Finally biting the bullet and getting into MR in the simplest of ways, moving away from VST/Track Quick Controls in Studio Setup, and using MR for this instead.
Just curious what other people have going on. Are you using the same MIDI CH# and CCs for Track, VST, and VSTi?
How are you using your endless encoders? For scale mode?
I’m using a Novation 25SLmkII which as 8 faders, 8 endless encoders, and 8 pots.
So, I’m thinking about the best way to leverage them all.
Are you using a separate device for Last Used and Mouse Pointer focused?
Do you have controls dedicated to focus, but also fixed to Track and fixed to VST - I suppose there could be a benefit to controlling both at the same time… ie, controlling a VSTi synth, while controlling FX parameters on the Track Quick Controls.
Any general workflow tips are welcomed, but mostly coming at this from a position of basics and incorporating older janky MIDI equipment - not super deep modern/MIDI 2.0/scripted stuff… but that is welcome as well.
I now have three MIDI controllers, but mainly for convenience.
An AMC3 + Touch for ‘pure’ MIDI CC to control my orchestral libraries.
A Korg nanoKey Studio:
The keys control special shortcuts that I need, knobs 1–7 control the Track Quick Controls, and knob 8 is assigned to pre-gain.
The X/Y pad sends MIDI CC and is not integrated into the MR.
My master keyboard is the M-Audio Oxygen Pro 61:
The pads send shortcuts including Start, Stop, Rec etc.
The 8 knobs control the Focus Quick Controls.
The faders send MIDI CC for MIDI Learn and are not integrated into the MR.
I think it’s all a question of your own workflow. I thought it through beforehand and asked myself how I work and what’s important to me.
For me, for example, it’s important that I’m not held back whilst composing and don’t have to fiddle about with the mouse too much.
When it comes to mixing and mastering, I’m a bit more relaxed.
I’m using multiple mapping pages for the SL-MK3, one working in “normal” mode with controller functions assigned with Components, and two pages for InControl Mode, one each for track and focus Quick Controls.
I’ve been considering making some changes to that, as well as script(s) to work more closely with StreamDeck devices and make it more interactive.
The catch, of course, is that this easily become yet another distraction from using the software for making MUSIC!
I currently have a configuration that maps eight MIDI channels to eight MIDI instrument tracks with Arturia V Collection, a couple of buttons to step through presets , a fader mapped to instrument volume, and the rotary encoders mapped to QC with a page for track controls and a page for focus controls. The rotary control are programmed for relative mode and the Cubase tracks have transformer scripts to translate Novations’s relative data to Arturia’s relative data.
Now my distraction is integrating StreamDeck using their Cubase Pro profile MIDI Remote mapping approach, but I’m “tempted” to dive into scripting to gain access to the controller buttons and displays.
I too took the plunge and switched to the new MIDI remote in order to transfer the functions of my Sherlock plugin, which is on a touchscreen and is extraordinary, but which previously worked with the generic remote.
I created a WPF floating window using Gemini with Visual Studio, and I currently have 10 pages of 240 buttons that work perfectly, allowing quick access to all my tracks from my orchestral template.
I thought it wasn’t possible, but with a little patience and the right instructions, it worked.
I still have a few technical issues to refine for the other pages, as there are 10 more blank ones.
Perhaps you should describe in more detail exactly what you intend to do with your MIDI controller so that you can choose the right ‘format’.
The Midi Remote, for example, has a significant limitation. The MR cannot transmit ‘pure’ MIDI CCs unless you omit the assignments on a specific page.
If, like Freudon, you plan to work with articulations and control them, ‘controllers’ such as Stream Deck or software like Touch OSC and Metagrid plus a touchscreen would be a good choice.
Or you could programming the keyswitches in higher and lower registers so that they follow a pattern that’s easier for you to remember.
If I’m not mistaken, Freudon is using a plugin called Sherlock 2. I’m not familiar with the plugin, and there isn’t much information about it online.
All I’ve found is that it’s set up via Generic Remote and also needs to transmit MIDI data to some extent.
In that case, it would be better to stick with Generic Remote and not use the MIDI Remote for this.
Eventually I’m going that route, but not until they make some improvements to MR for touchscreen users. I don’t really want a 1000 button MR device when I already have to design the touch interface as it is + MR at the moment has terrible/no HID protocols.
So for the moment, just figuring out the neatest way to set up my Novation 25SL MKII to do quick controls.
I’m curious if anyone has done a setup that utilizes both Focus Quick Controls, and Track Fixed simultaneously.
I’m thinking about having a set of controls that are dedicate fixed to Track, and then another set for plugin focused quick controls. This way, I can control the parameters of synth via track controls, while a fx plugin is focused.
To do this, I created a WPF floating window(windows presentation foundation)
with the help of Gemini, and I don’t know anything about C# coding.
My pages are mainly used for track visibility because I have a huge number of tracks, and it’s the only real way to quickly find and activate a track, or choose which tracks I want to see on screen.
It’s very powerful, but I admit it requires a lot of effort.
Because I don’t know or understand TouchOSC, I have a 24" touchscreen with which I used the Sherlock plugin by 14bitMIDI, created by Karol Obara. I wanted to reproduce something similar, but one that works with the new MIDI remote and not with the limitations of MIDI 1.0.
I had already tried to do this last year, but it didn’t work with ChatGPT. At the same time, I tried starting from the XML files, and that wasn’t the right approach.
And since I’ve configured a huge number of macros and especially PLEs, this allowed me to reposition all my commands and save space, because the old plugin had 192 buttons on each page, while with Gemini we managed to fit 240 buttons, not counting the 20 page assignment buttons.
Yeah, I have a tone of P/LEs and macros as well. I ran out of key command combos even after using AutoHotKey to reassign the WinKey as an additional modifier… But it’s too hard to remember them all anyways.
I’m planning on using TouchOSC, is there a reason you went the path you did?
Regarding this, I can’t get page 11 to work for articulation key assignments because M.C. says the MIDI remote doesn’t recognize program change messages.
an idea
Here is an example of page 1, called “Directory,” which lists all the banks classified by category and publisher. It’s a general page, but the 60 buttons at the bottom are common to all pages.
And as you can see, there are a lot of visibility PLEs to allow me to quickly find an instrument, an articulation, a keyswitch, etc…
My only remaining problem is with page 11 of the Keyswitches for triggering my articulations.
Until now, I was using program changes, but the new MIDI remote doesn’t support them, so I switched to Keyswitches, and it works. However, I’m now experiencing conflicts between my keyboard and my touchscreen.
