This rack is one I spent serious time developing last year and revised early this year. It is now to a point where I am going to release it to the community and hope it might come in handy at the time when you need it most. Since it is a complex beast it may not suit all users but if you can churn through the pdf manual I provided you will discover a very versatile tool that has the capability of saving custom automated fader MIDI streams for MIDI Faders for use in Audio and lighting both internal and external. This Fader Rack can go from fractions of a second up to 5 minutes events with calibrated and scaled gain slopes as well. It has 2 complete fade up and down engines with a variety of configurations and trigger sources available for using it. The zip file includes the Rack, the CC#7 MIDI files and the Instruction manual with install instructions. It is important to install the MIDI fader files folder in the racks folder with the rack. It is completely made from Cantabile route functions and bindings with rack state recall for the presets so no vst plugins are required. It is âuse at your own riskâ but has been tested extensively and I use it my live work now going on 3 months of real life use. Thanks to @brad and all the contributors at the site that made the making of the rack a reality. Hereâs a screenshot of the rack internals where you program the presets âŚ
3/18/2018 Edit: I made some corrections and improvements so download the updated racks when you get a chance. Added one shot trigger resetting on song load and added some more to the instructions.
Sure I can tell you some ways i use it so far. The manual has a lot in it but simply put you route your controller keyboard to the fader rack and route the output(s) of the Rack to the Vstis or MIDI ports of your choosing. I use it to do the following types of things:
I route my expression pedal via my controller to the rack to use it as a trigger to produce nice graduated slope gain swells for for brass, organ and strings. These are shorter duration fade choices. When I press all the way down the volume change and pace of change are handled by the auto fader and when i pull the pedal all the way back it reverses the process. It makes my pedal swells nice and even. I can also use a damper switch pedal as a trigger to do this as well.
On long fade in or out songs I set up a zone where when I press the chord it starts the long fade in of a pad to a predetermined level. Pink Floyd, Supertramp style long fade ins and outs. I also use the key switch modes to do the same thing.
I have also set up a cross fade between 2 vstis to independent preset levels and at a speed of my choosing using either a switch pedal, expression pedal or a key-switch. (both regular and inverted outputs are available for simultaneous cross fading. I use this to morph between 2 synth or organ patches at both fast and slow speeds.
I use it to fade the whole band out on a few numbers by feeding a midi stream produced by the rack to the digital mixer we use and controlling its master volume and monitor system fade outs. I just hit a high key-switch to start the fade out process and it does the rest while i play the rest of the song. The band wants to do fade ins now as well!
A young lighting enthusiast I know says he would likely use it to fade and crossfade MIDI lighting setups because the MIDI info is usable on many platforms including lights. I donât have that background but he made sense to me.
Hope that helps you see how I use it and thanks for your interest!
I made some fixes (the preset slots had corrupted routes) and improvements (added a binding to reset the one shot triggers on Song Load and added to the instruction manual) so I re-posted the new racks above. If you use this down load the new ones when you get a chance.
The scaling is set with 2 separate racks inside the the main rack (Scale Convert Up and Down). The default for the scaling is set to fade up to 0 db on a Cantabile slider and that is 96 on the MIDI output scale when fed to an external midi out route. To get to MIDI 127 set the scale to oo ~ +7.3db.
Hi Dave -
Iâm very confused how to get this started. Could you help with a âhello worldâ type into sample. In this case, the âhello worldâ would be an automated 3 second swell when I play the first chord of a musical selection.
Hereâs my setup thus far -
I put the rack into my âracksâ collection, choosing ânew scale faderâ to match my settings in Cantabile.
I put the supporting folder at the same level in my âracksâ collection. This appears to be correct since the media players do load the correct files.
I brought the rack into a song as an existing linked rack.
I routed my controller to "New Scale Folder - In (Keyswitch Notes).
I routed âOut (Filtered Notes)â to my sound VSTi. Midi events flow through normally.
