As someone who doesn't game and never used steam, can you explain to me how it works buying this? Would I need to always have internet connection to run it? Or can I just download it onto my laptop and have it run regardless of connection?
@@EricJohnson-fh8zj If you don't use Steam for anything else, it'll probably seem a little cumbersome to install just for this product, but it's not difficult to do. Once installed, you could theoretically switch steam to "offline mode" and never have to worry about an internet connection again. I think you might need to disable offline mode to receive automatic updates (even if you have an active internet connection), but otherwise you can use the product uninhibited indefinitely, with or without a connection.
what a cute comment.. but sadly Benn is a nobody :/ i the world of youtubers and viral vids.. the only thing Benn is known for is having weird eye brows.
@@dbptwg are you autistic or what are you trying to say? it's the fact that you have been tricked in a funny way but he told you right away about it what makes it enjoyable, like a joke with a pointe
It's so nice when GAS hits an entirely new itch I didn't even know existed AND sets me back $20 instead of like 2 grand. What a delightful program, the "gaming brain plus music brain" is an underutilized crossover. I'm a data analyst in my 9-5 and this feels like programming a solution for manipulating or rolling up and analyzing data. This is going to be a deep enjoyable dive. Thanks again for all the content and Mark Twain lies
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol Rather than reducing the experience of others to a microbially simplistic motive, you could choose to view it as a triumph of human spirit that despite how miserable life might seem sometimes, musicians still find it in them to make sacrifices for the sake of developing their art, to hope that they and the world might be *more* for their efforts. If the burden of your sadness has grown so heavy that you feel the need to offload it into a completely innocuous and pleasant online discussion, please consider whether it might better be placed in the hands of a mental health professional who can give you the support you need.
I'm incredibly impressed that this software was developed by someone who just learned coding as their first project?! I'm a programmer myself and this is insane
That is literally bonkers. Even just doing the UI work alone would be way beyond the average beginner… yet this has VST support, audio encoding, probably a bunch of driver integration… Dude’s a genius.
I'm not going to claim I could do this as my first project because I have a biased opinion on my current abilities... but most of this can be done with freaking StackExchange plus trial-and-error. The idea itself is much more impressive.
@@TheUnderscore_a lot can be done nowadays especially with the help of generative AI, however me, after watching 30 minutes of 4 hour course on python, I managed to hole myself into 5 hour journey to program an interactive shopping list (no gui), be very impressed with my resourcefulness and how incredibly optimized I managed to code it with basically 0 skill even tho it took 5 hours, only to then never watch the rest of the 4 hour course and never program anything else 😂 so I think the most impressive thing of all is that they actually stuck with it and finished it and didn't give up on it.
The "not enough alternative ways" thing struck me real hard. I do field service inspection and when I'm taking a break in my car I'll be zoning off on nanoloop doing live techno and FX-free dnb
Yeah I've had a lot of fun with nanoloop, it's great for little ideas. Sometimes I run into dead ends if I have something specific in mind where I can't really do what I want (like the limited number of patterns), but if you're just playing around it's easy to get something cool going.
This was kind of like the thing where you think you dislike an ingredient and then go to a good restaurant and realize that you just had a bad version of it previously. The only generative stuff I've seen thus far has been purely mathematical curios with little if any musical value, or modular guys going ham and ending up with a naive salad of noise and random notes. This was really eye-opening, thank you
Sort of like AI art and whatnot, how you prompt it, and nudge it this way or that way to give it a "human touch" greatly enhances the results of the generative work. I've had some great results with Max 4 Live devices after nudging the parameters juuuust right
To be fair, even a very musical human will mostly come up with bad musical ideas. An important skill as a musician is filtering which ideas area good and which are not, so I don't know where people ever got the idea that generative AI music was ever going to make #1 hit songs that everyone loved with each pull of the lever. The goal is really to get it closer to the point where it's more in line with what a human can do, which again, is mostly meh, some terrible, and occasionally something that's at least the start of something more interesting.
I've spent a lot of time in both Midinous and Orca and they're both fun in different ways but I can't imagine actually making a whole thing in Orca, it's way too abstracted.
I bought Midinous _aggggges_ ago, played with it a bit, thoroughly enjoyed it, put it down and haven't picked it up again since. Not because it's not great, but because I got distracted and... you know how it goes. It looks like a bunch of features have been added since then and I've now got all of my hardware synths hooked up for midi to my PC, so I'm definitely going to check it out again! Thanks for reminding me of its existence!
no joke this just makes more sense in my brain than a conventional DAW. This just gave me so many ideas of a new software I could make that is inspired by this idea!!!! Midinous is so cool!
