# Let's talk about Touchscreens



## Nicholas

Hi guys,

I wanted to share something with you that my buddy and I wanted to do for a long time. We have received a lot of questions (including here on VI-Control) about our custom touch screen solution. We now finally managed to make a video about it.

The video serves two main purposes:

It’s meant to inspire and educate musicians and composers who want to look into incorporating touch surfaces into their workflow. I was one of them a few years ago and I would’ve sucked up such a video like a sponge. It’s still only a fraction of what’s possible, but it goes a lot further than many other online resources, in our opinion. Also, seeing how other people do stuff like that is always a good thing.
We’re not developers, we’re not programmers, we’re not business men. But we had a few people interested in our solution over the last years. With this video (we also show you the in-line editor) we wanted to get a feeling for the community and if people would be interested in it. If there’s interest, we’ll see what we can do. We won’t (and don’t want) to make a huge amount of money of this, of course.
So, without further ado, here it is. Warning - its 1.5 hours long. Is it too long? Probably. Maybe not. You can decide. Have fun.



(P.S. as you can see, we're no video or YouTube experts)


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## GtrJazz

Fantastic vid and the touchscreen looks very similar to what Hans Zimmer uses. Any idea how much you would be charging for this?


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## Nicholas

GtrJazz said:


> Fantastic vid and the touchscreen looks very similar to what Hans Zimmer uses. Any idea how much you would be charging for this?


Thank you!  Glad you enjoy the video. And yes, HZs touchscreen definitely was a great source of inspiration over the years and it clearly shows. 

Regarding your question- I’m also going to answer it here for everyone to see:
no idea, really. depends on the scope of it… would we need a developer to program this as standalone? would we offer support? all of these things are in consideration right now. but we want to see how the community reacts to it first. 

all that said: we‘re musicians, not a software manufacturer. it more or less would just need to cover our expenses.


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## pmountford

A few years back I wrote my own Windows program that I still use everyday now. I've only watched a few minutes of your video but you said that you need to have 2 machines because of the miuse focus issue. I have a pretty simple solution to this iirc. There's a timer running in my app which keeps recording the last position of the mouse cursor so that when the mouse moves to my separate touch screen it repositions the mouse to the last none touch screen window position. Not a particularly fancy solution but it works pretty much 99% of the time without a problem. This means that I can run the DAW and touch screen app on the same pc no problems.


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## Nicholas

pmountford said:


> A few years back I wrote my own Windows program that I still use everyday now. I've only watched a few minutes of your video but you said that you need to have 2 machines because of the miuse focus issue. I have a pretty simple solution to this iirc. There's a timer running in my app which keeps recording the last position of the mouse cursor so that when the mouse moves to my separate touch screen it repositions the mouse to the last none touch screen window position. Not a particularly fancy solution but it works pretty much 99% of the time without a problem. This means that I can run the DAW and touch screen app on the same pc no problems.


Very smart solution. We thought about solving it something like this when we started out, but didn't have the programming experience to do it. And since we have multiple computers now, we just stick to it :D


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## sathyva

Nicholas said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I wanted to share something with you that my buddy and I wanted to do for a long time. We have received a lot of questions (including here on VI-Control) about our custom touch screen solution. We now finally managed to make a video about it.
> 
> The video serves two main purposes:
> 
> It’s meant to inspire and educate musicians and composers who want to look into incorporating touch surfaces into their workflow. I was one of them a few years ago and I would’ve sucked up such a video like a sponge. It’s still only a fraction of what’s possible, but it goes a lot further than many other online resources, in our opinion. Also, seeing how other people do stuff like that is always a good thing.
> We’re not developers, we’re not programmers, we’re not business men. But we had a few people interested in our solution over the last years. With this video (we also show you the in-line editor) we wanted to get a feeling for the community and if people would be interested in it. If there’s interest, we’ll see what we can do. We won’t (and don’t want) to make a huge amount of money of this, of course.
> So, without further ado, here it is. Warning - its 1.5 hours long. Is it too long? Probably. Maybe not. You can decide. Have fun.
> 
> 
> 
> (P.S. as you can see, we're no video or YouTube experts)



Looks great !
any chance of having it one day for Mac os ?
thanks


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## Markrs

Really good video. The controller looks very powerful and a good alternative to Open Stage Control. The best element is the editor that really simplifies the build process.


