Future Wotja Roadmap (visual...)

[animal]

Dear Pete, dear Tim,
I am very curious about your future ideas concerning Wotja, I see a lot of potential when it comes to integration of text and visuals, I do think, though, it needs deeper ways of interacting with the way pictures(/videos?) are being presented (my works are a realtime-manipulated mixture of audio and video, so this is what I'm concerned with, of course...)
Just wondering if you have anything you can disclose about your plans... .

[imtim]

Hi Animal

We tend not to disclose what our roadmap is simply because we are never sure what we are going to be able to so and we do not want to raise hopes and then maybe disappoint people if we cannot do something!

Our general approach these days is to try to focus on and improve what we can do best (e.g. the IME) and then try to keep Wotja open so that it can work in a number of work flows. For example, I wanted to create a music visualiser and found an app (Wizibel) that could work with an audio mixdown recording I made in Wotja. I think we can give the best results to Wotja users if we can understand more, in detail, as to what people want to use it for and how they would like to use it. We can them look to improve work flow over time.

The more we know that, the better we can make Wotja. Of course, it does seem that for a creativity app like Wotja there are multiple use cases, and that provides extra challenges!

Wrt your question, what apps do you use and have you found any work flows that work for you? What kind of things would you like to see it do more of?

Atb

tim

[animal]

Dear Tim,
I understand fully, and it's a wild world out there... . I am not looking for a replacement for my setup, since it is pretty complicated, with audioreactive visuals (VDMX on a Mac), and I don't see stuff like this happening on ios yet. But since you asked (and since you named WZBL): I hope for much further "tweakability" concerning the visual aspect. WZBL doesn't do very much for me, since there's hardly any (tweakable) audioreaction inside, I would suggest Apps like Pixivisor or Quantum Vj (rudimentary, but nicely experimental) for further development-ideas. The picture/video shouldn't just move about in a mechanical way, but somehow be responsive to audiofrequencies/mididata. That's where Wotja with its Noatiklbase comes into play for me, because it's all already in there, and you guys did greeeeaat work with the underlying programming! Thus I kinda hope for some kind of "intertangibility" of midi/audio/visuals/text (with the possibility of customizing it...). Also, concerning the momentary state of Wotja, visible text-input shouldn't just appear, but also be "playable", with some kind of generative aspect to it, too. And, what also comes to mind, I couldn't use Wotjas visuals for my shows, since it always has its logo dominantly appearing (and I didn't find a way to make it leave...).

I know, this might be quite a package, and I hope you take it in the best possible sense, it might take long still, but that's what I believe the future of ios (and instantaneous song/video- production will become. I see you guys at a culminating point of all possible crossroads, and wish you the best concerning the future (even if you don't decide for everything I ask).

If you are interested, some of my works are here (they all rely heavily on Noatikl, I love you guys!):
www.tobiasrobens.com/101/animalaleman

Cheers, t

[imtim]

Hi Tobias

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated. I tried to check out your site but it said I was missing the plugin and the Apple link takes you to here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205081. I tend to be reluctant to enable older plugins simply because I know I will then forget to disable them again!

Yes, we are at a kind of fulcrum but the issue is there are just 2 of us . And, we are also in a niche area which means there is little to keep the tanks filled. It is a tricky one, for sure. I agree it would be nice to see a lot more happening in the visualisation area on iOS but I cannot see how we would be able to find the time to do that well - with everything else we have to do. What would be really good would be if there was another app that could do the visualisation side and we could feed it MIDI / audio stream. OR, if we could ever make Wotja into an AU host and there was a MIDI controllable visualiser plugin we could use that way. Either way, none of it is at all trivial to do well and we are not venture capital funded .

Yes, doing more with text is something we want to look at and your comment about the watermark is useful to know.

Keep the feedback coming! I know you will be frustrated by how fast we can move, but, interestingly, I hope you are already seeing that now we are focused on Wotja we have been able to move a bit faster. We might not be able to move as fast as we have done the past few months (we have lots of time constraints) but we will keep pressing on. Thanks again for the appreciation - it really means a lot to us.

Atb

tim

[animal]

Dear Tim,
thanks for your response, and sorry for the plugin-dilemma (must be quicktime...), there's also stuff on

www.vimeo.com/animalaleman and youtube.

I understand completely you being just two and do appreciate your work. I'll try to stay constructive and open, concerning future input/ideas. At the moment, I am still much more into Noatikl than Wotja, to be honest, it is also almost overwhelming trying to get around inside Wotja, for me... .
Cheers, keep it up, t

[imtim]

Hi Tobias

Thanks for that link, I will have a look!

