iCE sequencer opinions

dimitris108

Does anybody has iCE sequencer in max/msp?

I would really like to hear opinions and if is worth it and why.

cegerlt

Me too! Me too!
-------------- Original message --------------
From: Dimitris Lambrianos

>
> Does anybody has iCE sequencer in max/msp?
>
> I would really like to hear opinions and if is worth it and why.
> --
> http://www.dimitrislambrianos.com/

Axiom-Crux

Im also a bit curious, seems like a ton to pay for a list function. Shoot, you can buy renoise for 50 bux. And most trackers are free.

dimitris108

I already have Logic pro but has anybody tried that?

I am very curious because it works in Max/msp although Logic can be hooked up...

Pieter Volger

is it only running on Mac or is there already a win version?

Anthony Palomba

Yes, I would like to know if a windows version will be available.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pieter Volger"
To:
Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 5:41 AM
Subject: [maxmsp] Re: iCE sequencer opinions

>
> is it only running on Mac or is there already a win version?

nathan wolek

On Jan 6, 2007, at 10:38 AM, Anthony Palomba wrote:
> Yes, I would like to know if a windows version will be available.

Peter Castine may be a bit slow responding to this thread. I know he
is traveling this week and next on family business. Be patient and I
am sure he will chime in.

-------------------
Nathan Wolek, PhD --- nwolek@stetson.edu
Assistant Professor of Music Technology
Stetson University - DeLand, FL
http://www.nathanwolek.com

Peter Castine

On 6-Jan-2007, at 10:38, Anthony Palomba (and others at other times)
wrote:
> Yes, I would like to know if a windows version will be available.

Yeah, I'd like to know when a Windows version will be ready, too.
(Sorry, I've been listening to Dave Barry on NPR podcasts).

Here's the straight answer: a Windows version of iCE Tools is a
pretty high priority for DSPAudio. However, it's a difficult
challenge for many technical reasons, much more so than any of the
other approximately 100 Max/MSP external objects I have ported to
Windows. We do not have a release date at this point in time.

That's all I can say. Sorry not to have more encouraging news for our
potential Windows users.

Obviously, we at DSPAudio find iCE Tools useful and valuable. We have
a number of enthusiastic users, although hardly any of them frequent
this list.

Best,
Peter

-------------- http://www.bek.no/~pcastine/Litter/ -------------
Peter Castine +--> Litter Power & Litter Bundle for Jitter
Universal Binaries on the way
iCE: Sequencing, Recording &
Interface Building for |home | chez nous|
Max/MSP Extremely cool |bei uns | i nostri|
http://www.dspaudio.com/ http://www.castine.de

Axiom-Crux

I didnt' say I thought it wasn't useful. I am sure theres tons of people who would use it, Maybe I don't fully understand its features, but isn't it a tracker style list of numbers? I tried out that Nortron demo and it seemed like such.

justin

a friend of mine use to have the old hardware version, and he could get some pretty mad stuff going with it. effectively it's a kind of generative midi hardware sequencer... DSP audio's version is a software interpretation of this rare piece of hardware.

i believe it should be possible to make quite complex sequences with it, certainly more complex than a standard tracker which effectively just plays back what's put in.

perhaps it's more camparable to the old max app "M"...

Brian E Willkie

Hi Peter,

If you don't mind my asking, what list(s) do they frequent? How did they
find out about iCE tools and why do they use it?

Thanks,
Brian

> We have
> a number of enthusiastic users, although hardly any of them frequent
> this list.
>
> Best,
> Peter

Anthony Palomba

Are there any links to this ice hardware sequencer?

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian E Willkie
Date: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:30 am
Subject: Re: [maxmsp] iCE sequencer opinions

>
>
>
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> If you don't mind my asking, what list(s) do they frequent? How
> did they
> find out about iCE tools and why do they use it?
>
> Thanks,
> Brian
>
> > We have
> > a number of enthusiastic users, although hardly any of them frequent
> > this list.
> >
> > Best,
> > Peter
>
>

Peter Castine

On 10-Jan-2007, at 10:27, Brian E Willkie wrote:

> If you don't mind my asking, what list(s) do they frequent? How did
> they
> find out about iCE tools and why do they use it?

I don't mind the question. But I don't know the answer. Sorry. (No, I
don't know everything, even if I come over that way sometimes:-) I
can only say that we have spread the word about iCE in other ways
besides announcing on this list.

I would also suggest that a lot more people read this list than
actively write to it. Others join for a while then unsubcribe (this
is a fairly high-volume list). So, my choice of the word 'frequent'
may have been less than perfectly precise.