Awesome video! I can't help but mentioning I made software for Ableton (Max for Live) called New Path some time ago, heavily inspired by Electroplankton as well! 🙂 It has a similar grid of arrows, but it adds many features like teleports and crossroads, etc. And it's a midi device so you can control anything you want with it, synths, samplers, drums, parameters, etc.
Jesus how the hell have I never heard of this? I am a hobbyist computer scientist, an IT guy, electronic musician and I am all about the non-random, generative midi. (That was regarding nodal, but also other interesting stuff after..)
I absolutely love this! ORCA was one I enjoyed playing around with, but I really appreciate the visual layout of this - it feels both in-depth while also surprisingly intuitive. I'm definitely gonna demo this, and for $20 (currently on sale), it's almost certainly something I'd be interested in picking up!
As someone without classical training, but an interest in music and having the background of a gamer the is such a beautiful thing. Being able turn timing notes into a logic puzzle is awesome. SIDE NOTE: I stumbled across your video but listen to you work on Spotify all the time and love it! didn't know until the end of the video!
Been looking for something like this without knowing it since i got into musicmaking! Thank you for consistently being a motivational force in my life wonderful human!
This totally blew my mind. I know it's not the same thing but when using Punk-o-Matic 2 to make music, the benefit of having a band perform the piece takes it to another level of enjoyment. So this is like performance & creation in one too. I love watching this play through something you make.
And it's in these moments where it's a bit depressing to find a video that is so relaxing, cool, exciting and brilliant. And a pity not being able to share it with someone who is not even interested and may be surprised as I have done.
I would like to thank the algorythm for taking me to a video from a RU-vidr I didn't follow about a software I didn't know about. Good job! Also, this seems much more approachable than Wotja, which I had fun with for generative music, but whoose learning curve seems much more steep when you want to get more complex stuff going.
I absolutely love this, instant purchase. This sounds much more like the music I've heard in my own head than anything I've managed to do with Ableton. Blown away. Downloaded it last night and was expecting it to be a task to route midi into my DAW but it just works straight away with no issue. Your video is also very clear on how to set things up. Thank you!
This is pretty cool. At the end of the day, it's just the UI that's unique here. I don't think it has a single feature that my DAW doesn't. But it sure is an interesting setup.
I'm glad I've only discovered your channel very recently. So much goodness to enjoy without having to wait until you release something new! Always been a fan of algorithmic music-making, so I'm definitely buying Midinous.
This looks amazing for pattern based progressive metal. Stuff like meshuggah for example! It looks much more intuitive to make polymeters and repeating patterns. At the same time i really like beat scholar which does that thing but even better, this is much better for making melodies though
2 decades ago I came up with almost the same idea. I had visions about a nonlinear music sequencer that works like a cross between a model train table and a tape echo - the trains are like tape pieces and the player can build his rail layout and place record and playback heads everywhere, those make sounds when the "trains" pass is. Trains can have different tempo or run through a crossover (that may split it to exit at both ends) etc. etc.
Dude- I have a spreadsheet of collected inspirational quotes and stopped the video to add the "Mark Twain" quote to it -- then had to go back and change it to "Benn Jordan" after you confessed! I like it more as a Benn Jordan quote anyway. ;)
I was in love with this a minute into your demo. I HATE fussing around with stuff in DAWs, and this seems so fast for sketching, creating, and exploring. EDIT: Sweet lord, it is linux native, I am buying this the second I get home.
Unfortunately Bitwig and Reaper can't open it without going over the hassle of loading a virtual midi port driver. However it works great with Ardour, Qtractor, Carla, BespokeSynth, VCV/Cardinal and of course external gear :)
WOW. this is INCREDIBLE, I'm absolutely buying this!! From a graphic designer's perspective, I always wanted to experiment with music making but struggled to understand the interfaces of any DAW I tried. for the uninitiated, it feels like being in the pilot's chair in an airplane where there are a million tiny levers and buttons and switches and it's not immediately clear what any of them do. But THIS makes use of grouping similar things together, which is like, one of the main tenants of graphic design, it makes something so much easier to understand. Having little closed circuits in different areas for baseline, main melody, percussion, etc. makes this SO much easier to understand for me. I hope there's some settings where we could make circuit lines bolder or thinner as well, having something like that would help immensely with visual hierarchy and make things even more readable. Your loudest main melody could be bold lines and quieter backround circuits could be thinner. I'm so excited about this, thank you for making a video about it!!!
The patch that's shaped like a tree sounds amazing! It's like a blending of the Demon's Souls "Maiden in Black" and Breath of the Wild overworld music.
