VB3 (GSI): rotary speed and sustain control

Cantabile
1

Hello to everybody,

I am quite new with Cantabile 3, since I approached this powerful software from a couple of months. Thanks to you all in this community I already had the opportunity to learn a lot, but now it’s my turn to ask for your help; I did not find anything similar in other posts.

In my setup there is an “organ-rack” which includes the amazing VB3 organ vst instrument. The rotary speed (slow/fast) is controlled by the sustain pedal (cc# 64) connected to the main keyboard and it does its job very good.
My problem is how to switch off or bypass the rotary speed control in a song, when I don’t need it, and reactivate it in the next song. To make it simple:

  • song 1: rotary speed control and note sustain ON
  • song 2: rotary speed control OFF and note sustain ON
    In the VB3 global option I have switched off the cc# 64 rotary speed control, and saved it as preset rack state, but then, when I load the next song, the rotary speed control stills deactivate, even if it was saved ON in a new different preset rack state relative to the second song. In other words, the VB3 plugin keeps and stays with the last control setup I made.
    May be it has something to do with the State Behavior - Plugin options (not yet fully clear to me) or I missed something else.

Thanks in advance for your inputs

Franco

2

You can use the midi filter. Choose with in the rack, input ports Rack:Midi in with your right mouse. Here you can supress controller 64, this wil stop your controller. Make a new route for the vb3 that has no filter. With rack states you can choose wich route is on or off.

Goldy

1 Like
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VB3 also has MIDI learn…simply click on the Rotary controls and re-map to other hardware or controller #'s

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Thanks a lot Goldy, I will check it as soon I will be back next Friday :disappointed: unfortunately I am out for work all week.

Thank you too Dennis, I already saw the MIDI learn function, where you can enable/disable the rotary speed control by sunstain pedal (or re-map it as you suggest). It works, but my problem is to save the configuration within the plug-in state or rack state. For sure this is an area of Cantabile where I should work to improve my knowledge!

Regards, Franco

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Let me offer you a somewhat complicated but extremely powerful solution.

I’ve set my VB3 in its global settings to treat sustain pedal as sustain and not to control leslie. Important: this is a GLOBAL setting of VB3; it isn’t controlled by plugin parameters, and therefore there is nothing you can do to change this with rack or song states! Essentially, you can only control “Preset parameters” of VB3 with Cantabile song / rack states.

Now I use Cantabile’s route MIDI filter settings to influence what gets sent to my VB3. I create five separate routes from my main keyboard to VB3:

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  1. Keys only (filters out all controller information) - this route is always active
  2. Sustain to Leslie (filters out anything but CC64, toggles CC1 between 0 and 127) - this emulates the “sustain to leslie” behavior. The only drawback: since it doesn’t know what state VB3 is in, you may have to press sustain twice at the beginning (leslie is fast initially, but sustain sends 127 first, then 0)
  3. Aftertouch to Leslie (filters out anything but channel aftertouch, transforms aftertouch to CC1) - great for one-hand soloing; spin up Leslie via aftertouch
  4. Modwheel to Leslie (filters out anything but CC1) - control leslie speed via modulation controller
  5. Sustain pedal (filters out anything but CC64) - use sustain pedal to hold organ notes - great when using hammond as a pad.

Here are some of the filter settings:

This is for the first route (notes only)

Here is the second (sustain to leslie)

And here the “aftertouch to leslie”:

Rest should be self-explanatory (simple “suppress notes, after touch, program change, channel pressure, pitch bend, Allow CCx”) for modwheel or sustain

Now make all these routes (except 1) state-dependent and you can configure for every song state if you want to control Leslie via aftertouch, modwheel or sustain pedal or if you want to use sustain to hold notes.

BTW: in my setup, I have to additional routes:

  • EXP to pedal: lets CC11 pass through to VB3 to control volume
  • Modwheel to pedal: converts CC1 to CC11 to control organ volume with the mod wheel

Plus, I set up song state triggers to send CC11 and CC1 to VB3, so that every state starts with a controlled setting for volume and leslie speed, independent of what I’ve done with my controllers in previous parts of the song.

Super-powerful, but needs a bit of fiddling to get right.

Cheers,

Torsten

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You know Torsten, I reckon Brad should make your replies a sticky! Or maybe you could bundle them all up into a single “tips” thread and then sticky that. Your responses are nothing short of amazing and extremely helpful, kudos man! And thanks.

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Hi Torsten,

You have done a really great job and thanks a lot to share your ideas!
Also very clear explanation.
May be it will be a bit complicate to tune up as you said, but it looks very powerful and elegant solution.
I am now looking forward to put in practice the tons of inputs you offer.

Cheers, Franco

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Hi Franco,
I don’t know if you’ve solved your problem yet, but this might be of use for you:
I also have VB3, and to control the leslie I mounted a modified foot switch to a bracket under my keyboard so that it could be operated with a sideways knee press. I changed the original switch in the foot switch to a “push on - push off” type to toggle between slow and fast. I like to leave the leslie in the slow state instead of off, but you could probably set it up to your preference. Since I am seated when I play this works well for me. BTW I’m in the process of building an external drawbar/switch unit so I can control the VB3 settings in real time.
pjay

1 Like
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Thanks a lot pjay for your contribute, interesting solution.
In the meantime I have already solved the problem as suggested by Torsten in his post and it works very well.
In addition that was a good opportunity for me to learn and understanding a bit more the signal routing inside Cantabile. Very powerful.

Cheers, Franco