VB3 (GSI): rotary speed and sustain control

Cantabile
5

Let me offer you a somewhat complicated but extremely powerful solution.

I’ve set my VB3 in its global settings to treat sustain pedal as sustain and not to control leslie. Important: this is a GLOBAL setting of VB3; it isn’t controlled by plugin parameters, and therefore there is nothing you can do to change this with rack or song states! Essentially, you can only control “Preset parameters” of VB3 with Cantabile song / rack states.

Now I use Cantabile’s route MIDI filter settings to influence what gets sent to my VB3. I create five separate routes from my main keyboard to VB3:

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  1. Keys only (filters out all controller information) - this route is always active
  2. Sustain to Leslie (filters out anything but CC64, toggles CC1 between 0 and 127) - this emulates the “sustain to leslie” behavior. The only drawback: since it doesn’t know what state VB3 is in, you may have to press sustain twice at the beginning (leslie is fast initially, but sustain sends 127 first, then 0)
  3. Aftertouch to Leslie (filters out anything but channel aftertouch, transforms aftertouch to CC1) - great for one-hand soloing; spin up Leslie via aftertouch
  4. Modwheel to Leslie (filters out anything but CC1) - control leslie speed via modulation controller
  5. Sustain pedal (filters out anything but CC64) - use sustain pedal to hold organ notes - great when using hammond as a pad.

Here are some of the filter settings:

This is for the first route (notes only)

Here is the second (sustain to leslie)

And here the “aftertouch to leslie”:

Rest should be self-explanatory (simple “suppress notes, after touch, program change, channel pressure, pitch bend, Allow CCx”) for modwheel or sustain

Now make all these routes (except 1) state-dependent and you can configure for every song state if you want to control Leslie via aftertouch, modwheel or sustain pedal or if you want to use sustain to hold notes.

BTW: in my setup, I have to additional routes:

  • EXP to pedal: lets CC11 pass through to VB3 to control volume
  • Modwheel to pedal: converts CC1 to CC11 to control organ volume with the mod wheel

Plus, I set up song state triggers to send CC11 and CC1 to VB3, so that every state starts with a controlled setting for volume and leslie speed, independent of what I’ve done with my controllers in previous parts of the song.

Super-powerful, but needs a bit of fiddling to get right.

Cheers,

Torsten

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