As someone addicted to Factorio this is even cooler! I'm mind blown by the clock you made at the generative music part. There's a channel who made procedural djent and i immediately got the idea to just replace all random notes with sequences in a way that allows this random generation to pick each sequence, and it's all visible and not just code everywhere. This is just incredible to watch for any logic nerd out there.
As a programmer.... I felt chills watching this application at work... It covers the basics of Node based programming in an almost artistic fashion that I could never seek to comprehend... It's like marveling at math, the complex computations of infinity, watching as it can go on and on with infinite possibilities. With undisputed potential. I aspire to write a program, app, or game as complex and complete as this.
I cannot like this enough times. I have been into writing complex and cascading modi sequences and experimenting with how to effectively add, ostensibly, randomizing triggers with specific parameters or for specific things and then and then and then. This, just... is all of the things. I'm also a video game junkie so how I missed this until NOW! Step aside Reaper, if only for a few (hundred) hours. Thank you thank you and a million times thank you. I may change that to DAMN YOU for ruining my life because I do nothing else but write nodal modular music inside the realm of midi "games", the absolute wet dream of nooooo one else but meeeeee... and everyone who checked this out so, clearly like a bunch more people. surely what else could I not know of...?
Subscribed. Right when the cord was triggered at 19:37. Something about that routing follow into the chord, and the duration of the cord timing out, I dunno... just got me. Also... bought it, too.
I'm literally crying. I've been playing bass/guitar for 15 years, it's been fun, but what you described in the intro is literally me. I see the fretboard and I see quite literally exactly 100 notes in front of me, I know theory but when I sit down I see ALL of the theory I know put in a big bucket all at once. aaaaaaaaaaand I'm also a huge fan of factorio, put a good number of hours into all the zachtronics games. This sounds like something made for my brain.
This is seriously an amazing video. Thank you for making this. Ive always wanted to make music but for aome reason i havent been able to commit. This feels like something id accidently apend whole days working with
Honestly this is such a cool idea. I'm a software engineer and I am also often thinking about alternative, more programmatic ways of making music. But all my ideas so far would've been text/code based, which is hard to use for "normal" people. If this starts to support plugins and mixer channels I'm definitely going to use it!
I was desperately hoping Nodal would get an upgrade. Maybe I've found out it is named Midinous. I'll check it out. Thank you so much for the always inspiring content, Benn.
I often procrastinate on watching your videos because they are longer than the limited time I have to sit and watch something. But every time I do take the time to watch them I learn something not just informative but for lack of a better word “life changing”. Or maybe lifestyle changing. I’m not sure, but my point is that the information value that you provide for literally free is mind blowing and appreciated so much by this one random dude on the internet. Thanks Benn Jordan!
As someone who jumped on this as soon as it was released, I'm excited to see this innovative product get some exposure. When I can't decide whether to do something in Bitwig or play a video game, Midinous bridges the gap. It really is the most unique, paradigm shifting sequencer you've ever seen. It's the sequencer that Hexcel and Midigrid wish they could be.
I need this kind of incrental node based music system as a sound controller for a game. This is going to my bucket list. Just imagine the granularity you can achieve for stuff like threat music in dynamic enviroments.
Just took it for a quick spin and _Ooof!_ This is fantastic! Just alone for the incredible ease of making one note, wherever it is in the sequence, trigger something else. Weee!
This looks sick! Though clicking around to make music is the thing that makes me want to get out of a DAW in the first place 😅 Probabilistic plugins and programs are always great ways to generate ideas you wouldn't have otherwise thought of
Only in the first min of the vid, but I have to throw in Gene Wolfe's advice on writers block, which is to ask yourself, "What's the next cool thing that happens?"- the important word here being cool... a very subjective word, but one in which your own tastes and those of your readers (or listeners, I guess) are strongly likely to align. "Happens" is of course another key word for this to work lol.
Luminaria!! I loved Electroplankton SO much as a kid, SimTunes also. Honestly MidiNous reminds me a LOT of SimTunes. I *REALLY* wish Toshio Iwai had done more stuff after that.
DUDE - this software is pretty cool! I did not even know it existed and after watching the tutorial - since you know the person who made this... I would make one suggestion... In the tutorial it is not explained how to use an external VST or instrument. I got it worked out in a minute after I remembered you saying something about it creating a port... But I just was thinking Hmmm this should probably get put into the tutorial so others can figure it out. (also I am a dev, and get that sometimes - we THINK people know stuff... but they don't lol) - PS I used Halion and it was cool - might do a video about it using Halion and point to your video if you don't mind. Thanks Benn!!
