I just bought the Nektar Panorama P6 controller. Sadly, I can’t get much help via Nektar support on their flagship controller and no one has really done an in-depth, menu diving tutorial on this controller… not even in the manual
What I want to do is create custom presets for various orchestral sound libraries so I have consistency in my workflow and easier access to a more natural sound from the libraries.
My main focus is on Spitfire Audio libraries. To start, I want to create one preset for Spitfire Strings, one preset for Spitfire Brass and one preset for Spitfire Woodwinds.
For now, I’m only looking to assign the faders, buttons and knobs to the left of the display for use with various aspects of the libraries including mic positions, dynamics, velocity, tremelo, articulations, key switches and so on. I then want to save them as presets I can load and I don’t know precisely how to change values, save and load within the P6.
But you probably want to switch to internal and then use setup button - control edit - and change the faders to the CC’s you want. Then Save the preset.
How many user presets are there? Nektar mentioned there are 20 but the only thing I found in the “manual” about presets was for the pads on the right and it says there’s 20. I’m not at the controller at the moment but I don’t think I remember seeing anything about loading or saving presets. I don’t want to write over factory settings, I’m really hoping for available user presets.
Yeah it’s not a problem to just save a preset, you don’t need to overwrite. I don’t know how many different ones you can have. I changed the faders to more useful CCs and saved.
I just got it the way I wanted and saved it - I’m not sure having multiple saved presets for each spitfire instrument is the best way forward.
I really need to find out how many available presets I have to work with and I will but I don’t want a different preset for each library. I want one for the main group types… Strings, Brass & Woodwinds. One Spitfire string preset for all of my Spitfire string libraries, etc. The variables will be different for each group type as well. That string tremelo fader isn’t going to do you much good with a French horn. The articulations are completely different as well between group types.
Haha ok - take a look at the quick controls in the inspector. You can assign these to control anything you want and they are easily automatable.
By default the Nektar can control the quick controls using the 8 knobs - you just have to press the q control button on the Nektar to see them represented.
You could assign the quick controls and save them for your various groups. They’re in inspector on the left of Cubase, you’ll get the idea when you open the pane.
Hope you don’t mind the interruption but thanks Manike, just purchased several analogue hardware synths with extensive midi options and was going to map the p6 to them, never thought of using quick controls… durrh
Awesome, I’ll check it out. I guess it would be a good time to bring up expression maps. I haven’t had time to look into them yet either (busy). I figured the best order of things would be to map the p6 for what I’ve been talking about and then try to work out efficient articulation changing.
What is the difference between quick controls and expression maps?
Here is a list of some expression maps on Spitfire support:
No problem - yeah I like to keep things simple and it’s pretty straight forward using quick controls and the Nektar P6
Expression maps are a way of changing between articulations in Spitfire or similar libraries. It’s visually clearer than midi note key switches and in the theory you can represent the different articulation changes automatically in the score editor.
Cubase quick controls work great with Nektar. You could also look at using Nektarine, it’s Nektar’s own VST wrapper that lets you program and save your maps as presets on the computer. The VST lives inside the wrapper so once it’s setup you would load an instance of Nektarine to use your VST and all the controls will be as you set them.
I have Nektarine installed, I just haven’t had a chance to look at it. I don’t know if it is something that was just done recently for all supported DAWs but I did see a demonstration inside Studio One with reps from Presonus and Nektar that was very nice. Where ever you placed the mouse pointer, the controller would automatically engage mapping for the VST the pointer was hovering over. It was pretty awesome. It may also have been for any section of the DAW. (Mixer, etc) the pointer was over and not just VSTs. I think that may have been a feature of Nektarine but I would think it would be able to do the same in Cubase.
Let us know how you get on. I have a P1 which I got to use with Reason and was fairly disappointed with the integration. I haven’t given it much time in Cubase with VSTs and Nektarine.
. Tell me more
- yeah I like to keep things simple and it’s pretty straight forward using quick controls and the Nektar P6