As for why... I certainly don't know why other people are using it,
although I expect most users find the paradigm behind ice.lattice
very powerful for sequencing arbitrary data in arbitrary ways.

Best -- Peter

Peter Castine

I assume Justin is talking about Nortron, which is inspired by the
hardware sequencer. Nortron and iCE Tools are two separate products.
However, Nortron makes extensive use of the iCE Tools. In fact, it
would not have been possible to build Nortron without iCE Tools.

In an attempt to clarify:

- Nortron is a standalone application (ie, it does *not* require you
to be a Max user/programmer to use it). Nortron is a sequencer.

- The iCE Tools are a set of external objects for use in Max/MSP. You
*do* need to be a Max user/programmer to do anything productive with
iCE Tools. You could, for instance, build an emulation of your
favorite hardware sequencer with iCE.

As an example of what iCE Tools can do, I used ice.lattice in a
recent interactive piece for 'cello to store musical fragments to be
played back in response to the cellist's improvisation. I couldn't
find a way to do what I wanted with seq or mtr. What I wanted might
have been possible with follow, but it was much more straight forward
to do with lattice.

The comparison with "M" is charming, although I'd say Nortron is to
"M" as quiditch is to soccer (or maybe vice versa)...

Best,
Peter

On 10-Jan-2007, at 6:08, justin wrote:

>
> a friend of mine use to have the old hardware version, and he could
> get some pretty mad stuff going with it. effectively it's a kind of
> generative midi hardware sequencer... DSP audio's version is a
> software interpretation of this rare piece of hardware.
>
> i believe it should be possible to make quite complex sequences
> with it, certainly more complex than a standard tracker which
> effectively just plays back what's put in.
>
> perhaps it's more camparable to the old max app "M"...
>
> j

Gary Lee Nelson

I visited the Kagi page. One place seems to be offering an UB version while
another says coming soon.

On 1/10/07 12:12 PM, "Peter Castine" wrote:

> On 10-Jan-2007, at 10:27, Brian E Willkie wrote:
>
>> If you don't mind my asking, what list(s) do they frequent? How did
>> they
>> find out about iCE tools and why do they use it?
>
> I don't mind the question. But I don't know the answer. Sorry. (No, I
> don't know everything, even if I come over that way sometimes:-) I
> can only say that we have spread the word about iCE in other ways
> besides announcing on this list.
>
> I would also suggest that a lot more people read this list than
> actively write to it. Others join for a while then unsubcribe (this
> is a fairly high-volume list). So, my choice of the word 'frequent'
> may have been less than perfectly precise.
>
> As for why... I certainly don't know why other people are using it,
> although I expect most users find the paradigm behind ice.lattice
> very powerful for sequencing arbitrary data in arbitrary ways.
>
> Best -- Peter
>
> -------------- http://www.bek.no/~pcastine/Litter/ -------------
> Peter Castine +--> Litter Power & Litter Bundle for Jitter
> Universal Binaries on the way
> iCE: Sequencing, Recording &
> Interface Building for |home | chez nous|
> Max/MSP Extremely cool |bei uns | i nostri|
> http://www.dspaudio.com/ http://www.castine.de
>
>

Cheers
Gary Lee Nelson
Oberlin College
www.timara.oberlin.edu/GaryLeeNelson

justin

> The comparison with "M" is charming, although I'd say Nortron is > to "M" as quiditch is to soccer (or maybe vice versa)...

ha ha :)

altho in the land of harry potter, its called football - or more simply put - the beautiful game.

sad truth being the national team are crap...

Peter Castine

On 10-Jan-2007, at 12:12, Peter Castine wrote:
> Nortron is to "M" as ...

My spelling skills seem to have been going down hill badly in the
last few days, cumulating in an absolutely inexcusable typo of
Quidditch.

Sorry for wasting bandwidth on this, but if I don't apologize I won't
be able to sleep tonight.

-- P. (on tenterhooks waiting for "Deathly Hallows"!-)

Peter Castine

On 10-Jan-2007, at 12:23, Gary Lee Nelson wrote:
> I visited the Kagi page. One place seems to be offering an UB
> version while
> another says coming soon.

The UB version is nominally "beta" and distributed to all users who
ask for it, although AFAICT it works fine and should be accorded
release status.

Best -- Peter

Peter Castine

On 10-Jan-2007, at 13:11, justin wrote:

> altho in the land of harry potter, its called football

Well, yes, it's called football everywhere in the English-speaking
world (both real and fantastical) except the US. My use of the word
"soccer" was to avoid misunderstandings amongst the Stateside
readership.

Vive le foot!

