Comrade wrote:i never in my life found or will find any other use from a midi controller other then the keys or pads... all those sliders and knobs are total useless to me.
to this and the following three posts:
knobs and faders on midi controllers are probably the most underutilized inclusions of any current musical interface technology out there today, simply because DAWs and VSTs make routing these things such a pain in the ass.
sure, there's midi learn, but setting this up for every track is such a bummer, and it also encourages a user to really only use one or two of the 16 some faders/rotary knobs you have.
i am one of those who until only very recently completely neglected the faders and knobs. however, the fact that they all can send a different CC is very, very very powerful - and again, HORRIBLY underutilized.
that's why i made this:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=106608using this, 4 of my knobs control an LFO over any of several different vst effects that are assigned automatically on every one of my tracks in Reaper. three more control other parameters on the effect, and the last knob controls which effect all the other knobs are currently effecting. this way, i can create/record lfo movements for anything from a lowpass filter to a reverb unit should i want to - all beceause they're just sending ccs.
furthermore, i set up 5 of the faders to control an AHDSR plugin in Reaper as well. this allows me to simply reach and tweak the amp envelope of my instruments without having to open the plugin and click each value with the mouse. the H is something i'm particularly proud of - when the fader is all the way at the bottom, your duratoin plays as YOU play it. when you drag it up, you basically can control the legato.
the other three faders control stuff like keyboard input velocity minimum (ie sets the lowest possible velocity you can reach to X value) and input velocity maximum (these two let you correct the velocity range, so you can specify that you want the velocity to be like 28-100 instead of 0-127. good for stuff with fx to velocity). the last one is an empty one which i haven't assigned yet - i may leave it blank just because it's nice to have one more learnable fader.
anyway, i hope this gets you thinking about how one can use those knobs and faders. they can REALLY really help speed up your workflow, at least once you've gotten your midi rig set up the way it needs to be. <- this can take a great deal of time and effort but i believe it's worth it.
