Upgrading Usine accessibility for newbies (like me)

[La Tenaille]

Hello,
Usine is very hard to control for me, and I imagine it's the case for a lot of people who are not brain-equipped for maths and logic.
I've made a few patches, very simple patches, but I went hardly ever the good way to make things simple and efficient.

Then I opened the Nay-seven "FBC1010" add-on... and had the beginning of a heart attack ! "Simple patch" you write Nay, for me it's the crazy work of a Usine spider making hundreds of Usine cobwebs, diving into sub sub sub sub patches and using extraterestrial modules. I confess I felt a bit depressed, wondering if at last Usine was made for me, poor musician so proud to find how to send a program change from his pedal board to his multieffects
Then I asked myself : because Usine gives a lot of freedom to a skilled user, because Usine spirit is unique, what could help me gradualy master this soft ? The community is great (I'm very greatfull for the time you've already spent helping me), but I don't want to create 10 threads to draw ten wires from pins, it's a nonsense.

Then the Nay "little tools compile" gave me the begining of an idea : some of you are brillant users of Usine, have a global vision of the soft, know most of the modules perfectly, and are equipped for logic and rationality, enough to achieve simple patches the good way, quickly and efficiently. So what about making training tutorials, classified from beginner to experimented : the goal of the exercise, a patch to download, a step by step description of why you use this module, why you patch it that way.
And then some exercises to practice and assimilate what we've learned, with a "solution" to download to do a comparison... I know there are various ways to achieve the same thing, but I'd love to be initiated in order to choose mine, rather than suffer my unstable-CPU-killer creations !
I know it's easy for me to suggest that, because I'm not on the labour side, but I'd love to give up with frustration and feel I'm improving just like I do with my musical instruments.
Waiting for your comments

[nay-seven]

Thanks a lot for this post ,
yes , with senso ( and the community ) we are conscious of this problem
and are looking for solutions very often , the Teach yourself Usine in 13 minutes was a first step..
last simplification on audio module or switches are also in this way .

For my part , I'm working on organize workshop in different place ( Rennes in may is ok ,possibilities for Paris, Bruxelles i hope)
talking about my fcb patch , i understand and gone to add comment and explanation soon and will re upload it
( but i say simple because open some addons or patches from 23fx or martin and you'll find mines simple.. )

your idea of little exercises is of course great , now just need time as always..
the way you can help us , could be for example , when you encounter simple questions in the way you use Usine is to write them and compile in a thread or a mail
cause it's for me( us ) a great help to back to a general simple view of usine..
so don't hesitate to ask !!

[La Tenaille]

you're right, 23fx23 is an artist even in his patches conception !
I can't resist the urge to post a screenshot of his artwork



For me, it's Tokyo subway map

I'm going to create a text file on my daw to write all the difficulties I'm encountering. I'm also thinking about joining a workshop when possible, I'm near Lyon and I remember some of you were from there.
Thanks for trying to make Usine more user friendly

[23fx23]

hehe, that's a small town patch, i got one here looking like paris:) btween it seems the main module "matrix is missing (in red)

im sorry i can understand this patch is totally messy to understand, i generally go quick and it's clear on the moment, to finally get a giant spider web even me im lost into when i reopen, best is too organasize, and subpatch, with clear names. Im just often too lasy, and noticed it's less Cpu than subpatching, conforting my lasyness.
but senso once told that would be improved soon, so i'll try to clean my room...

seriously it's a good message you gave, we can here you, was same for me on opening usine i was totally lost, now i make
"artwork", so don't worry im sure you can get like spideman in a not so long time, im not a math killer neither.

I find also find nay idea of "10little utils" is excellent , and i will try to make an effort on making the same, maybe relating array manipulations.

im from chalon sur saone/paris so for me an eventual workshop near lyon is agreat idea, and i would enjoy help you any matter i an, by waiting feel free to ask on forum, we (at least I) all did the same and that was the best learning school imo.

[gurulogic]

La Tenaille,
I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. While the countless hours I've spent in Usine has to some regard made me an advanced user,I am not as bright and as quick to learn as some users here so there are still sometimes the simplest things that I have a hard time understanding.
I would also like to see more mini tutorials about the fundamental concepts and modules use in Usine. At the same time, I am sure I can also contributes some of these myself...I have overcome numerous obstacles on my patching adventures so I am sure some of my techniques could be of use.

