Multiple Morphs through the max external

Technical Support
1

I’m getting very good results with the [sensel] object from the max package manager. But, only with one morph unit at a time. Should I be able to use and identify more than one morph simultaneously (in max, without overlays)? How would one go about doing so?

(I have four of them sitting here. worst case, I think I have workarounds for personal use. but I’d prefer to keep things relatively clean, if I were to actually distribute this code)

2

No, you can only use 1 Morph at a time with the sensel objects. We hope to improve this later in the year!
If you are using basic multi-pressure info (contact id, force, location, contact count), you can use the “multi-touch from MPE” example in our github https://github.com/sensel/C74-Max-Examples which simply uses MIDI. That means you can have as many Morphs as you want.

3

That was indeed the first workaround I had in mind. There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

The big plus is that it works anywhere. I could transfer my work to pd and run it on organelle, or orac, or zynthian if I had one. That’s huge.

My hesitations are:

  • There’s an unused margin (where the max external goes edge-to-edge)

  • I actually am leveraging the extended data (though I probably only need that on one morph)

  • The max external lets me bypass Ableton’s MIDI filters, and generate rich expressive MIDI on the other side of that wall. (Actual MPE data can’t reach max for live.)

4

Most of that could be mitigated through feature requests (later in the year):

  • remove size restrictions from the editor, so the mpe pad can go edge-to-edge

  • add options to the mpe pad to send some of the extended data (surface area, angle) as user defined CCs

(I’ve seen the latter requested in another thread recently.)

Midi filters in Ableton are still a problem, but that’s outside your realm of influence.

5

Ooh, one more:

  • Add an option for NRPN support, particularly on pressure data.

That’s a big one - MPE is great and all, but 127 pressure values is an unkind limit on the range and sensitivity of what morph can output.

Granted, nothing is listening to NRPNs, so that’s only limited to us hacker types. Here’s what I’ve been doing instead:

I’m currently splitting pressure into two zones when I convert to MIDI:

  • “expression” (light touch; CC11. That’s your volume / manual tremolo.)

  • “aftertouch” "(more deliberate press; channel aftertouch. That’s your intensity boost.)*

That feels fairly natural, and seems to get good results from synths that support such things.