Yeah, its time to leak some more information again about the upcoming new CoGe 1.3 release! As you already know, the CoGe 1.2 series added MIDI and OSC sending capabilities for sliders and buttons, and those changes made CoGe a powerful MIDI/OSC publisher. However, after I got my hands on some MIDI controllers that are capable to receive MIDI messages, just got the idea: why not make CoGe able to 'tell' controllers - both MIDI and OSC - about its state on an easy way? Well, thats the story sort, after spending a lot of time on testing whats the best way, I'm happy to introduce the MIDI and OSC Talkback in CoGe 1.3.
The concept is pretty easy: if an interface element, a slider for example, changing its value by a control module, or by your mouse, CoGe checks out if you did map a MIDI or OSC control for it, and if you did, the app will send a MIDI or OSC message to output MIDI/OSC port(s). When a device got the message, and it could handle it, it will react - in other words: lights turning on!
MIDI Preferences What you only need to do is enable Talkback function in MIDI or OSC preferences. The MIDI section of Preferences pane is something new. Here you can set up the behavior of the MIDI signal sending (Manual or Talkback), and it also has a section where you can enable and disable MIDI endpoints, both inputs and outputs. I think this is also a great addition for people working with multiple MIDI devices. So, back to the topic. After you enabled Talkback, the stuff is pretty simple. If you did map an interface element - slider, button, media slot, etc. - and do an action with it, the Talkback function just doing its job: sending MIDI/OSC messages back to devices.
If you ever used CoGe to control Live, Max/MSP or something else, you know after a while is pretty hard to recognize the MIDI/OSC sending enabled items on the interface. But it was hard just till now! I added two new items to the Outputs menu to show up enabled MIDI and OSC senders. If one of those functions is enabled, a blue background will show up on the sender item, with some information about the message its sending - channel, CC or Note number and the value! Much better, isn't it?
Here is a little video demonstrating the things you just read about. First, how to work with MIDI Talkback, then some examples, and finally the new function for showing enabled senders.
That's all folks, for now. Keep your eyes on the blog, I will write one more teaser-ish post, then release CoGe 1.3 next week!