The tips area is already beginning to be a nice little database of Usine factoids, but it would be nice to see it grow even further. http://www.sensomusic.com/wiki/doku.php ... guide:tips
I also like the idea of little mini tutorials that are linked to an example patch. I think even a new section in the addons just for simple examples might be a good idea? I think any time anyone has to spare to share some little examples of how to do things will help new and even advanced users very much!

[La Tenaille]

Hi 23fx23,

First thanks for your encouragements, pleased to receive it

About patches complexity, I've re-opened a few weeks ago the workspace I made 1 year before, and needed time to understand what I'd tried to make. It seems it's the way Usine works : we start patching like crazy, fall in transe, and wake up the day after discovering what we've done
The fact is it's hard to dive into someone else work, because we all think differently and there is no "standard" in that soft. Perhaps if we could see the construction from the begining, step by step, following the wires, that would be great, avoiding the vertigo effect opening a huge patch. A "teaching" module that records the soft behaviour to reproduce it later, like a macro ?

About the workshops, I've made a lot for my instruments (learner and teacher), and noticed it's quite hard to manage different levels, desires, goals, etc... One second I imagined myself beeing surounded by people playing experimental and electro with the eager of knowing how to use the sequencer, create midi notes and piano rolls... I know it's a stupid idea and could be a revelation for me... but for now I play traditional music and have psychologic troubles with sounds that are not generated by my instruments

[La Tenaille]

Hi gurulogic. I'm just discovering the tip section. I'm having a look quickly

[La Tenaille]

Hi,
I've dived into "Teach yourself Usine in 13 minutes (or nearly)", this is a great job Nay-Seven ! User friendly and not boring at all. I thought it was a short (13 minutes) description to begin but you've made a real starter manual. IMO the title devalues the content. Something like "Getting started" is perhaps less sexy and not original at all, but would suit more the content.

When I first installed Usine on my laptop (sept. 2008), I had printed the manual and studied meticulously the soft ; it was quite short at that time, and I felt frustrated reaching the "modules" pages, as I imagined the advanced help was starting at that point. Now I realise things have changed, and I'm going to re-read everything

About problem encountered I've already noted two things :

Storing / recalling : I've fighted a lot to understand how to store and recall my stuff the good way. Seeing in one thread that "the conductor only stores the visuals" helped me a lot to have a global vision. Now, the interaction with the PM, the "recall by conductor", "preset isolate" and "conductor isolate" are not easy to get. Other example : I've seen recently that the patch selection (when the border is white) in "rack mode" was also stored with the conductor...

Saving / backing up / Upgrading Usine Another important point I think. It stressfull not to be sure to save and backing up hours of work. Simple questions : are my patches stored inside the workspace ? How to upgrade without loosing settings ? I've discovered recently by reading Olivier in a thread that backing up the "default files" in the "files" file was enough... tested, working ! I think I'm ok now with that point but it took me time to grab the infos.

[gurulogic]

About Storing / recalling :
I'm perhaps somewhat untraditional with my Usage of Usine and as such I haven't used the Conductor much, I'm more into patch by patch management with the Preset Manager, or realtime loading patches for "uber snapshot recall"
The basic differences as I understand them are that the Conductuctor stores and recalls snapshots globally for all patches in a workspace of all interface items that can have their values stored in a snapshot, unless of course you select the option "not stored in conductor / preset" or else you select "conductor isolate" in a patch or sub patch window, which would mean that the cunductor would store no information for any values within the specific patch or sub patch.
Also important to note is that the conductor will not store VST parameters unless you, for example, connect a fader to a VST parameter inlet.

The Preset Manager on the other hand only applies to storing and recalling values within the specific patch or sub patch that it is located in, and can also store and recall VST "chunk" data so the current state of most any VST can be stored and recalled almost instantly (VST's that have large sample libraries to load will take longer to recall) Of course the preset managers can be linked so that a Conductor snap recall can also recall Preset Manager "snapshots" .'Preset isolate" will prevent any of the values in the sub patch from being stored or recalled by the Preset Manager in the parent patch, however you can still use a preset manager within a sub patch that has preset isolate enabled.
The advantage of the Conductor is the abiilty to do global snapshot store and recall and the advantage of the Preset Manager is the ability to store and recall the states of specific patches inependantly of other patches.