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## Markrs

sathyva said:


> Looks great !
> any chance of having it one day for Mac os ?
> thanks


They do mention in the video that Mac OS doesn’t support Multi touch, so you do need a windows computer for the touch screen controller.


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## GtrJazz

Are you able to switch articulations? And is it possible to have them automatically show up depending on the track selected like in composer tool Pro?


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## Markrs

Nicholas said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I wanted to share something with you that my buddy and I wanted to do for a long time. We have received a lot of questions (including here on VI-Control) about our custom touch screen solution. We now finally managed to make a video about it.
> 
> The video serves two main purposes:
> 
> It’s meant to inspire and educate musicians and composers who want to look into incorporating touch surfaces into their workflow. I was one of them a few years ago and I would’ve sucked up such a video like a sponge. It’s still only a fraction of what’s possible, but it goes a lot further than many other online resources, in our opinion. Also, seeing how other people do stuff like that is always a good thing.
> We’re not developers, we’re not programmers, we’re not business men. But we had a few people interested in our solution over the last years. With this video (we also show you the in-line editor) we wanted to get a feeling for the community and if people would be interested in it. If there’s interest, we’ll see what we can do. We won’t (and don’t want) to make a huge amount of money of this, of course.
> So, without further ado, here it is. Warning - its 1.5 hours long. Is it too long? Probably. Maybe not. You can decide. Have fun.
> 
> 
> 
> (P.S. as you can see, we're no video or YouTube experts)



I was planning on going down the OSC route when I got a touch screen (I use MetaGrid Pro on an iPad at the moment) but this has got be very interested in TouchDesigner. 

Would you consider sharing the editor you built? I totally agree with the issue with bug fixing, however I think community development of this could be fantastic, and save considerable start up time in getting something like this working.


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## GtrJazz

The editor alone would be cool. And would allow the community to share layouts


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## Nicholas

Hi guys,

sorry for the late reply. Peter and I are in the process of talking options for the Editor. We don't think it makes sense to just post the patch and then let you all be on your own. It would need some polishing, some sort of a documentation (either in video or ideally also in written form) and some upfront bug-fixing. Also, we think it would need to have an accompanying website platform where you can share patches in an easy, well-structered way. We're thinking kinda pianobook style.

We're also discussing the possibility of offering continous support for everyone using the thing. 'Cause let me tell ya, there will be more bugs the more people who use it!  

We will keep you posted. We're kinda overwhelmed with the interest in the thing, we even have people contacting us on Instagram about it. Crazy.


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## DJN

Fantastic work! It looks amazing and very functional. Congratulations, all your hard work definitely paid off!!


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## DJN

After watching your video presentation several times, I have to say I'm very impressed! I know it was a lot of hard work, you've done a great job and your video reveal was wonderful. Thanks again for sharing!

I have one question - how are you setting up "track initialization" This is something I've struggled understanding how to setup on my own touchscreen using OpenStageControl. Any help will be greatly appreciated!


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## Nicholas

DJN said:


> After watching your video presentation several times, I have to say I'm very impressed! I know it was a lot of hard work, you've done a great job and your video reveal was wonderful. Thanks again for sharing!
> 
> I have one question - how are you setting up "track initialization" This is something I've struggled understanding how to setup on my own touchscreen using OpenStageControl. Any help will be greatly appreciated!


Thanks, greatly appreciate it 

Init Track seems a bit more impressive than it probably is. It takes some of the last set CC values (eg Mod, Expr, Vol, Breath and Brightness), either via the touch screen or via our monogram console, and fires them off to Cubase so it gets recorded onto the MIDI track. This means that we can set parameters for any library how we want them, hit record, hit init track and then start recording with all the parameters recorded into the part


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## samphony

I’m interested as I’m in a similar situation. I’ve researched this topic over so many years. 

@Nicholas 
Would this system work with windows on a stick? 
I have a spare mac mini that could be used but if a mini pc on a stick attached to a touchscreen would eork that would be great.


