Song load trigger

Is there a “brute force” way to send a program change to external gear whenever a song is loaded via a “Song Load” binding, including if the song happens to be already selected? Currently the closest I’ve found is to use a trigger on Song State Load, but if I happen to already be in the song’s initial state, the trigger is not triggered. Essentially I want a song’s trigger to fire when a “Song Load” binding in the global rack fires.

Hi Neil,

This has come up a couple of times now and I’m thinking of just always firing the song long triggers whenever a song is selected - even if it’s already loaded. Would this cover it for you?

Brad

Yes, I think it would. And I can’t think of any situations where doing that might be problematic.

This sounds like something I’m looking for right now:

I’d love to send a certain MIDI CC to an embedded rack right after it has finished loading… an automatic trigger without the need of pressing a button on any controller, so to speak.

(To be more specific: One of my NI Kontakt instances is to stupid to remember my expression pedal (CC 11) being pushed all the way down, so I thought I’d set up a trigger which, of course, doesn’t do anything by itself).

Any advice?

—(Spent the last 3 hours programming songs / jamming… I LOVE C3! :blush:)

Hi @SeppHaslinger

Yes, a song load trigger should work for this. You might need to pair it with a binding in the rack to pass it onto the plugin.

Is that not working for you?

Brad

Thanks for your feedback, @Brad.
Yeah, executing the trigger by pressing a bound button works perfectly, just like it should, but it would be nice if I could bind the trigger to an automatic command which is executed on song load. Maybe I am missing something…

Hi @SeppHaslinger

Can you send me screen shot (or post it here if you like) of your setup - perhaps I can spot something.

Brad

Shure, @Brad, thanks for your help.

The trigger works perfectly when bound to a (physical) controller. But I’d like to not have to touch anything for the shown trigger to happen. I would be glad if it executed when the song is loaded (e.g. in the screen shot: “Hold The Line” is over → I press the “Next Song”-assigned button on my MIDI-Keyboard → song “Ich will nur” loads and sends the value “0” in MIDI CC “11” to the rack “Strings”)

Am I missing something in setting this up?

Thank you very much and kind regards,
Sepp

What’s wrong with this here?

or, if Kontakt takes some time to react, simply add some delay:

If song start doesn’t do it (for me it usually does, but I actually prefer state-specific initialization so I am sure of the string level in the chorus) - use a state-specific trigger (maybe only for the first state in your song):

This way, you can have different pre-programmed levels of your expression pedal for verse, chorus, bridge…

I use this all the time to set

  • organ expression pedal level
  • organ leslie speed
  • E-Piano tremolo depth (controlled by modwheel)
  • etc.

at the beginning of a song or a section. This is my usual default trigger setup (which I then modify for state-specific adjustments):

I have a big bright red button on top of my master keyboard that simply steps through song states so that I can concentrate on my playing and less on pushing faders, turning wheels or calling up individual programs. May have to do with the fact that in addition to keyboards (and sometimes guitar) duties, I am lead singer and band leader, so a tad busy on stage. I simply love these state-specific triggers - my lead sheet simply says “red button now” at specific points in a song; the rest is simply doing what I love most: playing and singing.

Cheers,

Torsten

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@SeppHaslinger,

@torsten 's answer is better than anything I would have written, but let me know if you still can’t sort it out.

Brad

Thank you very much, @Torsten,

your guide was very helpful and revealing! I’d never thought of how deep you can go in programming and automating your setup with Cantabile. I think my problem was that I’ve not thought of the “Song Start” trigger-event in the right way. I supposed it to be connected to the need of literally “starting” the song, which I don’t do. So obviously it invokes the trigger when the song file has finished loading.

Thanks again. I hope I can help others like you helped me.

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