Coming Soon: MIDI Integration, ASIO Support, Pedals and more!
Here's an update on what's coming next to Paradiddle. Some of these were slated for a late November release, but as features kept getting added this ended up taking a lot more time overall to manage the new complexity. Hopefully you won't mind hanging in there for a little longer - I've already implemented all of this, but am just doing additional testing until I can make sure it's ready to be released. This update will be going out some time in January.
MIDI Integration
I'm extremely excited to announce that MIDI In/Out support will be in the next update for Paradiddle! MIDI out support lets you send MIDI signals to any audio software that can take in MIDI, letting them use your own samples and apply your own effects to turn Paradiddle into a much more powerful audio creation tool. Each drum will have its own default MIDI note and channel that can be customized, and will send proper velocity information based on how hard the drum is hit.
MIDI in support will let you integrate any peripheral that can send MIDI signals to Paradiddle. This lets you do things like use electronic drum pedals that can send MIDI, and the drum will sound different based on the incoming velocity.
This has already been implemented, but I'm currently doing more testing to make sure I iron out some of the kinks. However based on my testing so far, it's been very satisfying to finally use Paradiddle with an e-drum kick pedal and trigger some fun samples in Ableton!
ASIO Support
Several of you have asked for ASIO support on the Discussion forums, and this will be in the next update as well. Users will be able to choose the Audio Output Device and Driver that's used by the system. Currently the two choices for the Audio Output Device are WASAPI (the default for Windows when using Paradiddle) and ASIO, but feel free to let me know if you'd want to see support for any other options as well.
I've done some preliminary testing with this, and I haven't seen a noticeable difference in latency between WASAPI and ASIO, but I understand that the ASIO settings can be tuned even further on the user's end. So after the next update it'll be interesting to hear how many of you can hear a noticeable difference in latency.
Additional Pedal Support
As I mentioned earlier, users will now be able to use additional pedals such as e-drum pedals through MIDI in. The way I'm currently doing this is by having an e-drum kick pedal going to a drum module, which is then connected to the PC. However, I've seen a few of you ask whether you could directly connect your pedal to the PC, or through an audio interface. Support for this will also be in the next release.
And More!
On top of these big features, the next update will also introduce some basic drum sound controls, such as controlling the max volume and the pitch of a drum. If you have any requests for what additional controls you'd like to see for drum sounds, feel free to let me know!
As always, if you have any comments, requests or feedback, you can post in the discussion forums or email hello@paradiddleapp.com.
The first update to Paradiddle is out! Here's what's new:
Remappable Controls
It's finally here! You can now customize your controls to your own liking in Paradiddle. Simply click on the Controls button in the Options tab to pull up the controls menu. This will show you all the buttons you can remap and what action they're currently mapped to.
Here are all the buttons you can remap:
Right Trigger
Left Trigger
Right Grip
Left Grip
(Oculus Touch only) A, B, X and Y buttons
Keyboard, or peripheral emulating keyboard: Ctrl and Space
To customize an input, click on the teal button under the name of the input and bring up the actions you can remap to. These are currently:
Trigger Kick
Open Hi-Hat: Pressing the button will open the hi-hat, and releasing it will close it. The hi-hat will stay closed in its resting state.
Close Hi-Hat: The exact opposite of the open action. The hi-hat will stay open in its resting state.
Your input mappings will be saved automatically as soon as you change them, and will be loaded back the next time you launch Paradiddle. If you want to reset to the default input mapping, you can simply use the Reset Defaults button in the Controls menu. If you have any suggestions on what other actions you'd like to be able to perform using your buttons (such as a record/stop recording action), I'm always happy to hear suggestions!
Other Changes
Fixed an audio format bug that played back the drum samples in a surround sound format instead of stereo. This should lead to better sounding audio samples overall.
Fixed a bug where the app launched in full screen mode on the Vive, even though it wasn't supposed to. When you launch the app on Vive you might notice a brief flicker where the app goes from full screen to windowed. Hopefully this isn't too distracting right now, this should probably get fixed soon.
Fixed a bug where the graphics setting wasn't getting saved and loaded back across sessions. I'm looking into a separate issue where it seems like the graphics setting isn't making much of a difference on the Oculus.
Further Updates
A popular community request seems to be support for more professional pedals such as e-drum pedals, so over the upcoming weeks I'll be experimenting with these and adding support for them.
The current plan for November also includes MIDI out support, and individual drum controls (such adjusting pitch, max volume, MIDI out note).
Thank you so much for your support so far! I'm really happy to hear that people have been enjoying their time in Paradiddle during this first week, and I'm very excited to shape the future of this app throughout Early Access with the help of your feedback. If you have the time, reviewing the app would be extremely helpful on the path to grow the Paradiddle community, and to let people know that my goal is to make the most user-friendly, flexible and responsive VR drumming tool out there for first time drummers and drumming enthusiasts alike.
As always, feel free to let me know if you have any other comments or questions.
Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle
Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/wjHnTVr
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Paradiddle Early Access is now Live!
Exciting news today!
The Early Access version of Paradiddle is now live & public. Feel free to start drumming and share your recordings with others in the community. I just wanted to share a few links that might be helpful:
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
Feel free to post on the discussion forums, the subreddit, Discord channel or email hello@paradiddleapp.com if you have any questions, comments, or bug reports.
I also wanted to let you know the updates that will be coming throughout November:
