Keyboard and MIDI map

Every key and MIDI message Auracle answers to, in one place. In the app, ⌘K lists every command with its key beside it.

The keys below use the Mac’s ⌘ and ⌥. On Windows and Linux, use Ctrl where you see ⌘ and Alt where you see ⌥: ⌘Z is Ctrl Z and ⌥↑ is Alt ↑, and the app shows them that way there.

The levels

PERFORM, PATCH, EVOLVE, TASTE and LEARNING are levels of one space around the sound you’re playing: TASTE is zoomed out (the sound among all sounds), PATCH zoomed in (what it is made of), LEARNING past TASTE, and EVOLVE beside PERFORM. The levels at the right edge of the stage show where you are, and a click on a stop goes there. The app opens at PERFORM, or at the level you were at last time.

They work with a knob or a list focused. A held ⌥ shows the model view after a moment; a key pressed while it is down (⌥↑, say) is that key instead, and the model view doesn’t come up. In a text field they stay the field’s: on a Mac ⌥← there moves by a word, and on Windows and Linux Alt ← is the browser’s Back, so it can leave the page from a field (elsewhere the app takes it). With a modal dialog up (the warm start, ⌘K’s list, stage mode, a lesson) they do nothing; a panel that leaves the page usable (MIDI, KEYS ⋯, the scope’s settings, Compare) doesn’t stop them. Clicking a stop puts the keyboard in that level. If you reach the levels with Tab, the arrow keys walk them as they are drawn (↑ out, ↓ in, ← to EVOLVE, → back), and Home and End go to their ends.

A move carries the face of the sound you’re playing from where one level draws it to where the next does: PERFORM’s well, the face at OUT in PATCH, its mark on TASTE’s map, its ring on LEARNING’s, and the card in EVOLVE that holds it, if one does. Where a level doesn’t draw it (an edited sound has no mark on the map), the face fades instead of flying, and while the sound is still on its way to you (just opened, or an edit not yet rendered) one level simply fades into the next. With reduced motion set on your system every move is instant.

Notes

The home row plays the white keys, and the row above it the black keys:

black:    w  e     t  y  u     o  p
white:  a  s  d  f  g  h  j  k  l  ;  '

Everywhere

In ⌘K’s list

Everything else you press while it is open goes into its field: no note plays and no level moves. One space says what it lists.

In EVOLVE

PATCH's canvas

PATCH's modules

Tab reaches the patch as a single stop. On a module:

Inside a module:

Elsewhere on the page Space plays the sound, a knob or a module focused included. The menus in PATCH's head and corner (⚡'s ▾, the layout's ▾) walk with ↑ ↓ and close with Esc.

The bank

The bank’s tabs are one stop: ← and → (and Home, End) show the next one as they move. Find a sound is the next stop (Esc clears it, and nothing typed there is a note), then the walkthrough’s ?, and then the list, a single stop:

In PRESETS the cursor keys work the same, Home and End jump to the first and last row, Enter opens the preset, and p plays it.

The catalog

The search finds a module by sound as well as by name: grit, vowel, sidechain, wander.

Gestures

In PERFORM

The pads’ keys, printed on each pad:

None of them acts while you type in a field, while a dialog is open (the warm start, ⌘K’s list, stage mode, a lesson), or with ⌘, Ctrl or ⌥ held. With the sound at home, ↵ and ⇧⌫ say there is nothing to keep or go back to. PASS and freezing WANDER have no key: PASS is a pass without another, and a tap on WANDER freezes it.

A focused control (reach it with Tab):

A run of arrow presses is one turn. An amber search control, or one still listening…, springs back to the center about half a second after the last press. A search control turned past its notch then asks, as letting go of a drag does.

With the mouse: drag up or down, Shift for fine, double-click a named control to center it (BLEND and WANDER ignore a double-click), long-press to hear it, and tap WANDER to freeze it. See PERFORM.

MIDI

Plug in a keyboard and it plays, with nothing to set up. Plug in a controller with knobs, and they work too.

Web MIDI works in Chromium browsers and in Firefox, which asks once whether to add a site permission for it. Safari has none; there the computer keyboard and the keybed on screen still play. When MIDI isn’t available, the keys bar reads midi ?, and the panel says why and offers CONNECT MIDI to ask again.

With Auracle open in more than one tab, MIDI plays the tab you used last. The others read midi ○, and play nothing from MIDI until you click in one.

The MIDI panel

1. Click the MIDI state at the right of the keys bar (midi ● with a device connected).
2. Press LEARN on a row, then move a knob: that knob now drives the row’s control (CC 21 now moves Snap.). Any knob it replaces is unbound.
3. Press CLEAR to unbind a row. It shows only on a row with a knob bound.