Yes, I was left baffled as to whether or not Midinous even allows VSTi's (or is this just a Falcon thing?). I mean, would Ominsphere 2 work with this (or any other VSTi in my collection)? Unfortunately, the guy in the video didn't make this clear.
@@philipford6183 The very first words in the description are, "Midinous is a non-linear MIDI sequencer",. most VSTi seem to be triggerable through MIDI.
This is amazing! I can play simple bass, I can play guitar like a bass, I can fat-finger piano - but because of that, my creative expression for music is mostly in my DAW FL Studio's piano roll, which is tough when you need to let your creativity flow. Connecting this to FL Studio has given me a new way to doodle and find what I'm looking for in terms of inspiration. Thank you!!
This is incredible. Being a software developer, and music producer I would be lying If I haven't though of doing one application similar to this. MIDINOUS is incredible, and I feel that this, or any other software in this line, can be enough to open creation to new grounds. Think like the game of life, where new patterns, or music "factories", can be discovered, shared, and people might generate their own music styles, within a template or pattern. Add some voice generation, and some effects gimmics, and it's a full one man music producing studio.
I've always been interested in things like these because I have a lot of interest in music and sound design, but I find myself very weak at composition and struggle to do much beyond making ambience. This approach to music really tickles my programmer side and fits into a view of making music that feels better suited for the way I think. Maybe some day I'll have the time and money to invest into it because it looks really cool.
One of the many reasons I loved bhajis loops for palm pilot and even now my old as hell rs7000 is that they had interesting inspirational tools to play with when there were no ideas kicking around your head. For instance a tool I like to use o. The rs7000 is one that most people ignore: the huge selection of midi clips that are assigned to styles and instrumentation but you don't have to stick with that...combine that with the midi remixes function and the midifx knobs that time stretch and shift notes around....you can make a completely original tune and play absolutely no notes. It's all pushing around preset midi data and it can go into extremely cool places quickly and its just a lot of fun.
I'm so glad I saw this! Thanks to this video I got Midinous on the weekend and I've been having so much fun making a song with branching paths :D Inserting a new section in the middle of a song feels very natural, because you don't have to move anything around, you can just stick a new path wherever. And I like that I can either make the hubs random, or tell them exactly what order to do the paths and exactly how many times. I can stick strictly to verse-chorus-verse if I want to, or not!
Seems cool, and different enough from existing node-based graphical coding systems like PureData and MaxMSP that it's adding something novel to the mix.
Ok - I begrudge the fact that you have just lured me down a rabbit hole of generative music creation that I didn't know existed 🤣!. Seriously, thanks for showing this off, this is a good enough reason for me to get onto steam! I can see that this will show up in my future releases...
There is one app I have on my iPad called Senode reminds me of this. Placing nodes, adding probability and linking back things like repeats or creating loops
This is why I love Renoise, and I came from oldschool DOS tracking Fasttracker II. This is very cool, and helps to break us out of the monotony of piano roll.
I say this on most videos I think but your demos are always so on point and inspiring and holy fricken shizzle 21:36 is so amazing. I just got home from work to finish the video and it transported me to another space entirely. amazing stuff
I was literally trying to find an app like this on Steam this past weekend. Amazing timing! Music software is either extremely under represented on Steam, or impossible to search.
Love the results very inspiring but the interface would make my brain melt unfortunately but maybe in the future we can get this on iPad I think a touch interface would make more sense
I gotta say virtualizing the expensive option is amazing. VR synth is amazing. It has a long way to go before we're building custom electronics and really cracking the ceiling, but it's well on its way.
Not even thru the vid ,but the beginning part abt writers block , for anybody working thru that, that's so true. Sometime u gotta try some different. Game changer
23:29 would be super slick at this stage of the piece, to have the atmospheric builds crescendo and then sharply CUT, all the way down to just a few of the main melody instruments, and then resetting and repeating that pattern a few times 🤘🏻
I had a very similar idea 8 years ago with no programming knowledge, and my friends called it dumb. I didn’t have the time nor interest to learn programming, so I’m glad someone who knows what he’s doing is making something similar. It kind of makes me want to make MY version of it
In the early 80's, i had the opportunity to practice a new way of creating music with Xenakis' UPIC. I was a kid and i thought it was something like a big 'etch and sketch' making weird sounds. I only realized a few years after how revolutonary it was.
One thing I really like about is that you can have all your instruments right in front of you, without having to select and switch instruments or adjust windows around so you can see more of them at once... They're just all there, and you also have whole patterns on screen, without having to constantly side-scroll around. I find it much more practical to zoom and pan around in this "worktable" kind of workflow.
my fav part is seeing programs that generate music like the DS game shown in the vid make really fun visuals, after all music is half of the painting, visuals fills the other half