Help With Lua

Keith | Gamma Sutra

I understand working in Lua is supposed to be easy. I know nothing about Lua and am fundamentally clueless as to how on earth it is supposed to be “easy.” I have reviewed the Floe developers page, and its description of how to set up an instrument is not helpful at all. I am sure it is clear and easy for somebody to follow. To me, it is a bunch of greek in the form of line by line code, detached from any actual functional Lua script.

To cut to the chase: I have SampleRobot Pro. That is easy to use and I can generate massive, complete libraries of samples very easily now, ready to create my own instruments in Floe. And I’m really excited about that. But now…what? Am I supposed to actually hand code 88 keys x 4 velocity layers, by hand, marked with loop points and such in SampleRobot Pro, one at a time, note by note, in Lua? Or, ….what? How is Lua supposed to be “easy”? Hand coding every detail of 352 samples, one by one, does not meet the definition of reasonable, let alone “easy.”

Can anybody please just cut to the chase, and pull the curtain aside to reveal an actual, functional Lua template or script that is made to match up with SampleRobot’s Pro’s output? Or please point me to a specific webpage or anything, that will reveal how Lua is “easier” to use than a GUI for setting up instruments(?).

From my perspective, coming at this somebody who has the samples in hand, and wants to now make them into a playable instrument in Floe, but knowing nothing about Lua: Lua is not “easy.” At all. Lua is the impediment standing directly in my way. Please help.

Sam (FrozenPlain)

I understand your frustration. Floe does require programming knowledge to create instruments - it’s designed for developers rather than general users. For experienced developers, writing code allows you to do things that can rarely be done with GUIs. Your feedback helps me realize the documentation needs to be clearer about this upfront.

For non-programmers, the solution will eventually be tools that generate/convert/export to Lua without requiring developer knowledge. Those tools don’t exist yet.

Keith | Gamma Sutra

Actually… I made a discovery late last night in Visual Studio Code that I probably should have figured out much more quickly: After I had carefully read the Floe pages on creating instruments in Lua, I started up a new script in VSC, and put the bits of code in offered at the Floe webpage, and then started asking the AI very precise questions like “how do I add 4 velocity layers to this code?” or “how do I add 50 samples to the library for this instrument.” Basically asking for and receiving snippets of Lua code to sandwich…somewhere…into the code I was building up.

The “aha!” moment came late last night when I got totally lost, and in exasperation asked the AI, “can you make a Floe instrument in Lua with 4 velocity layers?” The AI did not respond, “yes.” Instead, it spat out complete, pristine Lua code for an entire Floe instrument with 4 velocity layers(!!). The only thing missing was the sample set (because I had not specified it). Long story short, I had gotten myself so caught up in the minutia of asking the AI for snippets of Lua code for “this” or for “that”, and the AI was giving me exactly what I had asked for…bits and snippets of disconnected Lua code.

But, once I backed all the way out to the broadest possible prompt (make me a Floe instrument), the AI went to town in VSC and came back with the whole enchilada. I was using the AI in far too narrow of a fashion for the past couple of days, trying to use the AI to teach myself Lua. It seems I don’t need to do that, at all. All I need to do (working more on it today) is come up with one mother of all prompts, specifying where my samples are and their naming conventions, and stating how many velocity layers (or round robins, or whatever else) I want the instrument have. And then let the AI build the entire instrument in one go. Once I figure out how to get the AI to do that with one of my Sample Robot sample sets, then making future Floe instruments should be all but instantaneous using the same curated prompt with each new sample set. I’ll follow up here on this, once I have the AI successfully generate an entire Floe instrument without me needing to know anything about Lua, itself.

Keith | Gamma Sutra

Okay, I have managed, without knowing or learning anything thing about Lua, at all, to successfully make a functional Floe instrument with my Sample Robot samples this morning. The AI did the entire thing from a blank “new” file in Visual Studio Code.

It was easy, once I understood the game. I asked the AI to make an entire instrument for me after describing the naming conventions that Sample Robot was spitting out (“name of sample - velocity XX - midi note number - keyboard note”). The AI gave me the full floe.lua script which I then tried to load in Floe. Floe came back with an error code in trying to identify certain samples. I fed the error message from Floe back to the AI in VSC and asked for it to redo the entire lua script. That cleared the error. But then another error came up further down the code. No problems. With every successive error Floe came up with, I just fed it right back to the AI and asked for a corrected script for the whole instrument. After several rounds through clearing successive errors, the AI eventually got the script 100% straightened out (without me knowing or doing anything in Lua itself) and ….bing… the instrument is functional and live!!

The only slight challenge with this process (which was really very mechanical, simple and easy) was that I had to re-type the exact text of each error message Floe was giving me into the AI in VSC by hand, because there is no ability to “copy” text from the error message window in Floe. So I think one small suggestion I might make about Floe is that a “copy” button be added to its error message window (when Floe encounters a coding error in the script when trying to load the patch) so that I can just “copy” from Floe’s error message window and paste it into the AI in VSC, so that the AI can sort out what to change in the Lua code it has provided to clear the error.

I have more work to do to get things really dialed in. But the bottom line is that VSC is doing all of the Lua coding. I don’t have to know anything about Lua… at all. The AI, through VSC, is doing all that. I just have to tell the AI where errors start emerging in Floe when I try to run the script, and the AI goes through and corrects the Lua code for me until the instrument comes up working in Floe with no error messages.

So, again, just one small technical suggestion to add a “copy” feature to Floe’s error message notifications, so that I can just copy and paste the error into the AI in VSC, rather than having to retype it in by hand. But I am seeing now, I really don’t need to learn or know anything about Lua, at all. I just have to tell the AI what I want, and what is and is not working, and let the AI figure out what to do/adjust in Lua.

Sam (FrozenPlain)

Fantastic, I’m pleased that you got it working. If you feed your AI the whole of the Lua LSP definitions too it will probably help it too.

And noted about the copy error feature. I agree that would be useful.