I haven’t been a serious user in the past but due to DAW issues I may become one.
I have seen references to (and screenshots of) a Midi clock section in the options dialog but it does not appear in my copy of Cantabile. This is needed because I’ll need to able to sync the tempo to an external source.
I also have Finale, Notion, and Cakewalk. For the past few years I’ve been doing everything in Cakewalk but I can see good reasons to split the midi sequencing and VST hosting. I am trying it out now and fortunately the piece I’m working on has no tempo changes.
I can assure you that you will really like all the other features you get with Performer as well. It is entirely worth it for live performance AND recording.
So, I’ve only recently upgraded from lite, still learning a lot of the features - but, as I pull away from DAWs and grid based music I still need something to control everything.
Let me ask you this, if I may . . . With performer would this be a feasible workflow/expectations.
I want to use a beatstep pro and a controller keyboard to drive cantabile, so far so good.
Would you think it possible to configure cantabile to respond to start/stop triggers on individual channels? So that I could start a drum machine independent of the master transport, by sending start/stop just on channel 10 say? It also send start/stop on channel 1, 2 and 3?
I get the feeling cantabile can do anything if configured correctly.
Sorry for the possibly dumb question! I appreciate your offering advice and not a pre-sales consultant
That won’t work - start / stop messages aren’t channel-specific messages; they don’t have channel information. Start is $FA; stop is $FC - unlike note or controller messages that have the channel encoded in their second half-byte (nybble, as the nerds call it). So this is not a matter of Cantabile doing it or not; it’s just that the MIDI specification doesn’t give you channel-specific start / stop.
Cantabile will allow you to start master playback or any media player independently using any kind of controller message; you won’t need to use start/stop messages. You could e.g. create a binding that starts playback of media player 2 on receiving command-change 117 or a note C6 (just an arbitrary example).
The question is: will your drum machine plugin start independently of the VST master transport? Again, that’s not a Cantabile question, but one of the capabilities of your plugin. Most drum machine plugins are synced to the host tempo and playback, so it might be impossible to start/stop them independently of master transport.
Can you tell me what drum plugin you are planning to use?
Thanks so much for the detailed answer! That really does explain what’s going on.
By using a binding, I can probably do exactly what I need, or think it through from another angle. Knowing that transport start/stop isn’t channel bound helps me frame my expectations
Drum machine wise - I use the tr808 / 909 vsts from the Roland cloud.
