Ladies and Germs,
I have a question about how any of you more experienced users do your MIDI mapping. For the most part, I am using either Native Instruments Kontakt or Reaktor. I use a Yamaha S90es as my master keyboard. Using MIDI-OX, I have confirmed that the proper MIDI signals are being sent to my Cantabile rig. Forgive my rambling, but I’m going to try to explain what I’ve done, so…
For this example, lets say I have my Yamaha “talking” to my Cantabile rig on channel 8.
In Cantabile, I have been putting everything I do into Racks. I set the Rack to listen on channel 1, and map from the song level CH8 > CH1.
I want the foot controller (C4) to control Cantabile’s master gain, so at the song level, I have bound C4 on CH8 to Cantabile’s Master Gain.
I also want the Volume slider (the Yamaha has 4 configurable sliders) to control the volume at the Rack level, so within the rack I have bound C7 on CH1 (remember… that should have been remapped at the song level) to Kontakt’s output level.
On paper this seems to make sense, but I am getting strange interactions where the volume is way low sometimes, and seems to be just where I would expect it at others (based on the level meters in Cantabile.)
I’m sure some of you are using NI products, so how do you go about setup?
Thanks!
Rick
You’re probably already doing this, but make sure the extent of the fader on the Yamaha is controlling the right range in Cantabile. You may need to tweak the scaling in your controller binding to get it to control Kontak’s output level in the right way (for example, what does “all the way up” on the Yamaha fader mean, 0dB? Or more?).
Also, you say you’re binding to Kontak’s output level - is that the fader on the Kontakt plugin or rack? Or are you converting to CC7 and sending it into Kontakt? Remember, if you’re binding to Cantabile faders, you also need to take into account the fact that Kontakt internally has an output volume, controlled by CC7, and you may need a trigger to set that to 127 or suchlike. Some of us on the forum prefer to keep things clear, by controlling volumes externally to plugins (either via a Cantabile fader binding or a fader plugin such as FreeG), and then block CC7 messages going into plugins, so you know the only volume control is that external binding.
Not sure if I’m helping with your problem here, but these are a few thoughts that came to mind.
Neil
Neil,
Thanks for the input. I was thinking the issue was more with Kontakt and how it handles things.
I took a quick look at FreeG. Are you using that at the Rack level, or in place of Cantabile’s output level?
RR
I was using FreeG as the last step in all my instrument racks, controlled via a binding. However I now just use Cantabile fader’s controlled via a binding.
I don’t currently have any binding for the volume control of the main Cantabile output level.
Neil
Neil,
I’m a little confused here… Cantabile Fader / Cantabile Output Level.
What is the difference here?
By “Cantabile Fader” I was talking about the faders you get on routes and racks. I was thinking of “Cantabile Output Level” as the main master output volume going out to the audio device.
Neil
Neil,
Gottcha!
Well, that gives me some food for thought, I’ll look at things again this weekend.
Thanks again!
RR