What MIDI controller do you recommend/use?

[drphoto]

Earl are you doing shows with bands or DJ? I'm really curious to learn how other people running lights with bands are synching their cues. Right now I'm obviously doing it manually, but I'm hoping I can use the timeline to build a semi automated show. My plan is to build a show for a song by programming the cues using a recording of the song in the media file, then when we go live, replace the audio file with a click track that will go out from my computer to the drummer's in ear monitors. I'll start the scene, he will hear the click and start in sync. Hopefully. We've yet to test this crazy concept.

[Earl Harvey]

I primarily use live w Bands... I don't use timelines because most drummers I work with don't use a click track... I have entertained the thought of using an Aux from the audio console to trigger auto on a PC... I have an extensive background using MIDI as a Keyboard Player and have been an audio engineer well over 30 years... I have considered using timelines with a click track and perhaps adding also video text for lyrics... Lead singers can be forgetful or just downright too lazy to learn the darn things or if a guest vocalist has to fill in... I have also considered "striping" a timeline with SMPTE timecode on the audio track to sync external devices to SX

[drphoto]

Earl, I just picked up a Launchpad S. Can you tell me how you get the button lights to work? Do you have to use Automap? Xpress recognizes commands from the controller, but the active buttons are not lighting up. And that's the reason I got this, as I was losing track of which buttons were active on the
APC20. thanks.

[drphoto]

Never mind. Figured it out. Had to enable MIDI out in the button trigger setup.

[Earl Harvey]

Cool! you can change button color by having different data value on the output than the midi input but I usually just clone the input...

[drphoto]

Earl, this thing works great. yeah, I just cloned input too. Wish I'd seen your post about the APC before I bought that. Will keep you posted on my idea about syncing timeline cues by using a click track and sending that audio out to the band. We've yet to try that live.

[zkflow]

thanks!! looks interesting.. but for me.. to many noobs... a controller with only faders and pads... would be amazing!!!

[drphoto]

After a few months of using it, I can highly recommend the Novation Launchpad. I originally wanted a console with sliders, as that's what I was used to from the old analog days. Plus I felt like one got a visual/tactile reference as to what scenes are active. I'm learning to live w/ just the visual feedback provided by the MIDI out from V.7. I'm getting used to playing the show on this pad, and I have to admit, I almost like it better than sliders now. The Novation is thin, lightweight, requires no external power, and is fairly cheap. If you require more that 64 buttons, there's always software MIDI mergers. As as Mac guy, I use MidiPipe and it's flawless. As Earl said in an earlier post, stay away from the Akai APC units, I have the APC-20 and still use the slider/faders for my spots, but I'm not using any of the rest of it. At some point I'll probably sell it. I could do spots of buttons with the fade in/fade out enabled.

BTW: if software people are reading this, can we get a faster fade in/fade out than 1/2 sec?

[Earl Harvey]

Well I'll have to admit the new APC mini does look tempting for $99 ... The Launchpad actually has 80 buttons... I'm holding out for something with motorized faders which the market should be flooded with in January...

[drphoto]

Earl is correct once again. On the Novation, there are sixteen additional buttons in addition to the array of 64. I use these for my effects and back spots. While I love the APC-20 (beautiful metal case, nice long travel sliders with big buttons) the deal breaker was I could not figure out how to make it accept MIDI input from the Xpress. I kept loosing track of which scenes were active without any sort of feedback when using the buttons.