I’m used to using a shared RD-700SX at church and having several patches available at the same time (Piano/EP/pad/synth. I’m after a bit more flexibility that I can practice with at home and think that using Cantabile with a physical controller (e.g. Korg NanoKontrol2) and whatever keyboard is available at home/away would be pretty much perfect.
I’ve bought Cantabile Solo and am enjoying playing with it. However I’m not quite sure what the right way to structure my setup is, if I don’t have specific songs in mind. I guess in the future I will set up specific sounds for songs, but I think I’ll always want a generic setup with a bunch of my normal go-to stuff in. I’m wondering the best way to achieve this.
I think I need to have all my VST plugins loaded (Piano, EP, Pad, Strings, Synths etc) - so probably a max of the 8 faders you get with the NanoKontrol, and then to save that as a “generic” song.
Each fader would control one VST instrument, I’d use a button per fader to toggle the running state of the instrument (disabling rather than just fading down, to reduce processor usage?). I’ll use the knob above the fader to control a key element of each instrument, and amthinking about using the other buttons to do things like triggering octave doubling or effects on that instrument.
I could potentially think of some more creative uses (e.g. synth doubling piano top end, bass doubling piano bottom end) and have those in songs but coming from the RD-700SX I don’t really want to be reaching over to touch my laptop regularly, and I’m not sure if I’m heading down a route that will make life painful for me later.
Any suggestions from people who work more generically than at a song level?
Thanks in advance! (I promise I did watch a bunch of the Cantabile videos and search on here before posting but haven’t found anything that hits the spot)
To set up a bare bones setup like you want in one song it would look like like this example where on the routing page you have all the plugins loaded like this.
You can use the Learn function to id your nano controller CC numbers for the Source of your bindings by left clicking on the Add Binding button and selecting (learn). Depending on your controller you might need to try different switch types for the resume/suspend functions.
This is a rough starting template and you can add more button bindings as you wish. Hope this helps some.
Dave_N, I use almost this exact setup with my church’s RD700sx. I had an issue with the laptop not recognizing the USB connection. Had to drill down into the keyboard settings and change the USB driver type from “original” to “generic”. I also use a NanoKontrol 2 to control my rack volumes. My bindings are setup to assign a different rack to each NanoKontrol fader based on the order of the rack (“rack by index”). I always sequence piano, then pad, then strings, organs, then EP racks, in that order. If I don’t need to one of the racks for a song, I insert a “dummy rack” which I created for nothing more than to occupy a position in the list of racks in a song. That way I know that Slider 1 will always be associated with the Piano rack, etc. I still rely alot on song states to turn on and off particular racks and I preset the each rack volume as closely as possible to what I think I’ll need for a song during worship. I do have one song set up with all those racks active, which I use for our weekly practice between Sunday services. So I can pull up whichever sounds I need immediately- similar to what you can do with the native sounds on the RD700, but much more flexible. Then I’ll go home and create a new song which is more specifically tailored to what’s needed.
Thanks so much for the replies! I’m understanding there’s no really clever solution to this
I’ve gone through and created a rack for each instrument I’m after (to allow me to add effects if I want and then a separate input rack to add a level of indirection between my source keyboard and the VSTs (I’m doing a lot of playing around with the on screen keyboard and it was annoying to change all of the input devices every time!). I haven’t yet bought the NanoKontrol - still just dipping my toes in.
I’d really prefer a Behringer X-Touch with the knobs that show the state of each parameter live, but I don’t yet want to pay for the more expensive Cantabile and it sounds like there might be a pain with needing a delay on the MIDI reflections. I think the states option you’re using, LeesKeys, comes from Performer. States do look good from the tutorial video so I guess if I end up using a lot I could end up going for Perfomer and the Behringer control surface.
LeesKeys - I have a Steinberg UR44 interface so I was planning to use that for in/out and plug the 700SX in to that via MIDI which should hopefully mean I skip the USB MIDI on the Roland.
The tip about bindings with “rack by index” sounds really handy - that’s exactly the kind of thing that I’m after.
I’ve found some brilliant free VSTs but am considering buying something “all in 1” as a set of preconfigured sounds, like the Korg M1 patch library. I’m particularly missing mushy not-very-in-your face pads to use to give additional support.
Any recommendations for relatively inexpensive swiss army knife instruments?
Dave_N, Your Midi connection plan should work if you don’t want to go the USB route.
I haven’t found any “swiss knife” collection that does it all to my satisfaction. I have a core of plugins which I use all the time and am very pleased with. These include:
Pianoteq 6 Stage- a great sounding modeled piano which comes with Steinway D and K2 grand pianos; many presets for each one. I have also purchased their electric pianos pack which offers Rhodes and Wurlies. Very high quality sounds.
Korg M1- many, many presets including lots of good pads and strings. It’s part of the Korg Legacy collection. The collection occasionally goes on sale for 50% off, usually around the holidays.
Blue3 for Hammond organ emulation. It’s my go to Hammond sound.
Also, look at Air Music Technology Xpand!2, which is part of the larger suite AIEP3 Complete. I bought the Complete package a couple of years ago when they were offering it at a ridiculously cheap price. Xpand!2 has many presets in a variety of categories. I don’t know if it’s on sale anywhere now but I’m sure it will be again at some point.
Thanks Lee, that’s great. Those are definitely less expensive than a lot of the stuff I found (although I think generally I’ll need to use it a bit before I am convinced to invest a lot of money!)