Saving / backing up / Upgrading Usine:
Some more good questions! As far as saving is concerned, I regularily "save as" in case of the unlikely chance that a file gets corrupted or I really mess up on something I was doing. Also, keep in mind that Usine regularily saves a .old copy of your patch in the current patch directory so if you do somehow manage to have a crash before saving 10 minutes of work, you may be able to recover it .
Also Usine saves some patch content for "undo" of the current patch or sub patch in the Temp folder just about any time you do any patch creation action, but be carefull not to launch Usine immediately after a crash if you need to recover any of these files as the Temp folder is cleared every time you launch Usine
(I have never actually tried opening any files from the temp folder, I am only assuming they are complete, recoverable patch information)

For upgrading, you may want to save Default-Master.master, Default-Remote.remote, Default-settings.ini, Skins folder and perhaps your User directory in the Modules folder.

Otherwise, yes your patches in their current state are stored within a workspace. Be aware that they will differ from any patch separately saved to or loaded from disk if you have made any changes to the patch and then saved the workspace.

Any of the above information may be slightly incorrect

edit: When I find the time (in short supply these days) I'll try to validate all of my info and make a wiki>tips entry for these two things.

[BLUEJAY]

La Tenaille,

Great Post! Very helpful for me- this is my first post on this forum. And I was planning and thinking how best to convey my thoughts without appearing to rant and rave negative vibes. So, very well stated post; I could not have said it better myself. So, Ditto, +1, I concur .




The replies on this post are also very good. Together, with this very promising software, they encourage me to continue learning, and participating.
I have extensively tested various modular patching systems (Bidule, Audio Mulch, LiveProfessor, etc.) only to find they fall short for my needs. I am currently struggling with issues in Usine similar to this post, and other specifics for my music adventures.
I use a Behringer FCB1010, and was thrilled to see Usine had great design and potential for just what I'm looking for. I was hesitant to switch software, but, with a free version offering full functionality (with a few limitations) I felt it was worth the time despite of the higher learning curve inherent with Usine. Unfortunately, I discovered the limitations in the free version make it practically impossible to confirm the retail version is what I am looking for.
Some of the most key functions I am looking for are specific to this post. The Conductor module is one of the biggest factors.
As mentioned in this post, Conductor is different than Preset Manager. In addition, each one can affect another to achieve specific abilities.
I see great potential for Usine and it's design/support team. Hopefully some additional testing, and forum info will allow me to confirm it is the right choice for me. I will post some feedback soon (probably in a separate posting). As well, I will probably include additional feedback, but I welcome any helpful replies in the meantime.


Thanks for the great post,

[La Tenaille]

Hi,
Welcome to the factory bluejay. Happy to read I'm helping you with my questions

Thanks gurulogic for your precisions. I use the conductor because I'm used to play lists with names of tunes : one name, one tune, let's say a linear approach. Your approach seems more dynamic. Since we can "conductor isolate" a patch (thanks Olivier for listening !), I can prevent the double storing of my VST tunings, that's great.
About storing, I've put all my personal creations in files outside Usine. So I'm backing up Default-Master.master, Default-Remote.remote, Default-settings.ini (or moving it in the new Usine version) and everything seems ok, no need to use the different file menus, I'm right ?
Thanks for reminding "the patches stored within a workspace differ from any patch separately saved to or loaded from disk". A nice trap to avoid !

[claygues]

Bonjour/Hi,

I think i can understand that you (La Tenaille) feel about using usine. I am an artist who do some music and who have an interest with computer but i am not a programer. And for people like me usine is very interesting. Very interesting but not easy. And sometime frustrating because i think that all is possible but i have not understand all that happened underground. So i use it with the limit of my understanding, and in fact the posibility are already numerous. But sometime i must be please to be surprise by what happened instead of doing exactly what i have thinking of.

Salutations, Cyrille.