Controlling VST instruments with midi

Virtual instruments Virtual Effects and Add-ons
1

Hi all,

I just recently bought Cubase 6 and thought I’d play around with the vst instruments some, controlling for example Prologue with my Moog Little Phatty using a midi/usb interface. It responds on the keyboard, the pitch-bend wheel and modulation wheel without me having to configure anything. But for me it’s really quite useless if I can’t tweak the Prologues ADSR, OSC lvls and of course most importantly Cutoff frequency from the Little Phatty. I tried to find a way to configure this and found the “midi controller setup” under “note expression”, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Moog since whatever I add to the list of controls, none of them are actually controllable but the one’s that were by default such as the pitch wheel. I didn’t even find cutoff in the list, I found portamento amount and on/off though, added them and nothing happened when I pressed and tweaked the same controls on the Moog.

I have the Moog manual and the CC numbers for each control, but that doesn’t help at all really since I can’t find any way to configure any of the vst instrument’s midi implementation. Is this even supposed to be possible? I guess it must be… Any help is welcome, thanks :smiley:

2

Try quickcontrols. Check the Cubase manual for instructions.

3

The quickcontrol section has no clear connection with midi control… I have checked the manual for guidance but it gave none… unfortunately. Anyway, thanks for the reply!

4

Not all VSTi support MIDI learn. It is something that has to be programmed into the VSTi. Steinberg VSTi support quick keys, not MIDI learn.

You need to read the Quick Control section again, because it does tell you how to map a MIDI CC to a Quick control slot.

5

OK I just misunderstood. I thought I found it now but it still doesn’t work. When I click the midi learn button my Korg nanokontrol can add volume and/or pan to the quick control list, but that’s nothing new really… Still trying with the Moog, this should be possible, at least the cutoff knob sends midi, that’s a start ^^

EDIT: ok read it all a bit more carefully this time. I cannot route a specific Midi CC message to any of the quick controls, only choose which parameters to be in the quick control section by moving the right encoders/faders/whatever. Going through it all one more time, but it doesn’t look like I can route the Little Phatty cutoff knob to control for example the "Prologue"s cutoff knob. That is REALLY bad actually, and makes the VST instrument useless to me :frowning:

EDIT 2: Finally I found the page of which you are talking in the Cubase manual. The prologue cutoff knob is alive, thanks for the help, even if I went looking on the wrong pages for a while haha :smiley:

6

There you go, glad you got it sorted :slight_smile: