OSC/Midi Support
Musix can wirelessly send the notes you play to a computer. This means you can use the synthesizers and audio software you already own to make great music wirelessly with the Musix interface.
Musix offers two options to connect wirelessly. In each case, you need special software on your computer to receive the information from Musix.
The Short Version: Easy as 1-2-3
These instructions assume you know what you are doing. Each step may require some additional learning, please see below for the Detailed Instructions. For best results, make sure your iPhone/iPad is on the same wireless network as your computer.*
OSC
On Your Computer:- Find your computer's IP address.
- Launch software on your computer to receive OSC messages (e.g. OSCulator, MaxMSP).
- Choose or note the port used for OSC messages by your receiving software.
- Launch Musix.
- Touch the instruments menu (
),
touch OSC, touch the blue arrow and enter your computer's IP
address and the port number
for OSC messages. - Start playing!
MIDI
On Your Computer:- Download and launch DSMidiWifi.
- Connect hardware or launch software that can receive midi messages (e.g. MaxMSP, Pd).
- Launch Musix.
- Touch the instruments menu (
),
touch MIDI. - Touch the blue arrow and specify a MIDI channel if you need to.
- Start playing!
Note: it is possible to connect your iPhone/iPad to your computer even if they are not on the same network. This may require you to forward your OSC port through your router, so it has been left out of the "short version" instructions. Some details are available below:
Detailed Instructions:
Connecting With OSC
OSC (Open Sound Control) is a network protocol designed to allow multiple music making machines to communicate with each other. To use OSC, you need OSC-capable host software running on a computer with network access. Lots of folks use Osculator (http://www.osculator.net/), and other software programs can receive OSC messages as well including Pd and MaxMSP.
How to set up software to receive OSC messages from Musix:- OSCulator (See the Quickstart page)
- a MaxMSP patch that will receive OSC messages (see below)
If you need to connect using a windows machine, have a look at the list of software that works with TouchOSC.
To activate OSC messaging on Musix, touch the instrument icon () and select "OSC" from the list of available instruments. Click the blue arrow to set up the
networking parameters you need to make sure the iPhone/iPad can talk to your computer. You will need the IP address of the computer that will
receive messages, and a port number.
Note that this works best when both computers are on the same local network. If your computer's ip address starts with 10. or 172.16-172.31 or 192.168., then you are on a private network and your ip address is not accessible from a different network. In these cases, your computer must either be on the same local network as the iPhone/iPad, or your router must be forwarding the OSC port to your computer, for messages to be sent.
If you are having trouble connecting, you may want to use an ad-hock peer-to-peer network, which means your iPhone/iPad would connect directly to your computer.
The port number ensures that the the receiving program (Osculator, MaxMSP, etc) can be connected directly to the iPhone/iPad and receive messages. The specific port number you choose doesn't really matter as long as Musix and the receiving program use the same port, and that the port is not used for other internet traffic. Common choices include 7777, 8000 and 9000 depending on the program used to receive messages. OSCulator uses a default port of 8000 for incoming messages.
Once the receiving program is running and Musix has been set with the IP address and port, you should begin to see messages appearing in the receiving program. At that point, you can use these messages to trigger notes in your favourite synthesizer, or do anything else you like!
Connecting with MIDI
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is an old but enduring standard for passing information between musical instruments. Most hardware synthesizers and devices still have MIDI as the main way to communicate between devices, and USB connections will often pass midi signals instead of some newer standard. OSC is poised to replace MIDI, but has been so poised for a few years now and MIDI seems to not be going away.
Musix can send MIDI information directly over the network to your computer. Once the MIDI notes have been received by your computer, you can send them to any synthesis engine or hardware device.
To activate MIDI messaging on Musix, touch the instrument icon () and select "MIDI" from the list of available instruments. Click the
blue arrow to choose the MIDI channel to use, and to find the software that you will run on your computer to receive MIDI messages.
Musix uses a third party software program called DSMidiWifi, originally build for receiving midi information from the nintendo DS. The program is well build and allows for receiving midi information from any device (as long as the sending capabilities are built in) over a wireless network.
Once you have downloaded and installed DSMidiWifi on your computer, if your computer and iPhone/iPad are on the same wireless network, you should not need to do anything else. The software on your computer acts as a server, looking for devices on the wireless network broadcasting DSMidiWifi signals.
The consequence of this is that if you have many devices using DSMidiWifi on the same wireless network, you might run into trouble. In this case, you should use your computer to generate an ad-hock peer to peer network that only your computer and your iPhone/iPad use.
DSMidiWifi acts like a midi input on your computer, but you still need midi software or hardware to do anything with the MIDI signals. MaxMSP can receive and process MIDI signals:
Using MaxMSP to receive OSC or MIDI messages
MaxMSP is a programming environment that is specifically tailored to receiving and processing real-time information. If you aren't familiar with MaxMSP, some of this may not make sense. This is a simple how-to on handling OSC and MIDI messages.
OSCOSC messages are sent over UDP, so to receive and handle OSC messages in MaxMSP, you use the UDP-receive object with the port number as an argument:
OSC-route objects allow you to split up the stream of OSC messages into usable values. When using the message format of "MIDI over OSC", messages come as either noteON or noteOFF, followed by the note value and the velocity, which can be unpacked after the OSC-route.
MIDIWhen DSMidiWifi is running, MaxMSP sees this as another MIDI input, so all you need is a standard midi input object such as midiin or notein:
Once the object is placed, you need to click on the object to select which midi port it will be listening to. If DSMidiWifi is running properly, you should see DSMidiWifi-out as an option. Select it to begin receiving MIDI messages:
