How many of you have mapped your midi keyboards to your synths/DAW's

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How many of you have mapped your midi keyboards to your synths/DAW's
Posted on: 23.04.2012 by Johnsie Kingrea
Hey as the community title states how many of you have managed to map your midi keyboards to your DAW/synths?


I really want to find a way of making things more organic with my soft synths. I've got a Moog Little Phatty and when I play with that, the rate that I come up with sounds and ideas is way faster since i'm able to tweak things very easily, rather then having to use my mouse to adjust things all the time. Things that's bugging me though is in my synths of choice there's so many controls that it'd be impossible to map everything in an intuitive way. What do you believe would be the best way to setup my keyboard?
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Well
Johnsie Kingrea
01.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Quick question
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Well
Johnsie Kingrea
01.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Quick question
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Well
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Sweet.
Meh. Is that really a problem?
Ya to really a huge deal,I guess the one thing I found disappointing with automap was that it didn't exactly work as advertised. It made it sound as if it would magically have all the parameters nicely named and mapped but this wasn't the case. And there was no support for native instrument synths, I had to make my own mappings and name the parameters my self. It works but only after you've put in the work.
Dorie Scelzo
03.05.2012
Originally Posted by rdej47
Yes you can name your parameters.
Sweet.
Originally Posted by rdej47
One of the downsides to auto map though is that you have to have automap running in the background for your parameters to be mapped.
Meh. Is that really a problem?
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by botstein
Sure. Aftertouch is information sent by the instrument/controller/device/hardware/whatever after you touch down. I'm not sure exactly how your SL 49 does this, but Maschine sends great (accurate) signals related to pressure if you hold down the pad(s).

In both Massive and Razor, you can associate aftertouch with really any part of the synthesis. I believe aftertouch is great for vibrato, which is of course totally impossible on any regular acoustic piano or keyboard/controller. In Razor, I sometimes set a "psuedo pitchbend" to receive aftertouch in order to achieve this.

I believe Loudon Stearns (great teacher, by the way) demonstrates aftertouch in a compelling way at the beginning of this tutorial:


He uses aftertouch for glide time, which has a lot of performance potential.
Good call on that video man, really clarifies the uses of after touch.
Johnsie Kingrea
01.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Quick question
Monserrate Rupnow
23.04.2012
Originally Posted by seitz
omni has a app for ipad??? fuck i gotta get it...im addicted to omnishphere and trillian
Yeah man, it's even free. Works awesome, very well done.
Johnsie Kingrea
23.04.2012
Originally Posted by botstein
I've mapped my Oxygen to Massive, Razor, Live, and Maschine. I map Maschine to Massive a lot because I like using aftertouch.
Hey Botstein could you explain what can be achieved with aftertouch? I've seen it in Razor as a modulation source but i'm not really sure what it does. I'm pretty sure my Novation SL 49 has aftertouch but I really have no idea what it is haha.
Maricruz Mouw
23.04.2012
Originally Posted by Tarekith
This is one of my biggest hangups with using softsynths and midi controllers, the mapping. I hate being in the flow writing and then having to stop and remap something if I get an idea that's outside my current mapping. These days I mainly use hardware OMnisphere since it has the OmniTR app for iPad that eliminates common mapping issues.
omni has a app for ipad??? fuck i gotta get it...im addicted to omnishphere and trillian
Johnsie Kingrea
23.04.2012		Hey as the community title states how many of you have managed to map your midi keyboards to your DAW/synths?


I really want to find a way of making things more organic with my soft synths. I've got a Moog Little Phatty and when I play with that, the rate that I come up with sounds and ideas is way faster since i'm able to tweak things very easily, rather then having to use my mouse to adjust things all the time. Things that's bugging me though is in my synths of choice there's so many controls that it'd be impossible to map everything in an intuitive way. What do you believe would be the best way to setup my keyboard?
Dorie Scelzo
04.05.2012		Maschine has as many pages of knobs as you want. That is not its shortcoming.

I've never mapped an NI synth because I hate them, though. The only problems I've run into mapping synths to different pages of Maschine's control is that you can't rename them…which apparently automap lets you do.

I'm probably going to buy a Remote ZeroSL Mk2 within the month (don't need more crappy keyboards than I already have). I'm still kind of hoping that Novation will announce basically the exact same thing with motorized faders for about the same price, ready for immediate shipping…and that I'll find out about it before I order one.
Larraine Hannum
03.05.2012		Agreed, The novation sl mkII line is great with automap but takes alot of time to initially setup. And your spot on about the drum pads being worthless, as is the x/y touchpad (requires alot of pressure to work properly).

Can't wait till I get my hands on a decent hardware synth though.
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Well
Dorie Scelzo
02.05.2012		Well…nothing will automatically map the way I want it to. Maschine's auto-mapping to its knobs is atrocious. And you can re-arrange them…but you can't rename anything…which makes some synths unusable like that.

I believe I'm going to give an automap device a try…see how well it works. I don't mind mapping things like that if I only have to do it once and don't have to worry about which instance it's controlling or what happens if I move a control when I don't mean to (basically…as long as scribble strips work correctly).
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Sweet.
Meh. Is that really a problem?
Ya to really a huge deal,I guess the one thing I found disappointing with automap was that it didn't exactly work as advertised. It made it sound as if it would magically have all the parameters nicely named and mapped but this wasn't the case. And there was no support for native instrument synths, I had to make my own mappings and name the parameters my self. It works but only after you've put in the work.
Dorie Scelzo
03.05.2012
Originally Posted by rdej47
Yes you can name your parameters.
Sweet.
Originally Posted by rdej47
One of the downsides to auto map though is that you have to have automap running in the background for your parameters to be mapped.
Meh. Is that really a problem?
Johnsie Kingrea
02.05.2012
Originally Posted by botstein
Sure. Aftertouch is information sent by the instrument/controller/device/hardware/whatever after you touch down. I'm not sure exactly how your SL 49 does this, but Maschine sends great (accurate) signals related to pressure if you hold down the pad(s).

In both Massive and Razor, you can associate aftertouch with really any part of the synthesis. I believe aftertouch is great for vibrato, which is of course totally impossible on any regular acoustic piano or keyboard/controller. In Razor, I sometimes set a "psuedo pitchbend" to receive aftertouch in order to achieve this.

I believe Loudon Stearns (great teacher, by the way) demonstrates aftertouch in a compelling way at the beginning of this tutorial:


He uses aftertouch for glide time, which has a lot of performance potential.
Good call on that video man, really clarifies the uses of after touch.
Johnsie Kingrea
01.05.2012
Originally Posted by mostapha
Quick question
Dorie Scelzo
24.04.2012		Quick question…if anyone's used the novation automap stuff. I know you can build templates for your plugins. Does it allow you to change the parameter names that show up on the display (on the Remote ZeroSL II, for example) or are you stuck with whatever the plugin designers named them?
Monserrate Rupnow
23.04.2012
Originally Posted by seitz
omni has a app for ipad??? fuck i gotta get it...im addicted to omnishphere and trillian
Yeah man, it's even free. Works awesome, very well done.
Ervin Calvery
23.04.2012		Sure. Aftertouch is information sent by the instrument/controller/device/hardware/whatever after you touch down. I'm not sure exactly how your SL 49 does this, but Maschine sends great (accurate) signals related to pressure if you hold down the pad(s).

In both Massive and Razor, you can associate aftertouch with really any part of the synthesis. I believe aftertouch is great for vibrato, which is of course totally impossible on any regular acoustic piano or keyboard/controller. In Razor, I sometimes set a "psuedo pitchbend" to receive aftertouch in order to achieve this.

I believe Loudon Stearns (great teacher, by the way) demonstrates aftertouch in a compelling way at the beginning of this tutorial:


He uses aftertouch for glide time, which has a lot of performance potential.
Johnsie Kingrea
23.04.2012
Originally Posted by botstein
I've mapped my Oxygen to Massive, Razor, Live, and Maschine. I map Maschine to Massive a lot because I like using aftertouch.
Hey Botstein could you explain what can be achieved with aftertouch? I've seen it in Razor as a modulation source but i'm not really sure what it does. I'm pretty sure my Novation SL 49 has aftertouch but I really have no idea what it is haha.
Ervin Calvery
23.04.2012		I've mapped my Oxygen to Massive, Razor, Live, and Maschine. I map Maschine to Massive a lot because I like using aftertouch.
Maricruz Mouw
23.04.2012
Originally Posted by Tarekith
This is one of my biggest hangups with using softsynths and midi controllers, the mapping. I hate being in the flow writing and then having to stop and remap something if I get an idea that's outside my current mapping. These days I mainly use hardware OMnisphere since it has the OmniTR app for iPad that eliminates common mapping issues.
omni has a app for ipad??? fuck i gotta get it...im addicted to omnishphere and trillian
Dorie Scelzo
23.04.2012		The obvious answer is to just map everything in a way that makes sense.

Oh wait……there aren't MIDI controllers that have enough controls to do that except for the ones that cost as much as decent hardware synths.
Monserrate Rupnow
23.04.2012		This is one of my biggest hangups with using softsynths and midi controllers, the mapping. I hate being in the flow writing and then having to stop and remap something if I get an idea that's outside my current mapping. These days I mainly use hardware OMnisphere since it has the OmniTR app for iPad that eliminates common mapping issues.
Dorie Scelzo
23.04.2012		I have some soft-synths that I've mapped to Maschine's controls (separate from the auto-assignment, which always sucks). At this point, it's just some of the TAL free stuff (an SH-101 clone, a Juno clone, and something else…don't remember what the plugins are really called)……because for some reason my "good" soft synths (Dune, mostly) don't label their parameters in any useful way and I can't differentiate between them on Maschine's display. And for some stupid reason, you can't rename the controls……yet another basic feature that NI just didn't believe about.

The SH-101 clone has 6-pages of assignments. There are some blank (unassigned) knobs in there to organize things logically, so it's not using all 46 possible controls (from 6 pages of 8 knobs each in Maschine). I disagree with Jason entirely about the usefulness for controls……but that's also why I'm seriously considering just switching to hardware.

I'm going to try and see how this works and also how Novation Automap works before I do……but I don't have high hopes. Like you, any time I touch a real synth (Virus, Nord, Voyager) it just works. IMHO, the LittlePhatty is about the least-knobby thing I'd ever even believe about, and I'd probably buy a minitaur over it just because I believe it'd be easier to program.
Georgina Schatzman
23.04.2012		Realistically there's only a hand full "knobs" one actually uses I'd say that makes sense for mapping. Obviously the ADSR on the AMP and Filter are obvious examples, plus the filter and res it self. Possibly a knob to change the OSC wave, range and volume. That would be a solid start for any synth mapping. From there it just becomes very specific to the synth itself. Actually, I don't believe there's that many more knobs on the a Little Phatty than that!

Plus there's so many presets for soft synths these days, you can get away with flipping through them to find something close to what you need and then more than likely you'd just use the above controls to adjust it to taste to fit your track.

And some things I'd say would be easier to do with a mouse than with actual controls (i.e. all the routing capabilities in Massive for example).

All about KISS. No need to make it more complicated than it has to be.

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