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## Nicholas

samphony said:


> I’m interested as I’m in a similar situation. I’ve researched this topic over so many years.
> 
> @Nicholas
> Would this system work with windows on a stick?
> I have a spare mac mini that could be used but if a mini pc on a stick attached to a touchscreen would eork that would be great.


Gonna test this tomorrow, I have an Intel compute stick here. 
It does run well on a baseline Surface Go (!) 2 though, so it should also run fine on a compute stick. If you add a lot of objects, editor performance might become a bit sluggish. But the „Play Mode“ - the actual touch surface - is optimized for performance


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## DJN

Nicholas said:


> Thanks, greatly appreciate it
> 
> Init Track seems a bit more impressive than it probably is. It takes some of the last set CC values (eg Mod, Expr, Vol, Breath and Brightness), either via the touch screen or via our monogram console, and fires them off to Cubase so it gets recorded onto the MIDI track. This means that we can set parameters for any library how we want them, hit record, hit init track and then start recording with all the parameters recorded into the part


Thanks Nicholas for your reply and detailed answer. Your description is clear and makes complete sense. For me, it's all a little intimidating until I get a look under the hood and see what's really going on. Almost always, I find the solutions are far simpler than I thought they would be 

Appreciate you sharing all your hard work with the community. Best of luck with further development, and please keep us all updated on your progress moving forward.


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## banjo01

Hey @Nicholas,

I really enjoyed your video. It was really entertaining to watch and, as a personal project, it inspired me to start making a really basic version of what you guys made.

I was curious what resources you used to program the GUI, what language you used, how you were able to send that data to another computer, and how you were able to incorporate the many touch functionalities in the editor like the resizing and stuff. I thought the attention to detail was super cool. I was thinking of making this using Rust as I want to push myself to learn Rust by actually using it.

Thank You!


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## Fitz

Truly incredible. As someone who built his own TouchOSC interface over the years, I know how difficult it is. Amazing work.

Any idea how this would integrate into MIDI remote in Cubase 12? Especially if they get rid of Generic Remotes in Cubase 13?


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## Nicholas

banjo01 said:


> I was curious what resources you used to program the GUI, what language you used, how you were able to send that data to another computer, and how you were able to incorporate the many touch functionalities in the editor like the resizing and stuff. I thought the attention to detail was super cool.


It's all done in TouchDesigner. Main programming language is Python. All the scaling, etc is done via Python and CHOPs.



Fitz said:


> Any idea how this would integrate into MIDI remote in Cubase 12? Especially if they get rid of Generic Remotes in Cubase 13?


As of now, we've switched to the new MIDI Remote System entirely. It works pretty well, except for opening / closing specific plug-ins on a specific channel (e.g. the Tuner). From what I know from Gregs live streams, this will be re-integrated in the future



samphony said:


> Would this system work with windows on a stick?
> I have a spare mac mini that could be used but if a mini pc on a stick attached to a touchscreen would eork that would be great.


I tried testing it, but for some reason my Intel stick just stopped working altogether and I couldn't get it fixed. But as I said, since it's running on a base model Surface Go 2, it's probably going to run on a stick.

*Regarding selling this thing:*
We're gonna do a (shorter, I promise) follow-up video soon explaining or roadmap. But things are looking good right now, we're just going to polish this quite a bit before releasing it.

This will also be your time to shine - hit us up with any features you want or need. Is there something in Open Stage Control you'd love to see us implement? Want to do something in another app that's not possible there? We need input :D


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## samphony

Hey @Nicholas thanks for the reply to my recent comments on you tube as well. I understand why midi has your priority right now. As soon as this system offers direct connection to the key commands file of any supported DAW I’ll be interested to purchase it.


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## Pablocrespo

Love the possibilities so far, I would love if between the comunity we can make it work in the same computer as cubase. I work with another touchscreen solution that has it so it must be doable. another solution would be to have it in one of my vep machines, but would need to have a very large monitor cable and use midi over lan.

Can you tell us which commands use keyboard maestro? I am working on Windows so those won´t be available.

