Anyone interested in Electra One contract work?

General discussion
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Hi Guys, Are any of you interested in developing Electra One interfaces as contract work? We need someone who understands the Electra One and LUA code. My friend Ben wants to pay someone to do the coding, apparently I’m not fast enough for him. He wants to do another synth in parallel to my work on the Yamaha FS1R. He wants to target the EMU Morpheus next.
The Controller will be the combination of an Electra One, a FaderFox MX12 and a FaderFox PC12.

FS1R_Editor_Concept
FS1R_Editor_Concept1920×438 104 KB

The FaderFox panels feed CC commands from the knobs, buttons and sliders to the Electra One on midi channels 2 and 3, which the E1 converts into sysex commands for the synth. On the FS1R I’m struggling to fit all of the FS1R settings, so I’m pruning out the fseq data, system settings and controls you wouldn’t ordinarily use as you edit a patch. All of the 986 settings in a one-part FS1R patch just won’t fit on the 576 Controls in our setup. Ben has suggested adding more panels, but I’m not sure more is better past a certain point.
The project is inspired by the controller that Robert Skerjanc put together for the FS1R. His is all custom hardware, and since he’s tired after assembling a dozen or so units there won’t be any more. With my concept, using off-the-shelf hardware makes it simple to recreate.
Between the three units, we can cover an extensive set of controls for editing a synth using mainly knobs, buttons, and a set of 12 sliders for the most used settings, with the E1 in the center with a touch screen and knobs for the rest. The FS1R is a perfect candidate for this type of editor. So is the 1-rack-unit EMU Morpheus. It’s significantly simpler than the FS1R I’m working on.
Ben wants to branch out from there to include additional synths like the EMU Proteus, the Chroma and others, to create a collection of Controller programs that use the same hardware under his umbrella for sale individually or as a group. ie. After paying someone to program the interfaces he doesn’t exactly want to give them away for free, he’d like to recoup some of the programming costs.
Any interest guys? Let me know and we’ll arrange a conference call to discuss the scope of work.
I’m Thor, you can see my website at JavelinArt.com. I’m in the U.S.
Ben is in Canada, he’s offered to provide a Morpheus and the FaderFox panels on loan for the first Controller. I’m not sure how far he’s willing to ship his Morpheus or any of his other synths, but we’ll find out. It might be cheaper to simply buy one where you’re at than ship his halfway around the globe.
I’ll need a resume (the Electra One modules you’ve coded as examples) and then an estimate of how much you need to code the interface.

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No interest? Surprising. I suppose I understand somewhat, it’s been a real climb for me to create an FS1R controller. I got bogged down and lost momentum, it was taking too long. Entering each data parameter one at a time in the online editor takes way too long when you have almost 600 to do.

So, I’ve been writing a computer program to read the data out of a spreadsheet. I just got everything working, it didn’t take me as long as I thought it would. I can now upload a custom .epr file which starts as a spreadsheet. The nice thing about the spreadsheet is the cut and paste works easily. Cutting and pasting in the online editor is more work than it’s worth. Online it doesn’t insert new Control ID’s or Parameter Numbers, or make it easy to edit the cc7 or sysex parameters like I can in the spreadsheet. The FS1R has 8 operators, and I need one page on the E1 per operator. I can copy and paste an entire page and update all of the parameters in about 15 minutes!

Anyway, let me know if any of you are interested in coding other synthesizers for us. I have a new tool now.

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Part of the issue is that those of us that have developed complex presets for other gear understand how much time and effort is needed to really get it done right.

Likely, if we calculated the sheer number of hours and picked some nominal hourly rate, you wouldn’t be able to afford it.

If it was a fixed price agreement, that number would need to be high to cover the inevitable problems and requests for tweaks and changes.

There would also have to be an understanding that few of us do this for a living, so any/all time is carved out around the rest of daily life requirements and therefore time to delivery would be quite some time in the future.

There’s definitely folks that can do this, it’s really a time-money tradeoff.

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Yes, the sheer amount of time it takes to create an instrument preset is an issue…

I’ve written a program to take in data from a spreadsheet which speeds things up immensely. I’m hoping that will speed me up to the point where I can create an instrument definition quickly, but I keep having to back up, learn how to handle something new, then continue on. I’m not a native LUA programmer so that slows me down. Oh well. On we go.
I’m getting close to having the FS1R preset working, almost all of my controls are functional. Just a few more to go, ones that require LUA, and I’ll have it.