should turn blue just as you feel your finger touching the instrument. If that’s not the case, you can fine-tune each one and then save your settings. If you haven’t seen it, there’s a video about it here:

https://warbl.xyz/videos.html


4. The Configuration Tool will work offline if you save it to your device. I’m not sure if that’s possible on Android, but on your Mac you can download the whole page from the GitHub site:

https://github.com/amowry/warbl

You would need to use the download link at the top right of that page to get the whole WARBL repository, but then you can get rid of everything except the “webconfig” folder. Then, open that folder and open the “configure.html” in Chrome, and it should run without an internet connection.

5. Yes, that is called flutter-tonguing, and it is possible with the new whistle-type mouthpiece, with a little practice. It helps to allow a little air to escape around the mouthpiece as you’re doing it, and possible even pull the mouthpiece away from your mouth a bit.

Hopefully that helps, but let me know if can clarify or elaborate!

-Andrew

[aliska34]

Thank you so much! Your reply has been very helpful and I have been trying to implement suggestions all day some with more success than others. I think crossing noise may be a sample issue in some ways - as on some samples I do not hear it but on the Alchemy synths, it's a constant occurrence no matter how hard I try to implement the techniques suggested. This also goes for flutter tonguing some synths it words on others not - thoughts? My other trouble is I have no idea what to do or how to handle the installation of the offline WARBL calibration software - everything goes way over my head with this stuff (I am terrible with programming). Is there a tutorial video you could recommend (for mac)?

Thanks again!!!
-Allie

[gonzoB]

If you're hearing the crossing notes on some presets and not on others, it may be that the attack phase of that voice is harder. For instance, a trumpet preset has a much harder attack than,say, a flute. Depending on the synth and preset you may be able to tweak the attack.

Gonzo

[admin]

Yes, I would think the difference would be instruments with a quicker attack vs. a slower one. With a slower attack the notes get blended together more, so very brief intermediate notes tend to become less noticeable. The same may be true with flutter-tonguing. If it's possible to post a video comparing the response you're getting from the various synths, that might help figure out what's going on.

Here's a link to the Configuration Tool here as a zipped folder:

https://warbl.xyz/WARBL_Configuration_Tool.zip

If you download this to your Mac, open it, and then open the file inside called configure.html, it should run offline. If the default on your Mac is to use Safari as your browser, you may have to tell it to open in Chrome instead (not being a Mac user I'm not exactly sure how to do that). You could also open Chrome first and then open the configure.html file inside Chrome.

The only slight problem with using the Configuration Tool in this way is that you won't receive automatic updates, so you'd want to get a new version when there's a WARBL firmware update (not very often, but there will be one in a few months). Part of the reason the Configuration Tool is a web page is so that I can make instantaneous changes to it without requiring anyone to update anything.

[aliska34]

Thanks! I think I got it working!

[admin]

Great, glad to hear it!