It would be very helpful if, when you have a few moments, you could see if you could put into words what it is you find overwhelming with Wotja, i.e. more so than Noatikl .

Wotja is a deep tool and we have tried hard to make it easy to use (we are close to it of course, and you should see where we started from!) and a goal of ours is to continue find ways to improve it wrt usability. We always know that things can be improved and we always appreciate constructive feedback!

So, if there is anything in particular that you find especially confusing and that you could highlight for us then it would help us a lot to know about as we could then have a think about it and see if there was anything we could do. You can email me directly if you want, too.

Many thanks for your interest!

atb

tim

[animal]

Dear Tim,
I'll try to explain. Maybe I just got used to Noatikl, using simple file rules with not much going on but morphing. My approach is always starting with very simple patterns evolving slowly (and in a sloow tempo), maybe two to three things playing sinewaves, and triggering various Apps on just one of the Midichannels. In some ways Midi still behaves strangely on ios (and thus often surprising, which I like!), some Apps are not being triggered, when using really low pitches etc... . I use this for fresh and surprising audioresults. What I am trying tomsay is: my Noatikl-projects are pretty basic, with not a lot going on (thus easy for me to keep a grip on everything, when connected to a variety of other Apps). Thus, when dealing with Wotja and starting a new project I mostly end up having to erase most of the initially instantiated sounds, I just haven't yet found a way to grasp it all (itmis also not very clear to me what exactly textinput is doing in the background, how it generates sound, and how to manipulate that intentionally... . Another thing is, I don't seem to have the filetitle visible in Wotja, while playing. Would be good to easily see it (like in Noatikl).
My usecase might not be the most common, I don't know. Also, the word "overwhelming might not have been the best to use here, I hope this makes it a little clearer... .

If there's any way to internally have Mididata influence the way a picture/video/text are being generated/visualized in some future generation of Wotja, you should keep it in sight,

I'll try to keep in touch, appreciating your work,
Good things!, cheers, t

[imtim]

Hi Tobias

Thanks for that. If you want to do that in Wotja, i.e. creating a simple piece from scratch, it is easy. You will only need to use one cell (we have considered adding a 1 cell mode and might do that one day) as a single cell is in effect a whole Noatikl piece.

Go Create New > Music Mix (manual) and from the left hand Pak list in the Templates screen select IME Voice Types and then Fixed Pattern (for simple, basic pattern voice). You get taken to the Mix view and will have 1 cell populated. To add another voice to that cell, either tap a Voice button in the piece and from the pop up menu select "Add Voice of Type" or tap the cell and from the pop up Templates screen select a template to add and select "Merge".

Text to Music (TTM) voices are simple once you get your head around them. You enter text into the text field and that text is used to generate a melody (a fixed pattern under the hood). Using the TTM voice parameters (see: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/guide/#i ... tterns-ttm) you have a good deal of control over how that melody is shaped. It is a fast, easy way to generate patterns, even if you cannot see them.

Yes, I can see it might be useful to see the file name. We will ponder that, so thanks for the suggestion.

Hope the above helps!

Atb

tim

[animal]

Thanks Tim,
the thing with the TTM is, I don't know which letters/words are creating what tones in what way (in any relation to what I have set up otherwise, concerning rhythm/nextnote etc.?), and thus don't see a way to manipulate it in a meaningful way. It seems to generate randomly, is that right?
Cheers, t

[imtim]

Hi Tobias

the thing with the TTM is, I don't know which letters/words are creating what tones in what way (in any relation to what I have set up otherwise, concerning rhythm/nextnote etc.?), and thus don't see a way to manipulate it in a meaningful way.

Correct on a number of counts.

At present the note patterns generated by the TTM generator do not rely on a Voice's Scale or Rhythm rule, but on some internal rule. Enabling a Voice's rules to affect the patterns would require a change to the Pattern format, but it is something we have on our list to do as it would add a lot of power (and thus it has been on the list for a long time I might add). My hope is that we can find a way to prioritise this, but that depends on Pete and him having the time to do it.

The TTM is meant to be a fast, fun way to generate random patterns where the fun of it is that you don't have to know about how they are generated. It is about spontaneity and serendipity. If you want deep control over patterns, then you would need to use the pattern format (and we don't have a pattern editor right now).

Hope that clarification helps!

Atb, tim

[animal]

Yes, this helps, thank you Tim.
Good wishes, t