MIDI control surface recommendation

[remmet]

I'd been thinking about getting a new keyboard controller with lots of knobs or faders that could be assigned to control various VST parameters. Now I'm wondering if I could get the same capability for less money with a MIDI control surface box of some type. I'm not interested in using it for mixing or transport control, but just the ability to assign knobs or faders to MIDI control numbers for the purpose of controlling VST parameters - and recording the continuous data into my sequences.

Or, being a DP user, is there an easy and effective way to create such a control surface within the DAW?

Any advice or suggestions?

Richard

[andygabrys]

sure Richard,

the Korg Nano series is dirt cheap. check this one:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/nanoKON2bk/

[Len911]

Lol, +1 on the korg, though I have the pad.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/nanoPAD2bk/

Ebay usually has several of them, the pad1 the previous version has 12 pads instead of 8 (chromatic scale??)

also they have an x-y pad that maybe better suited for recording continuous controller data.

the korg control editor software is free downloaded from their website, it allows you to store presets and scenes.

"...Objects usually have several parameter levels — for example, whether a button will send a note or a control message, its MIDI channel, velocity curve, and so on. For any button that is sending MIDI CC messages, you can specify the on/off values; in the case of a knob or slider, the minimum and maximum value range can be specified. Virtual organists will be pleased to know you can invert the values of sliders on the Nano Kontrol, so that they operate in the same direction as organ drawbars. Some buttons even include attack and release time parameters, enabling ramped CC value transitions between on and off states.
Both the Nano Kontrol and the Nano Pad offer four Scenes (Nano-speak for ‘presets’), which are presented in their Editors as four tabbed pages. Individual parameter values can be copied and pasted within a Scene, or between Scenes, and whole Scenes can be copied and pasted to another. Managing this information is very simple: you can save individual Scenes to disk, or entire Scene Sets (all four Scenes as one file.) The handy tabbed file browser on the left allows for quick reloading of your saved Scenes and Scene Sets."


*the four scenes or programs are for the four buttons on the unit. In the software, you can actually have an infinite number of presets, but you can only load 4 at one time into the unit.

[remmet]

Thanks for the suggestions. Today I've been pouring over the DP manual and reading about custom consoles. It seems that with a bit of effort, you can construct a very sophisticated console with faders, knobs, and/or buttons, and have them generate controller data that can be sent to the targets of your choice, including - I'm pretty sure - soft synth parameters.

I'd like to be able to control various parameters of vst's like Alchemy, Samplemodeling instruments, and the like. It looks like DP has the capability of doing this without requiring me to spend any more money. I'll give it a shot later this evening and see if I can make it work.

Thanks again.

Richard

[andygabrys]

what about just using an ipad or iphone and something like TouchOSC to control those parameters? you tried something like that? Does DP play with that?

[remmet]

what about just using an ipad or iphone and something like TouchOSC to control those parameters? you tried something like that? Does DP play with that?

Good questions, Andy. I've heard of people using iPads in conjunction with their DAW, but I don't know the details. It might be worth looking into.

R

[andygabrys]

Yeah for sure. I know it's all different with logic x having a built in iPad app, but even logic 9 had the OSC functionality. If nothing else meant I could remotely start and stop recording without having to be near my computer keyboard.