Now that the long awaited 3.2 update is finally here and most users are getting more familiar with the new features and seemingly endless possibilies caustic provides, some of you might be asking yourselves "what can't caustic do?" Well boys and girls, let me tell you about a little app called Caustic Guide.
Caustic Guide will give you much more control over how you save a caustic file, opening the doors to many more possibilies than you have with just caustic alone. Currently in caustic, you can save songs in the form of caustic files or exported audio. And you can also save presets and audio samples. But that's about it. Which don't get me wrong, I don't mean to diminish anyone's thoughts on how awesome caustic already is, I'm only here today to explain how much better it is about to become...
Ever wish you could put a particular track with all of its mixer settings, effects, and automation into a song? That would be a Sound. Or maybe more than one tack at a time? You can do that in Guide as well by saving them as a Group. These are all easily accessed within Guide's file browser... another nice feature that shouldn't be overlooked.
The first step in doing any of this editing is importing a caustic file where Guide will then use it to build a template. When browsing for a caustic file, Mike has also incorporated a player for auditioning within the file browser in case for example, you cant remember which exact file you want to import. I've mentioned to Mike before that I'd make a lousy salesman. Mainly because I know the true value of this app will only be apparent once you've had the chance to use it for yourself, and no words I choose will be able do it justice. And I know I am only scratching to surface here. Myself, having been a tester for the past few months, I can only say that I can no longer imagine having caustic and not having Guide...
I had in mind to post something like this also. Mike is breaking some heavy new ground with the apps he has planned. Guide is the beginning, and it is special. Just imagine having that sweet synth setup you made with the subsynth; you have all your dials set the way you want, you save it out as a preset ... all is wonderful with the world. But then you import it into a new song, and it isn't the same because the efffects aren't loaded, you don't have the reverb and delay the way you had it in the other song, etc...
Now imagine an app where you can save that "sound", by grabbing the whole shebang: the machine with it's preset, the effects, the mixer settings, the patterns, the sequencer layout, even automation, or only bits and pieces. Imaging making a stellar Modular setup with other machine inputs, creating a "group" that has the master modular, the slave machines, and you are able to place all of the machines in a new song, machines, effects, mixer values ... so on.
Mind blown yet?
How about creating a beatbox and loading in a "sound" that has presets for a standard genre of music, ready to start song making?
Curious yet? If not you need to check your pulse.
Thanks guys.
Just one minor correction with AFX's description that I didn't catch. A Preset is a .preset no mixer or effects. The thing is, when you are building a Template(future .caustic file), you can s elect a slot and add Preset, the browser opens and you can listen to any type on machine preset you want, without adding a machine like you do in Caustic.
EDIT: And Guide has a batch export for machine preset files, so you can export all 14 presets in one go if you want, giving them all names beforehand.
So if you mind wanders and you are listening to things, where first you wanted a beatbox and then you here this nice SawSynth sound, you can s elect it and create the machine from that, then go back and listen for more to create.
This app is 2+ years in development. To say it's probably the most complicated thing I have ever written is an understatement, minus a compiler I wrote(different animal).
Rej has spent MASSIVE time with me over the years giving me OSC commands and allowing my code to talk to his.
So think about this, Rej knew what I was doing, the one thing he has said is he LOVES people climbing on top of his stuff and making things. This is what I did. So Guide is in essence a true blessing of Rej's to take his app farther and he trusted me with that almost 4 years ago.
One last thing, every library item even .caustic files can have metadata added, author, vendor, tags, description, web site.
So as you start building up libraries of Sounds and Groups and Templates, when another user goes to load you library item, you will have full attribution right there in the browser metadata viewer. They can even click on your http link right there and it will open up your Android browser to your soundlcoud account or whatever.
Guide is meant to expand the Caustic ecosystem. I have eventual plans to incorporate dropbox and other cloud sharing things that can unite more Caustic users from around the world even more tightly then they are now for huge collaborations and content sharing, accelerated young musicians learning as others show them the ropes.
Mike, Rej, you guys who write code and create things like Caustic out of nothing - you guys are wizards, in my view.
Incanting in your arcane languages to make magic happen.
Thanks Steph, try it out.
http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/node/15642
Mike, you wrote a compiler? By yourself? Jeez...
I haven't been around much, but I'm looking forward to checking this out...after the coming weekend I should have plenty of time too!
¿que onda, pachuco?
Mike, this looks really cool. I just downloaded it and will watch the videos and tinker with it more when I get time. Thank you:)
> Mike, you wrote a compiler? By yourself? Jeez...
Basically, it was a transpiler from ActionScript to JavaScript, massive time and is only starting to get used, OS Apache Flex.
Multithreaded compiler, AST walker and emitter. I am fascinated with grammar of all languages, at it's root all language is the same, our brains scan and parse bits of data and assemble into "real" things, just like a parser/compiler does.
Anyway, ramble... :)
Post the link of the thread may help others who r clueless two caustic guide. My person means with each post boost popularity of a thread.
Where and how can I get Caustic Guide? Mike's link above is dead.