I have just purchased TRacks 5 Leslie and was hoping to use to replace the Leslie emulation in Blue 3. However I find that I cannot get my head around the Cubase approach to Midi Learn “or” TRacks approach to automation. I am wanting to control the Rotor Speed with the sustain pedal of my Alesis 88 keyboard. Now all my other plugins midi learn works immediately but perhaps because what I want automate is an insert there is a problem.
I am using Blue three as an instrument track and TRacks 5 Suite with the Leslie plugin in the first insert. What now?
Believe me I have tried any one of a number of things.
There must be someone who understands how to use the midi learn functions in Cubase? But maybe not with TRacks - which suppose might be the difficulty.
Right click on a control of the instrument or plug-in with mouse, the menu has “midi learn” or assign to CC. Selected Learn CC then Move a control on your controller and it will lock to that function, mod wheel to control rotary speed for example. Multiple controls on the plug-in/instrument can be learned and assigned to the mod wheel so it controls several items at once. You may have to set Min/Max values for these items.
Activate the QC’s then remove the settings, click “L” for learn, select a QC slot, then move a control on the plug-in or instrument. Whatever control you assign will be locked to the QC physical control (pot/slider) is assigned to your QCs.
Also, you can select “show automation track” for an item and then assign a QC to that track, or use the pen to draw in the track.
I don’t know the plug-in you have, but I’d think this should work.
Thank you or your reply. I have tried out your suggestions without much luck I am afraid. It seems that the TRacks Leslie does not respond to Midi Learn and setting up the Quick Controls do not seem to be able to create a workable link. Although written automations do work when linked to the selected parameter. In this case the speed control. However I want to be able to control the speed control with my keyboards sustain pedal. Other users have got this to work in Logic.
So is something broken here in Cubase or am I just doing it wrong. The manual is not very clear, or I am not clever enough to understand it. IK support are onto this and are trying to contact Steinberg support. However, given my experience with SB Support we could be waiting months. It would be nice if someone from Steinberg could give some advice.
Hi,
Can you automate the parameter? Just via common Cubase automation. If yes, let’s try another step.
As Stephen57 adviced, assign the QC (in the track Inspector, open the QC tab, click L -enable Learn - click to the 1st slot to enable it and move the plug-in parameter via the plug-in GUI). When it’s linked, disable Learn and try to move the QC slider in the Inspector. Does this work? If yes, let’s do the last step.
In the Studio > Quick Controls, assign the 1st QC to the Sustain Pedal. Make sure the right MIDI In is selected. Use Learn and Press the pedal or assign it manually. Now, try to use your pal to control 1st QC (does it move in the Inspector) > and the plug-in (does it work?).
If this approach doesn’t work, you can try to use Generic Remote, but this is ment to be more Global settings.
Thanks for that. I am in the middle of some decorating - house maintenance - but will get to it this evening. Or before if the boss gives me time off for good behaviour!
I’ve had a look. I have my Blue 3 B3 sim added.I have inserted the IK TRacks Leslie inserted in the first insert slot. I have shown the Automation lane. The problem is that midi learn does not seem to work with this plugin.
I have followed the Automation path to the Leslie Speed Control and check that it is controlling the lever by manually moving the automation line - it does.
I go to Studio>Studio Setup>VST Quick Controls I have made sure that It is set to all Midi Inputs. I have selected Controller 1 - ticked Learn and pressed the Sustain pedal and got the CC64. Closed this window and pressed the sustain pedal - nope! It does not work. What it does do is control the volume of the Blue 3.
This is exactly what I had been doing before.
The problem is that in the inspector I am only getting the Blue 3 controls.the footpedal is working the first inspector slot which is Blue 3 Volume. How do I get the insert controls to appear in this section?
How do you get the Remote Control Editor to work? This is a puzzle. I am beginning to think that I will have to ask IK for my money back as it is obvious that their Beta Test programme has been curiously lax with regard to Cubase. Their support does not seem to know what the answers are and are currently awaiting Steinberg support.
Hi,
Could you send some screenshots, please?
To me it sounds, you haven’t assign the QC to the parameter.
I am not too experienced with screenshot. The one I’ve got is too large. I have a 3 screen system. How do I localise the image ?
Thank you for your time.
Here is the relevant bit - I used paint.
It does not want to stay on that setting and the Speed control reverts to Blue 3’s volume control.
The speed parameter looks promising, or?
I just realised, question is, what values does your Sustain Pedal sends. If it’s 0 and 127 or 63 and 64. This could by the problem.
That might explain the clash with blue 3. It seems to be 64 and pos 63 as it works the Blue 3 volume.
Could you try, just for testing, assign different controller (a knob or a slider) from your hardware to the QC1, please?
