Loomer Architect

[Petajaja]

Anyone a user of this program here? I bought it a few months back and have completely fallen in love with it. I'm pretty new to using software for sequencing but people describe it as being like Max but devoted entirely to MIDI.

I've already got a ton of really nice results from it and even more inspiration but would love to have other people to chat with about patch designing and such.

Here's the site if anyone's interested in having a look: https://www.loomer.co.uk/architect.htm

The demo version is free and the only limitation is that you can't save a project. You can however save your patches as 'fragments' which can then be loaded so not being able to save projects really isn't a huge limitation, I pretty much only bought it to support the developer as I think he's done a real great job with it.

Again, I'm really new to this kind of approach to music but I've so far made an editor for my Volca sample which adds a bunch of utilities that they don't currently have (such as being able to store a kit with a project rather than using the internal storage of the volca) I've also made a sequencer for my Motas-6 that allows it to be sequenced like a 303 with slides and accents and also a sequencer that turns the Motas-6 into a drum machine with up to 9 independent voices (at a stretch). It's also of course amazing at mathematic / algorithmic / generative sequencing and even just straight forward sequencing, the preset sequencers it comes with are already much deeper than anything you'll find in hardware.

Finally, I've not done extensive testing but I've experimented with some time critical stuff at like 999bpm and the timing has always been very tight which was a nice surprise after hearing so many people complain about timing issues when using a computer for their sequencing.

Also.. I never really introduced myself here despite having lurked here for some years now so.. hello!

[xy_politics]

Yeah, I bought it quite a while back. 

Amazing tool for sure but it hasn't had much use here tbh.  I moved over to Bitwig which has many useful sequencing and note processing functions.  Also I own Plogue Bidule which can handle most of the lower-level MIDI processing things I need using off-the-shelf modules.  I also bought all the HY-Plugins sequencers which I am having a blast with and can recommend to all and sundry

Eventually I'm sure I'll want to build a fully-custom sequencer for something or other, and then it'll come into its own

[auxien]

looking through the quick start guide (which is almost 40 pages lol) and this is obviously a pretty powerful piece of software. definitely has the same look/general approach as Max, but for MIDI, like you said. i'm trying (trying!) to stay off of the computer for the most part when it comes to making music so i don't think it's something for me, but if i had seen this years ago i may have been very excited about...this is exactly the sort of thing i was wanting to learn Max for. i'm sure there's a few around here who would be into this if they've not yet heard about it.

i'm currently considering grabbing a Blokas Midihub (https://blokas.io/midihub/) for similar fun and fuckery, but obviously not as complex...tho you can do some pretty interesting and tricky stuff with it apparently...plus it's designed more for loading onto the device then removing from the computer which is essentially a necessity for me these days.

good to see more MIDI manipulation stuff getting traction, i think that's been a very under-utilized area of music tech.

edit: and welcome to WATMM from a former longtime lurker as well 

Edited January 5, 2021 by auxien

[TubularCorporation]

Just have to be insufferably pedantic here and point out that Max has always been MIDI-only.  MSP is for audio.  They're so fully integrated now that it's easy to forget.

 

 

[Petajaja]

4 hours ago, xy_politics said:

Yeah, I bought it quite a while back. 

Amazing tool for sure but it hasn't had much use here tbh.  I moved over to Bitwig which has many useful sequencing and note processing functions.  Also I own Plogue Bidule which can handle most of the lower-level MIDI processing things I need using off-the-shelf modules.  I also bought all the HY-Plugins sequencers which I am having a blast with and can recommend to all and sundry

Eventually I'm sure I'll want to build a fully-custom sequencer for something or other, and then it'll come into its own

 

I think Architect is actually pretty great even without diving to deep, as well as having all the building blocks to build pretty much whatever you want (and a lua scripting module to do anything not possible with those blocks) you also have plenty of finished objects like the mono / poly step or aux sequencers, these don't take too much effort to learn and the possibilities with them are pretty exciting to explore.

I can imagine it being easier to be productive with something like Bitwig though, currently most of my time spent with Loomer is just me learning and experimenting with ideas. Never heard of Plogue Bidule, I'll be sure to take a look at it!

 

4 hours ago, auxien said:

looking through the quick start guide (which is almost 40 pages lol) and this is obviously a pretty powerful piece of software. definitely has the same look/general approach as Max, but for MIDI, like you said. i'm trying (trying!) to stay off of the computer for the most part when it comes to making music so i don't think it's something for me, but if i had seen this years ago i may have been very excited about...this is exactly the sort of thing i was wanting to learn Max for. i'm sure there's a few around here who would be into this if they've not yet heard about it.

i'm currently considering grabbing a Blokas Midihub (https://blokas.io/midihub/) for similar fun and fuckery, but obviously not as complex...tho you can do some pretty interesting and tricky stuff with it apparently...plus it's designed more for loading onto the device then removing from the computer which is essentially a necessity for me these days.

good to see more MIDI manipulation stuff getting traction, i think that's been a very under-utilized area of music tech.

edit: and welcome to WATMM from a former longtime lurker as well 

Hah, I feel you on wanting to say away from the computer. I work from home and spend all day at my computer, it can be kind of hard to transition to the mindset for music sometimes. I had the Pyramid before I start using Architect and only ever worked with hardware sequencers prior to that, there's definitely things I miss about having a dedicated unit for this kind of stuff but I also was getting frustrated at pretty much every hardware sequencer having some annoying limitation that another doesn't, I also didn't like the interface of the pyramid too much. With my aversion to using a computer for making music in mind, I only use it for sequencing and generally try and just do a stereo recording of whatever I make (honestly can be a bit of a pain, I do see the appeal of a DAW!)

I used to own a mio10 which I sold to fund two of those Blokas midihubs, they're really great and I've got nothing but good things to say of the company. I think in time they'll expand the utility of it a lot and it's already one of the most feature packed devices of its kind. Since I started using Architect though, I mainly use it for routing as it's generally faster for me to set up things in Architect while I have that window open. 

Yeah I'm happy to see interest growing in this area, there's so much amazing stuff to come from it, much of it I've not really heard in much music so I feel like there's a lot of unchartered territory here.

Thanks for the welcome!

 

2 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

Just have to be insufferably pedantic here and point out that Max has always been MIDI-only.  MSP is for audio.  They're so fully integrated now that it's easy to forget.

 

 

Haha, shows how much I know, I didn't even know there was two versions. I wonder how Architect and Max compare, I saw some talk about why Architect has some advantages over max when it comes to MIDI but I can't remember what it was, there's a lot of good info from users on the loomer forum at kvr though!

[TubularCorporation]

Well, there was Max and then there was Max/MSP (MSP = Max Signal Processing) so it's more like MSP was an extension for Max, the same way Jitter is, but they were already inseparable by I think the end of the 90s.  I wasn't kidding about being insufferably pedantic.

 

Architect looks pretty nice.

[Nil]

I bought a licence when Architect got release (late 2018) but soon after discovered Tidal Cycles and have been live-coding since then.

BUT last week, I dusted my licence and started to patch, and I'm blown away by how intuitive it is. I went from the sequencer in the Quick Start guide and modded it to test some generative ideas, and I'm positive I'll build a few sequencers with it for my next slew of tunes. Super promising and inspiring, I'm delighted !

I'll add Colin who develops Architect is incredibly helpful and equally as responsive.