TinyBox

15/11/2020

I had a few days off, but Corona forced me to stay home and behave... So I decided to use that free time to release a small TinyBox update. Nothing spectacular: ControlCenter now has the possibility to export a setup to text file, and import a setup from text file (for those who don't like to use Cmd-C Cmd-V). And the new firmware has a small ("breaking"!) change in the way you scroll through a setlist. I followed the suggestion of a TinyBox user and made this more intuitive : from now on you use the DOWN switch to go to the next song, and the UP switch to return to the previous song. (nothing changes if you don't use setlists : in that case use UP to go to the next bank and DOWN to go to the previous bank).

20/08/2020

And while I was at it I also added support for some additional less used MIDI commands :
SongSelect
SongPositionPointer
TuneRequest
SystemReset

20/08/2020

Today I added some more flexibility in the TinyBox programming. You could already use the commands "SwitchOn", "SwitchOff" and "SendTrigger" in the content of a preset in order to (de)activate effects or send trigger contents. These commands were not allowed in the content of an effect or trigger, because that could potentially lead to an "infinite loop" : activating an effect could trigger a command to again activate that same effect - that would definitely lock up the TinyBox... I have now been extending the TinyBox code compiler to detect this kind of infinite loops. Thanks to that detection, I now am able to allow the "SwitchOn", "SwitchOff" and "SendTrigger" commands in the content of an effect or trigger too. The picture below shows some examples of the infinite loop detection in action - you'll immediately understand what this is about when looking at that sample code. With the upcoming editor version it will be very easy for instance to deactivate certain effects as soon as you activate a specific effect, thus making certain effects "mutually exclusive".

03/07/2020

When you combine the TinyBox with a JackBox you don't even need an FCB1010 any more - that is, if you like it Really Tiny! An Up/Down switch could select the next/previous preset in your preset list, and 2 expression pedals can be assigned to any continuous control (volume, wah, pitch, ... ), which can be different for each preset . You can add a "virtual tip switch" and/or "virtual heel switch" to each expression pedal to have even more control.

03/07/2020

A new product is on the way! The JackBox, an add-on for the TinyBox. It allows you to extend your FCB1010 with 2 more external footswitches and 2 extra expression pedals! In a TinyBox setup each bank now can contain 12 presets, and you can assign 4 different "sweeps" to 4 pedals.

11/06/2020

I made a short video of the TinyBox in action. A Raspberry Pi runs TinyBox ControlCenter to host the music score files and FCB1010 status webpage for the iPad. Single cable from TinyBox to FCB1010 - no more mains cable needed. iPad connects through WIFI. Sorry for the bad lighting conditions - you should be able to read all preset names on the virtual FCB1010 switches, you can see that better in the second part of the video.

05/06/2020

And just a last one: talking about looping, it made me go back to a video from old-time LittleGiant user Reyn (wow, old-time indeed: 12 years ago already?!). His theme is old-time too: Commodore 64 tunes turned into looping gems. This one does build up gradually, yet it doesn't bore me for one second
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8UBY8Yj9c0 😎

Live Remix of Martin Galway's Green Beret.

05/06/2020

Talking about looping... Sometimes looping in pop music is considered boring, as it usually takes some time to lay down a ground layer and then start building your song on top of that. That's not always true. Look at how smooth this guy is performing a Radiohead cover :

Music video by Can Oflaz performing High And Dry. (C) 2020 Sony Music Entertainment Türkiye Tic. A.Ş. Songwriters - Composers: Greenwood Colin Charles, Green...

05/06/2020

A few days ago someone asked me for the latency specs of the TinyBox. Interesting question indeed. Many years ago, when launching the Gordius Little Giant MIDI controller, we attracted the attention of the Looper community - these guys learned us how important a low latency spec is for their use cases. As the TinyBox design followed the same principles as the earlier Gordius products, we could expect similar results, but the question triggered me to spend a few days on doing extensive latency tests. The results are very satisfying, as you can read in following test report - if you're interested in these nitty gritty tech details of course :

02/06/2020

If anyone is still linking "MIDI" to "crappy synth sounds", please take your time and watch this marvellous demo of SWAM ("synchronous waves acoustic modeling"). Physical instrument modeling for the win!

Today we demonstrate the full capabilities of the SWAM engine. Doctor Mix joins Audio Modeling CEO Stefano Lucato to discover the virtual acoustic instrument...

29/05/2020

Why not share it here too :
today I was asked what could be a possible way to browse through all 768 presets of an Axe-Fx. Of course the TinyBox has plenty of memory so it's no problem at all to create 77 banks and fill them with 768 presets, one for each Axe-FX preset. Each TinyBox preset can send a "Bank Select" CC message to specify 1 of the 6 Axe-Fx banks followed by the ProgChange message to select the preset within that bank. However I played around with the "data variable" and "if then else" possibilities of TinyBox, and that brought me to a setup in which you can select all 768 presets by creating just 1 bank with 8 switches :
+1 / -1 / +10 / -10 / +100 / -100 (and for convenience I added: "Next bank" / "Prev bank")
Have a look at the code for this solution here :
https://pastebin.com/aqpS8qCK
At first sight it may look a bit complicated, but that's just because the Axe-Fx banks are groups of 128 presets, while we are used to count in 1 / 10 / 100 instead.