Eager to know more and to be able to try this! (I think some vep folks could be beta testers if you like)


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## robfel

Hi Nicholas. Beore I go to the TouchOsc route I really want to try Touchdesigner. Will there be Early Bird or beta for us who want to jump on the train early? I know your scrambling and finishing up for release but can you divulge some sort of ETA and Pricerange? Thanks In Advance!


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## Québ

Interested too, just in case you need more enthusiasm!


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## Pablocrespo

Hey Guys, how is this coming along?


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## wslml

Hope for new news！！！！


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## Fitz

How have you found this runs with new midi remote in Cubase 12? I have a fully customized TouchOSC template, but midi remote doesn’t seem to accept incoming program changes yet. Curious if you’ve tested this with Cubase 12.


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## Alaudidae

Hi @Nicholas .
I have tried to contact you a few times thru PM.
Is your software available for the public to buy?
It's looks like a great software.
Please let me know.
Thank you and all the best.


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## Fitz

It seems like this thread has gone mostly dead for the meantime.


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## jwmarshall

Definitely interested in this as i've been using and designing my own touch templates for about a year now, but this seems like it could work out well. I just don't use Cubase, I use Logic.


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## Nicholas

Hi guys,

I'm deeply sorry for the long silence on this topic. It's been a difficult year for me to say the least. We "paused" (pretty much killed) Oxygene for personal reasons, which meant that I had to re-consider all my life plans over the past few months. I'm now on the path of becoming a full-time video game composer, therefore all my attention was drawn to re-building the whole setup to fit this use case. In short, the Touchscreen situation was far from by biggest problem.
Now, to the silver lining: For all the things I want to do when it comes to video games composition, I was looking for a programmer capable of developing custom-solutions for a lot of problems for me. And I did. She is incredibly smart and highly motivated to go on this journey with me. So, we are working on different things at the moment, one of which is far bigger than anything I've ever done before. I won't talk too much about it yet, but it might completely change the way you work with orchestral templates. And yes, of course, the Touchscreen Software is part of that journey. If everything goes the way I expect it to, we'll be releasing a whole suite of Software solutions for the modern composer, which will all play together. The Touchscreen is part of that solution.
For now, I'll have to put you off again until early next year. We'll be setting up a company, and with that, all the necessary social media stuff, which also includes a YouTube channel where we will be updating you on all this stuff, I promise.
I don't want to sell you shit. My patch works for me, but it's far from a release-worthy product. This will take some time, but it all seems to be going in the right direction now, finally.

Thanks for your patience and sorry again!

-Nicholas


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## Alaudidae

Hi. @Nicholas 

I wish you all the best in the world and good health.

I will be waiting for any thing that you and associates will develop, and will be the first one to buy from you.

Thank you.
All the best.


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## wslml

Nicholas said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I'm deeply sorry for the long silence on this topic. It's been a difficult year for me to say the least. We "paused" (pretty much killed) Oxygene for personal reasons, which meant that I had to re-consider all my life plans over the past few months. I'm now on the path of becoming a full-time video game composer, therefore all my attention was drawn to re-building the whole setup to fit this use case. In short, the Touchscreen situation was far from by biggest problem.
> Now, to the silver lining: For all the things I want to do when it comes to video games composition, I was looking for a programmer capable of developing custom-solutions for a lot of problems for me. And I did. She is incredibly smart and highly motivated to go on this journey with me. So, we are working on different things at the moment, one of which is far bigger than anything I've ever done before. I won't talk too much about it yet, but it might completely change the way you work with orchestral templates. And yes, of course, the Touchscreen Software is part of that journey. If everything goes the way I expect it to, we'll be releasing a whole suite of Software solutions for the modern composer, which will all play together. The Touchscreen is part of that solution.
> For now, I'll have to put you off again until early next year. We'll be setting up a company, and with that, all the necessary social media stuff, which also includes a YouTube channel where we will be updating you on all this stuff, I promise.
> I don't want to sell you shit. My patch works for me, but it's far from a release-worthy product. This will take some time, but it all seems to be going in the right direction now, finally.
> 
> Thanks for your patience and sorry again!
> 
> -Nicholas


I have been paying attention to your new news and looking forward to your product！！


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