The panel lists PERFORM’s first eight controls (the panel’s in its order, then BLEND and WANDER) and what drives each. A row is a place in that order: after you arrange PERFORM’s panel, a row names whatever sits there now. A row with no knob bound says what does drive it: mod wheel on MOTION, pressure on BRIGHT, and · elsewhere. Below the rows: a switch for first knobs you turn claim free controls, the bend range, and the incoming clock’s tempo.

Knobs you turn

With that switch on, the first eight different knobs you move take PERFORM’s controls in the order you move them, in that order: with the six, BRIGHT, SNAP, MOTION, BODY, GRIT, SPACE, BLEND, and WANDER. With seven on the panel, WANDER falls past the eighth, and with eight BLEND does too: MIDI doesn’t reach what falls past. Each is announced (CC 74 now moves Bright, the first free control.). The mod wheel is left out, because it already means something.

Some controllers are never taken, by the switch or by LEARN, because MIDI gives them a meaning of their own:

• bank select (CC 0 and 32);
• data entry and (N)RPN (CC 6, 38, and 96–101);
• the sustain, sostenuto, and soft pedals (CC 64, 66, and 67);
• the channel-mode messages (CC 120–127).

So a keyboard that sets its bend range over RPN can’t take a control that way.

A sound’s controls have to be measured before they turn anything. Moving a mapped knob measures the sound you’re playing if PERFORM hasn’t already, so the knobs work from any level.

Endless encoders

A relative encoder is recognized from what it sends, with nothing to set. An ordinary knob sends only when its value changes, so it rarely sends the same number twice in a row; an encoder sends the same small tick over and over. Once a CC has sent a few values that repeat like that, it is followed relatively, and a toast says so (CC 21 is an endless encoder, so it’s followed relatively.).

Both common encodings are recognized: two’s complement and offset around 64. One tick moves a control 1% of its travel.

When in doubt it treats a CC as an ordinary knob. A knob mistaken for an encoder would be unusable; an encoder mistaken for a knob is only jumpy.

Soft takeover

An ordinary knob does nothing until it passes through the control’s current position. Then it takes over. This is often called pickup.

It matters here more than on most instruments, because the controls move without the knob: you can turn a control with the mouse, the keys, or the XY pad. Without pickup, the first nudge of a knob left at three o’clock would jump a control that is now at nine. So whenever a control is set some other way, the knobs bound to it have to pick it up again.

PERFORM also re-centers its controls, after a KEEP, a TAKE, a fresh measurement, or a Wander glide, without moving the sound. A knob you’re using isn’t let go then: the control’s new center is where the knob is now. The knob’s next movement moves the control from there, scaled so each end of the knob still reaches the same end of the control. Once they agree again, the knob follows.

BLEND is different. When B empties (you pass on an offer, or take it), BLEND returns home, and a knob on BLEND is let go. It does nothing until you bring it back down to home, and then it follows again. Otherwise a knob left near the top would sweep the whole of BLEND in its last few steps, and the next nudge would pour the next offer over the sound you chose.

The mod wheel and channel pressure aren’t picked up, because they don’t set a control’s position. Unless you learn CC 1 onto a control, each adds to the control it drives, on top of wherever it sits. The wheel pushes MOTION toward restless, and pressure pushes BRIGHT toward bright.

At rest they add nothing, so letting go returns the sound to where the control is. They never count as touching the controls, so they don’t pause Wander.

Clock

MIDI clock sets the tempo, which the arpeggiator follows. It needs one full beat of ticks before it reads anything, updates when the tempo moves by more than 0.4 BPM, and stays within 30–300 BPM. A gap of more than a second reads as a stop, not a very slow tempo.

Start is a restart: a running arpeggio begins again from its first note if a chord is held, and with SYNC on the step sequencers go back to their first step. From a Start until a Stop, the clock also pulls the synced sequencers back onto its beat once a beat. Stop silences nothing, and Continue is ignored.

For each device

The mapping, the switch, and the bend range are remembered for each device, or combination of devices, in this browser. Plug the same controller in tomorrow, and its knobs mean what they meant today.

The keys bar

Not bound to keys, but this is where people look for them. At the left, KEYS and the octave (Z and X are buttons too). At the right end:

In KEYS ⋯:

It stays open while you play through it (the keybed, the octave, HOLD), and folds on a click outside the keys bar or Esc.

On a phone held upright the keys bar is out of the way until you ask for it: KEYS, at the end of the bar along the bottom, brings it up over that bar, the octave, the volume, REC (its dot) and KEYS ⋯ on one line (MIDI is a row inside KEYS ⋯ there) and the keybed under them, and KEYS again puts it away. It starts at one octave, a finger wide a key.

On a touch screen

What a key does, a finger does like this:

On a phone held upright a toast is a banner across the screen; swipe it up to put it away (on its side too).