Using Helix floor as a VL midi controller

[ericwentz]

Hi All,
I wanted to share my experience using my Helix floor as a controller for VST Live and how I set it up. I configured my Helix using the HX Edit program rather than the physical hardware. The Helix was set up first:
First, open HX Edit then click on Window->Command Center. This opens up a window that looks like this:

I decided to use switches 4,5,10,11 for control. Here’s how to set one of the switches.

1. Click the switch to be programmed (in this case switch 4)
   
   
   
   In this case, switch number 4
2. On the right side of the window, select MIDI CC from the COMMAND dropdown.
3. I used MIDI Channel 1 for all these commands
4. The CC# value set to 114
5. The next “Value” is sent to 127
6. Set the Switch LED color to your choice
7. Set the Switch label to your choice, in this case “Prev Song”
   Here are my settings for the other 3 switches:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Next, on to VST Live to receive these commands.
First, select Devices-> Connections…
Make sure you are on the MIDI page. It should look like this:

Click on the Plus button at the top of the screen and a “Set Port Name” dialog will be displayed. I called mine “Helix”

Once OK is pressed a 3rd row was displayed on the Connections dialog showing <nc> for the device. Clicking on <nc> brought up this dialog:

Select “Core Midi: HELIX HELIX”. Then close this dialog box.
Next, follow the menu Devices->Actions and Shortcuts…
On the Transport tab, I selected “Start/Stop” then the “Learn” button. Then press switch 11 (Start/Stop) on the Helix. Same thing with the RTZ row and switch 5 on the Helix. The screen then looks like this:

Finally in the “Project” tab of the Actions and Shortcuts dialog, i set up “Next Song” and “Previous Song” in a similar fashion. The result looks like this:

Now you can close the Actions and Shortcuts dialog and control VL from the foot switches on your Helix. One note here is that the Helix should be set to “STOMP” mode and NOT “PRESET” mode and has to be redone for every patch that you need to use - bit of a pain, but I only use a few.
Hope this an help someone and save them the digging that I had to do in order to set this up. Thanks for reading.
Eric

[musicullum]

Great, thanks a lot!

[Detgyver]

Great tutorial! Works from the first try perfect.
Thanks for sharing you knowledge!

[ericwentz]

Glad you found it useful.