Cakewalk and S61 in live use, any thoughts welcome.

[C. A. Hamman]

Hi all I have been working on a live environment with Cakewalk (CbB) and my Native Instruments S61 keyboard, thought I might share my findings thus far.

What I have started with this the Keyboard settings. Thus far a I have varied Midi Mapping in the following type of template.

I have the 61 Keys broken into 3 parts. One such example is as follows - I have others with just 2 splits and the Octaves transposed differently.

Split 1 Keys C-2 to C2 on Channel 1 no change to Transpose

Split 2 Keys C3 to C4 on Channel 2 no with -12 Transpose (down 1 Octive to start at C2)

Split 3 Keys C5 to C8 on Channel 3 no with -36 Transpose (down 3 Octives to start at C2)

In Cakewalk I have created several Folders (representing each song we play) in each folder I have setup 3 instruments tracks (VSTi’s). 3 being more than enough for each song we do not all are using 3... Each track assigned to the appropriate channel. Thus far it works fantastically – I set each folder Echo on for each song as I go along and disable those inactive. I find that I can currently load a full set this way – and have effects to each channel if I need it. The only thing about it however, is that for Kontakt instruments I have the Keyboard in Midi mode and am not using the Komplete Kontrol as VSTi. As that takes over the keyboard for one individual sound.

This folder is broken into 3 VSTi Tracks each assign to separate channel.

And no crashes!

At the moment I have no use for playing any backing tracks or sequencing other instruments / Midi. But I’d say we’re going to be looking at that next – I was thinking that there may be a way to do that through Matrix (for the MIDI or Audio loops in Folder segments) and to get over the timing issue have a button configured for Tap Time...

Thoughts?

[Timothy Reynolds]

I am very interested in your post from July.

I am thinking about buying the S61 (or 88).

So it works well with CbB?

Timothy