Fors Opal users thread

I don’t think that’s possible. there’s no sequencer parameters in the modulation destinations.

unless I’m missing something, which is highly possible :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

@Ess would it be possible to be able to retrig a pattern with automation? with dummy clips I can happily change patterns but it continues at the current page index, at least as far as i can tell.

Maybe duplicate the pattern, and switch when you want to reset?

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Opal always follows the song pointer position of Live – the reasoning here is that you’ll get the same result from the step logic and different pattern lengths no matter when you press play. So for example if you render out a track it’ll always play back in the same way– or when just jamming around, there’s no way to end up in a non-reproducible state.

What I could do is to add an “internal clock” mode in which Opal uses its own counter for the song pointer. This would then reset each time you press play/stop the transport of Live.

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i did that, but the song pointer remains the same.

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so i’m maybe missing something here, so please forgive any misunderstanding. when in session view mode, for the particular track, does song position make sense. would it not rather be, that everything is sync’ed to the current quantization value, which would then allow a reset of a pattern to happen, once a trigger has been received, at the next quantization multiple?

Session mode still uses the transport of Live, so it’s not technically different – however I understand your use case and I think it would be nice to add an option to have an internal counter.

Regarding reseting the pattern, that’s a whole different aspect that I’d have to think a little bit about, what makes sense etc.

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Since I used Opal to experiment with odd time patterns like 5/4, I usually also have odd number of step length pages too. I can only be hopeful that this answer can help.

I do think it’s really helpful to find the right time signature for your project, and match the metronome count with your step length pages count. For example in my case, I set my step length to 10 per page. That way every 2 pages with 1/1 time division will worth 20 steps which also equals to 1 bar of 5/4. I can then extend the step pages to 8 and make it into 4 bars worth of 5/4 (since it takes 2 pages to create 1 bar).

Afterwards, I’ll check if it’s in time with my metronome by simply making sure the first count of the beat lands exactly at my Opal’s very first page every time it finishes a cycle. By making sure of that, I’m able to automate pattern change without any misalignment between my Opal’s steps and Ableton’s clock. It works on both arrangement and session view.

To help myself count when doing something like polymeter, I usually make sure my kick stays within the set time signature and let my snare, hats, perc to run in variety of step length counts. By doing that, I can always check on my kick’s step length pages to see if it stays in time or not.

A little sidenote, I did find some visual lagging which can disorient the timing visually, when using too much cpu power. It didn’t affect the audio sync though.

Hope this reply fits the answer you’re looking for. If not, hopefully it helps in another way :pray:
Have a great day.

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I wasn’t able to get this working for push 3 unfortunately…

Is it possible to use some sort of on/off message to trigger the start/stop of Opal while in clips mode?

My current method of working is building up arrangements in clip mode and then “performing” a rough arrangement/performance into the arrangement window. At the moment, the Opal tracks don’t really have a way to get turned on/off when I launch the clips from the “Master” section (sorry if the terminology is completely wrong. I’m still very much learning things…).

This may go back to a question a week or so ago when someone asked about onboard transport controls for Opal as opposed to it being slaved to the master clock.

I’ll add, I don’t want to simply mute Opal since there’s very nice artifacts that happen when the transport stops and the triggered notes play out their final bits. It’s always sort of weird and interesting and I want to preserve all of those.

Hopefully this makes sense. I’ll clarify later if it’s not making sense.

Thanks!

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Not that I know of, but you can always create an empty sequence in Opal and switch to it (by automation) when needed.

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This is a great idea! So I’d use a CC to trigger the change of pattern, correct? Can I just setup a clip to do that sole task? I’m still new to the paradigm of clips (vs more linear thinking in Logic Pro), so sometime’s it’s not as clear to me how things work.

The one thing that comes to mind is I seem to remember it being said that you need to factor in some lag into the pattern changes, so triggering immediately before the change might not be the right way to do it for an accurate pattern switch that hits tightly on the 1. This might mean creating a clip that actually has the CC towards the end of it, if that’s possible…

Sorry, just thinking out loud.

Thanks for the idea. I appreciate.

Sure, just set up clips containing the automation you need. I wouldn’t use midi CCs in this case, though, that would require setting it up. Normal automation should do the trick.

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Thanks so much for this advice! I took some time this morning and got this configured in my template so I can just have an easy way to turn Opal on/off in the clip view.

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@Ess i’ve loaded dust up on the push 3 standalone and the mapping seems to work pretty well, however the modulation tab seems to not work as I expected. the problem seems to be that i can map each mod destination to one of the targets, but i don’t seem to be able to set Vel, LFO, Env, Rand amount for each one.

Have i missed something or are these missing?

really nice plugin. couple of things that would be great, maybe theyre possible already & im not able to work them out ;

  • the pop out opal editor to not always be ‘on top’ when switching ableton channels
  • the ‘randomise all’ button to be midi mappable
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maybe a dumb question, but is there any way to move the device around teh screen like it’s always shown intutorials or is that just editing?

I’m not sure if this is what you mean, but if you run Opal from user library/devices/opal-rack/opal.amxd it will open in the rack:

However, if you run it from user library/devices/opad/opal.amxd, it will open in a floating window that you can move and even scale:

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that is exactly what I mean!

but for me it’s just: library/devices/opal.amxd. It’s still the same though.