Humusbeta

Performance capture

Humus is not a tape machine you arm track by track. One button keeps the whole living instrument: the audio you heard, plus every knob you turned, every controller move, the Metapad cursor and the notes, as lanes you can scrub and redraw.

Capture

  1. Get a patch making sound.
  2. Press Capture, the round button on the transport (Cmd+R or Ctrl+R).
  3. Play: knobs, the Metapad, notes, a microphone, the tempo.
  4. Press Capture again. One undo step puts it all on the timeline: the audio on a bed track, a lane for each knob you moved, the Metapad path and the MIDI.

Notes are recorded by MIDI Tracks whose round record button is lit, while Capture runs. Arm as many as you like: each records the same take and stays armed after Stop. Arming alone monitors, stopped or playing: the track plays your keyboard into the instrument it feeds, and when a MidiIn already plays that instrument it listens there instead, so nothing sounds twice. Arming a track is what puts the keyboard on it: selecting a row does not play it, and a muted row plays nothing even when armed, though it still records.

With nothing armed, Capture follows your cords: every node a MidiIn reaches gets an armed MIDI Track of its own, named after it, and the one it already had is armed instead of a second one being made. A MidiIn wired into both a drum and a Firefly gives you two tracks, one per node, and both record the same playing. Each new track starts on the input its MidiIn is on, All inputs when that MidiIn listens to every port, and Auto when two inputs on different ports reach the same node. A node no input reaches gets nothing, and the tracks undo with the take.

The input chip on a MIDI Track row picks what it listens to: Auto follows the patch as above, All inputs or a single port narrows it to that device, and None leaves only what reaches it through its cord. The light on the chip flashes as notes arrive.

A take that lands in a clip adds its notes to it; when the clip already held notes, the new ones wear a colour of their own, a different one each take. A sequencer's notes are recorded onto a MIDI Track you have armed between it and the instrument.

Right-click Capture to choose how it starts. Before recording offers Start right away, Count-in with the click or Pre-roll the song, for one, two or four bars. Automation write picks Touch, where a lane records only while you hold a control, or Latch, which keeps the last value until you stop.

While you move a control that has a lane, your hand wins and the lane shows an amber H. In Touch the lane takes over again about a beat after your last move, so you hear the automation, including what you have just written, while you go on playing or overdubbing notes. In Latch it stays held until you stop. Click the H to hand a lane back sooner.

Scrub and reperform

Drag the playhead after a take and the whole patch jumps to that moment: every knob and the Metapad return to where they were. Redraw a lane on the timeline and playback drives the knob the new way, over the audio you played.

Keep what already happened

While the transport plays, Humus holds the last thirty seconds of everything you do. When something good happens, press Keep the Last 8 Bars on the transport. The lanes and the Metapad path land on the timeline where they happened, and with an audio track in the patch the audio lands on it too. No arming, no planning.

Where recordings go

Audio goes to the Recordings folder of the patch's project, one file per take. A patch that has not been saved yet records into ~/Documents/Humus/Recordings/Untitled/, and its takes are copied into the project the first time you save. Undo takes a clip off the timeline and leaves the file on disk.