Axiom-Crux

How about a piano roll? detonate works poorly, and has no tempo sync.. if someone made a well made piano roll that would be popular I think.

jln

Peter Castine

On 10-Jan-2007, at 1:02, Nicholas C. Raftis III wrote:

> Maybe I don't fully understand its features, but isn't it a tracker
> style list of numbers? I tried out that Nortron demo and it seemed
> like such.

I had not intended to go into this in depth, but given the above,
here we go...

iCE Tools are much more than ice.lattice. Granted, lattice is the
core of the package, but lattice does a lot more than handle numbers.
Each lattice row can hold anything a message box can handle: ints,
floats, symbols, lists, arbitrary messages. And more: a row can
contain delay and repeat instructions, allowing you to fine-tune
timing and implement echo effects, etc. Each bang normally moves to
the next row, but you can also bang through a lattice backwards, or
yo-yo. There are other options, like going through backwards measure-
by-measure (but playing through the rows in each measure front-to-
back). You can fill a lattice by interpolating between any two
values already in the lattice. Interpolation can be linear,
exponential, parabolic... (think: the guy who wrote lattice also
brought you the scaling functions available in lp.scampf & Co.)
Lattice is particularly powerful with floating point frequency
values: it has tables allowing you, with a single keystroke, to enter
frequencies for tempered and non-tempered intonations, including
things like the Lucy scale. You can even define your own keyboard
mappings for a non-tempered scale of your own devising. You can even
map keystrokes to arbitrary symbols. And more.

Don't forget that any lattice can manage up to 16,000 patterns. Each
pattern can hold up to 2,147,483,647 rows (limited only by available
virtual memory). Lattice is designed to be fast even with large data
sets, whereas you will find that other objects for handling arbitrary
data sets slow down for really large data sets. These sorts of data
set sizes and data flexibility are far beyond what other tracker
sequencers will offer you. Lattice is a *toolkit* for building a
tracker-style sequencer, but it goes far beyond what standard
sequencers can do (even if it tries to look like a classic tracker).

And there's more: ice.pump is a tool allowing you to control multiple
lattices from a single computer keyboard: shift focus, synchronize
multiple lattices, etc. You will typically have one lattice per pump
outlet, and pump will sprout up to 2,500 outlets if you ask it to.
Ice.key will do everything the standard key object won't let you do:
optionally field keystrokes when Max is in the background, field
keystrokes even when Max thinks some other UI object has focus,
handle key down, key up, auto-key, get "dead" keys (like option-e,
option-i, etc.), menu commands... if you want the keystroke, ice.key
will field it to you. And ice.mux and ice.demux are a highly flexible
multiplex/demultiplex pair.

I will stop on iCE here. Please look at the Web site for more
information (URI below). Please direct queries to oh,
the full address is on the web site (easy enough to figure out from
the company's URI). Since this is posted to a web forum, we don't
want to make spammers' life too easy.

> Shoot, you can buy renoise for 50 bux.

Renoise~? Well, I can top that with lp.nn~ (now plugging a different
package). Pro-rated, the price for lp.nn~ is under a dollar. (Looking
at things from your point of view, I should perhaps reconsider the
price structure for Litter Pro).

> And most trackers are free.

If we weren't convinced that iCE did *TONS* more than "most
trackers", we wouldn't even have bothered to develop it, let alone
charge money for it.

The saying goes that free trackers, like free advice, are worth every
penny you pay for 'em.

Hope this helps,
Peter

Jeremy

No, Renoise: www.renoise.com

Am 12.01.2007 um 03:15 schrieb Peter Castine:

> Renoise~?

Axiom-Crux

Renoise, the tracker, is actually quite powerful, and allows for tons of convenient and experimental features.

I guess basically what i am saying in the end is 200 is a bit much, and I know of a couple people who said they are interested in buying it but they also think its a bit too much. Even judging by your own litter power price, which has tons of functions that are very useful for much cheaper. Im not downtalking your product at all, I think its great and really powerful for sure.

Good luck!

Axiom-Crux

that piano roll is great, thanks julian!

robotic-audio

is the UB Version ready yet ? i can't figure from the homepage...

1.1 UB it says, but in the purchase tab it's version 1.0 UB comming soon ?

dimitris108

So what is the difference between Logic pro and iCE tools?

Gregory Taylor

> So what is the difference between Logic pro and iCE tools?

The former is an end-user application. The latter is a set of what appear to be rather robust tools one can use in the Max programming environment to do things that you might use a sequencing application for, and several things you might not be able to do, or not do easily. Perhaps the gating factor in deciding which one to use might be your facility with Max itself; If you're not at all fluent with Max, I doubt that the iCE tools would be much of a solution to anything.