I do not own the plugin in question, but here is an example of modulating the tremolo amount with HALion Sonic SE between two fixed values using an on/off type of foot pedal. Provided your plugin supports VST automation this method should work in your plugin as well.
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Arm the track hosting your Leslie plugin by activating the record or monitor button.
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Right click the control you wish to control with your pedal in the Plugin Interface, choose “Learn CC”, then stomp your pedal. In this case, I can now see that when I stomp and hold my left pedal the Tremolo Rate knob jumps to 100%. When I let the pedal go it jumps back to 0%.
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If your pedal only sends 0 for off, and 127 for on, you can use MIDI Insert track transformers, or a Local track transformer to convert the CC events to the desired values before they get forwarded to the plugin VST automation system.
In this example I have assigned a stomp on/off pedal plugged into my AKAI MPK261 keyboard to CC67. I want it to send a value of 34 when I stomp and hold it. I want it to send a value of 11 when I let it up. So, I’ll add a couple of “Transformers” in the MIDI Inserts tab of the track.
Note, if I wanted a toggle foot switch instead of a momentary type (one I do not have to ‘hold the pedal’), then in my case I would just program it into the MPK261 itself as a toggle rather than a held type controller. If My keyboard could not do that I personally would use some control other than an on/off type pedal…either a continuous pedal, toggle button, slider, or pot, etc.
Note, some plugins do not support learning a CC in this manner, but do have fixed CC values you can use to automate controls via MIDI events. I.E. ARIA Player does not link in with the VST automation system of a DAW, but there are plenty of hard set controls we can manipulate with CC events. Some Libraries, like the one shown below give a visual indicator as to what CC a control listens for, while some might only provide that information in the library’s documentation or help menu.
In this case I only need to figure out that tremolo can be automated for this instrument via CC22. So, I need to set up my track MIDI transformers to convert whatever my pedal is sending (CC67 in this case) to the CC22 values I desire.
Finally, some versions of CuBase might not have the option to apply transformer to a Track MIDI Insert. In that case you might still be able to build up to 4 ‘local’ MIDI transformers per track.
Thank you very much Brian for your ideas. I have never used the midi modifier. It opens up a whole new can of worms that I will have to get my head around.The annoying thing is that with the Blue 3 B3 emulation I can easily assign any midi function to any plugin parameter. There is no midi learn with TRacks Leslie and even the IK support don’t know how to automate in Cubase, So I kind of feel that is has not been a well developed application.
My keyboard controller is the Alesis Q88 so I will need to look into the manual.
David
I haven’t been able to get the Cubase Rotary working in an insert slot! If I could figure out whether I am doing something wrong by getting that working with midi automation.
Learn the “Track Quick Controls”, then you can assign up to 8 of them at a time on each Instrument/Output bus Track.
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Go to “Studio/Studio Setup”.
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Go to Track Quick Controls.
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Set the MIDI input to be from your MIDI keyboard/controller.
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Learn some sliders/pedals/etc.
Now you can assign these 8 controllers where you want them on a per/track basis in each track’s “Inspector Panel” under the “Quick Controls” tab.
If you need to do real time transformations of what your MIDI keyboard is sending (as per my transformer examples in earlier posts)…you can use a Virtual MIDI Port like loopMIDI to pipe things through a CuBase MIDI track first, and then into the Track Quick Controls Map.
You might also have better luck with a “Generic Remote Device” if this is something you need pretty much hard-wired at all times. I often make a Generic Remote Map that is set to get input through a virtual MIDI port. From there I can arm/disarm MIDI tracks in CuBase to get total control of things…including the power of transformer inserts, as well as the ability to automate a lot of things that CuBase doesn’t have a native automation lane for (such as arming/disarming tracks, launching macros, etc.).
Funny thing is that I briefly had the Rotary working but the QC slot 1 i had directed to the insert slot 1 reverted to the vst instrument.
I am afraid that I need to spend some time learning about the Transformer and the GRD. I am primarily a guitarist who uses midi keys to colour my music. I have never tried to automate a function of an insert. It is a new language to me as someone who has always relied upon midi learn. I have not been a power midi user. So thank you Brian and Martin for being patient with my ignorance. It is always good to learn something useful.
I use Blue 3 and the sustain pedal seems to default to cc64 which means it defaults to controlling the Blue 3 volume every time I direct it to the insert’s speed control.
I’m out of time before heading to work, but I’ll try to pop in and throw up some examples on how to do more stuff via remote.
The MIDI Track > virtual MIDI port > into one of the automation device maps technique isn’t very ‘obvious’. It’s just a trick I’ve learned over the years. Essentially it will allow you to convert that CC64 event and his values into something else in real time. This can also be done with third party software such as Bome Translator between the controller and the DAW.
