In this short tutorial, we will be setting up the sending of MIDI messages from TouchOSC to another application on the network.
We'll be using the TouchOSC Bridge utility application, to handle sending MIDI messages over the network, as this is a common use-case for control surfaces running on mobile touch-screen devices.
If you want to send MIDI messages between TouchOSC and other applications or ports on the same device or computer, the set up becomes much more straight forward and you can skip the steps involving TouchOSC Bridge in this tutorial.
If you are running the Windows operating system and choose to connect via a network connection, please note that the Windows firewall can prevent this setup from working. Should you run into problems, please disable the Windows firewall temporarily and try again.
We'll be using the Protokol application, our free tool for testing OSC and MIDI connections and messages. This is the same utility we use in-house for testing our applications.
Protokol is available for all the same platforms as TouchOSC and is a free download.
Next we'll configure TouchOSC to send MIDI messages to TouchOSC Bridge and load one of the included example layouts.
Now we'll load one of TouchOSC's included example layouts.
With the document now loaded, and the connection configured, put TouchOSC into control surface mode by pressing the play button on the editor toolbar, or by using the CTRL/CMD+E keyboard shortcut on desktop platforms.
With both the receiver and sender configured and ready to go, we'll send some MIDI messages.
Move a fader, press a button or interact with any other control on the control surface in TouchOSC and you should see the received MIDI messages being printed in Protokol.