First, a long-delayed thank you to everyone who answered a question I had in March 2020, about a week before a gig, and also about a week before everything stopped for us in Minnesota. The gig was my first for money, and a success, and Cantabile worked perfectly.
I have made the most rudimentary use of Cantabile for about 3 years. But it works for me. I run 3 controllers (two for me and one small controller at the mic). But I am not a fan of the Arturia keyboards for organ playing, so I want to swap out an Arturia controller and use my YC-61 as my main keyboard. Easy enough if it is just a controller, but I also sometimes want to use a patch in the YC-61…and I want Cantabile to dial in the patch. This is doable, right? Seems like a simple thing, but as I say, I do nothing but zone and send sounds to different keyboards. I don’t even use racks. Since I’m really a horrible keyboardist, I control volume using my audio interface when I have to, and not pedals. They seem to become disconnected all the time and are unreliable. Even assigning a knob somehow goes wonky. So I go with what works.
To be honest, over the past 2 months I tried to quit Cantabile and move to a Kronos, YC-61, and a little Arturia controller at the mic. But Korg and Sweetwater agreed that I couldn’t do what I’d become accustomed to doing using the Kronos. So back it went.
Anyway, if there’s a video/guide on how to control hardware synths, just let me know!
Thanks in advance for any help…
Hi Keith,
Do you have bindings in your version of Cantabile? If so it is easy to send Program changes to external gear if you have a working MIDI port to the device.
Dave
Yes, I have the Performer version. I can barely make a binding for assigining buttons to go forward and backward in my set list. Sometimes those bindings disappear after 6 months or a year. Not sure why.
In any case, all my MIDI for everything is set to omni, so I’m guessing I have any needed MIDI channels available. So, it seems like I set the YC-61 to External. But do I do anything special to its MIDI channels? Or maybe I make new User patches and save them with a different MIDI channel than 1 or something like that? Or maybe I don’t need to do anything to the YC-61 except set to external? I tried that and the board worked perfectly as a controller when linked to Cantabile.
If I use a binding to select a sound internal to the YC-61, it would definitiely be helpful to have detailed steps… I’m not sure the binding video gets me there completely.
And then, the last question, for the those super zoned songs like “Live and Let Die” and have orchestral parts zoned all over 2 controllers, is it possible to set a zones on the YC-61 to play both VSTs and… let’s say 1 internal YC-61 patch? That would be awesome!
Again, thanks for any info!
Hey Keith,
It looks like the manual for the YC-61 allows you to call up User Live Sets only so you would have to load your YC live sets with your favorite presets. The table from the manual shows the Banked Program numbers for the Live sets.
The binding is shown set to call the first live set. you put a period between each section of the address.
Cantabile binding shown as an example.
I used External Synth for the target to represent the YC-61. The type of binding sends the PG change when the song loads.
On the question of playing a Vst and the YC zones at the same time the answer is yes. You just need to set your Cantabile Vst zones in the input routes to match the zones on the YC you like, make sure the YC’s audio is turned up and then you blend the two sources with a mixer.
Hope this helps get you started,
Dave
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