Gesturing: Does anyone have solutions?

[markwesse]

Ive come from a background of custom controllers...doesnt take long to figure out how important gesturing is for foot switching if you dont want to tap dance. 

By gesturing, I mean behaviours on footswitches like single press, double press, hold etc

I realise the looper has a couple of these and there is also a hold type gesture for command centre but its quite limiting

 

My question is, has anyone else gone down this path and if so, hwo?

 

Im not expecting miracles but a consistent pattern available for all switches would be cool

1. Single press

2. Single press/hold

3. Double press

4. Double press/hold

 

In the past I have just set a single CC/per channel eg Single press on Ch1, Press hold, same cc but on chan 2 etc

 

Alternatively, is anyone interested in doing a little arduino box or similar that would simply be a loop through box for midi to be used as a midi processor so anyone that wants to hack a little deeper doesnt have to go the eprom path?

 

I have the control maps done as they are also putting them into some OEM hardware if that helps

[DunedinDragon]

I control everything on stage (Helix, lighting, Ableton Live) with a Morningstar MC8 MIDI foot controller.  It provides a wide range of different actions such as those you've mentioned that can be defined individually.  I originally imagined this might come in handy, but after two years I still haven't come up with any uses for any actions other than a simple press.

[markwesse]

On 7/17/2022 at 7:03 PM, DunedinDragon said:

I control everything on stage (Helix, lighting, Ableton Live) with a Morningstar MC8 MIDI foot controller.  It provides a wide range of different actions such as those you've mentioned that can be defined individually.  I originally imagined this might come in handy, but after two years I still haven't come up with any uses for any actions other than a simple press.

 

Cool, thanks. Are you mainly playing to pre recorded stuff or is it spontaneous etc?

Eg,

Scene fire = Single

Scene Fire Legato = On Hold Release (Life saver for live/spontaneous)

Scene Stop On Global Quantise = Double Press

Immediate Stop On Pedal Up = Double Press On Release (Perfect for synced breaks on Crescend Finish)

 

Thats just a little...but it becomes muscle memory on a single button...hence why I use it

 

[DunedinDragon]

No mine is all coordinated backing tracks with 2 or 3 additional instruments added to those that are played live.  I think if I were to do something like what you're describing I'd probably go with something like Max for Live as most people do in order to have spontaneous control and would tend more toward using live keyboard/synth rather than guitar.

[markwesse]

I use the same gestures for all my hardware...I do remote scripts for live for OEM music mfg...they get it too. I dont use any max at all anymore although I programmed that for a while. Push 2 was the first to have legato and I had already been using it for quite a while as it was in the Live Object Model...although I didnt understand what legato was in a Live context...

It (our music) is  pretty spontaneous mixed in and out with songs and 3 brilliant friends...I have been able to get similar loop and manipulation on the helix now...so I dont use Live as much, just host guitar synth and separate looper with feeds coming direct from the FOH mixer but gesturing is about muscle memory = psychology of being creative. Its worth reading about; you learn to play it like an instrument vs linear button process but it doesnt make sense until you do it and then you wonder how you got by without it :)

 

Thanks for your iinput...the MC8 is quite a neat unit...but way too small for me and I cant deal with stomp box buttons...give me reed switch anytime. I really like a lot of what they have done and the gesturing is brilliant

 

 

[markwesse]

On 7/17/2022 at 7:03 PM, DunedinDragon said:

I control everything on stage (Helix, lighting, Ableton Live) with a Morningstar MC8 MIDI foot controller.  It provides a wide range of different actions such as those you've mentioned that can be defined individually.  I originally imagined this might come in handy, but after two years I still haven't come up with any uses for any actions other than a simple press.

If you ever want to sell it? :-)

I think might be a lot easier to use something like that and ditch the helix...ie Native/hosted in Live/midi guitar in Live etc

[DunedinDragon]

On 7/21/2022 at 11:58 PM, markwesse said:

If you ever want to sell it? :-)

I think might be a lot easier to use something like that and ditch the helix...ie Native/hosted in Live/midi guitar in Live etc

I guess my only concern about using Native would be the potential load on the laptop during live performance.  Ableton is actually pretty efficient in that regard, but even then I reduce all my MIDI tracks to static WAV files even though I could use the plugins directly just to ensure I don't encounter latency or other system issues when I have a large show with lots of songs.  This is doubly important in that in order to maintain the ultra realistic performance characteristics of the backing instruments I pretty much only use sampled plugin libraries rather than syths, and some of those libraries are extraordinarily large and processor intensive.  I also believe spreading the computational requirements among different processors aids in this regard (i.e. Helix Floor, DMX lighting controller, etc.).

I do agree that the market could probably use a packaged turnkey system similar to what I've built as there's a pretty sizeable interest by musicians and bands in having a simple way to get into the backing track and stage automation business without having to have develop it themselves.  If I were a younger man I might consider something like that and may eventually even try to get one of my sons to take something like that on as they're both engineers as well.  But for now they both seem happy with what they're doing.  I'm sure eventually someone in the industry will take it on.  There's too much interest and money sitting on the table for that not to happen.