You were almost there, instead of routing from "Out(Filtered Notes) Use the âOut(Selected State)â and might want to put a reset switch for the fader if needed. The note triggered defaults are one shot fades (after you trigger them they only work once until reset).
As far as a drive-by will this do it? To set up the fade you open the rack, select the rack state (Preset) that you want to store your fade in and adjust the parameters as shown below using the select menus on the internal racks and the variable speed control on the media player. Your requested settings for a 3 second swell to full (on a Cantabile Fader) or a value of 127 for MIDI CC 7 are shown in the picture below.
To calculate the percentage setting for the speed control knob the equation is
Base Time / Desired Time = Multiplier x 100 = xxx %
2.5 sec / 3 secs = .83 x 100 = 83 %
The picture below illustrates the settings for that task but post any questions and I will try to help.
On the question of bindings the rack outputs are also available as sources for bindings to any slider in Cantabile or to outboard gears MIDI port. So if you prefer you can route to your rack or vst using a binding instead of a route from the rack itself.
Hi Dave -
Thanks for the detailed notes. But still nothing is working - no indication of any notes or CCs being routed out of the âOut (state selected)â port. Did I need to also make any changes on the bindings tab?
For the first figure, the only difference I have (other than the VSTi used) is that Iâm routing the keyboard to âNew Scale Faderâ. You have both New and Old scale factor in the picture. Do I need to load both?
BTW, one of my end goals is to generate âflowing stringsâ, where when I press a chord different notes in the chord begin to sound at different times. Have you ever tried to do that using your rack?
My bad on the picture, I replaced it with the correct one. You donât need both. To check the rack operation try the following. There is no binding needed to check the operation of the rack, they are just another way to do the same thing.
So to check it out you select the Out(State Selected) output route of the Fader rack and then open the MIDI Monitor. View>MIDI Monitor.
Press a note to trigger the fade rack and look for cc7 stream of midi to come out. If nothing comes out then either the trigger needs to be reset or the note isnât getting to the trigger input on the rack or maybe some files are missing, the folder with the midi files must be in Documents/Cantabile/Racks/MIDI CC 7 Fader Files because the path must be correct for the rack to work. With the rack open you can test the media player playback by directly pressing play on Media Player 1 (in this case) and watching for the gain slider on that player to move. If you can, post your screen shots they may help to figure it.
On the last question of âflowing stringsâ I will need to cogitate a bit on that and will get back to you. Letâs see if we can get this going first.
I may have found the problem, but donât know how to fix it. It turns out the control works fine the first time it is used, but never resets so it can be used again, even if I reload the song to play it again. The instructions you sent route the main keyboard to âNew Scale Fader - In (Reset Up/Dn CC3)â In the rack, you have bindings that when the input port gets controllers 3, 66, or 67 various resets occur, but there are no resets based on note ons or note offs. Should there be?
The In(Reset Up/Dn CC3) input is for a separate momentary switch input that uses CC3 as the proper MIDI Control number. I set up a manual reset switch for the single shot swell type settings on the Cantabile Control Bar so I could test them. Like below
All this assumes you want only one swell up to a certain volume and then not worry about it the rest of the song. If you have something more complex in mind please detail it for me and maybe we can figure what configuration to use to get it done. Also when you have the one shot settings you want it is important to lock the rack state with the Note triggers reset and Enabled so that when it is called up in a song it will be ready to trigger.
There is also a reset for the note triggers on Song Load built into the rack that should have worked but I donât know why itâs not working for you. Also you have to have the fader rack state behaviors in the song set to âSelected Rack Stateâ to recall your presets for different Songs.
No, I havenât designed anything like that yet but could look in to adding it as a feature when I have time. The pdf manual describes the available modes of operation and MIDI implementation. The 3 basic operation modes are one shot fades Up/Down/Up & Down/Down & Up, Keyswitched fades based on fixed keyswitch maps and Foot Pedal based auto fading.
