Korg nanoKontrol (original) control surface

[Mike Slinn]

Is it possible for a version 1 Korg nanoKontrol to work with Cakewalk on Windows 10? I've done this with Ableton Live 9 on Windows 7, and it was easy. I am now running Windows 10 Pro with all updates on a new laptop.

Thanks,

Mike

Edited April 9, 2019 by Mike Slinn
Clarification

[msmcleod]

You can, but unlike the nanoKONTROL 2 it doesn't use MCU mode.

You'll need to set it up as an ACT Midi Controller within Preferences/Control Surfaces, then select the "ACT Midi Controller" from the Utilities menu and use the Learn function to assign the buttons/faders/knobs.

[Mike Slinn]

Sounds easy enough, but the specifics are not so obvious to me. The presets drop-down list does not have an entry for the original nanoKontrol, unfortunately. Wish it was present!

I see a funny button at the top right of the ACT-MIDI-Controller-1 dialog box labeled ACT. Clicking makes it turns blue and that seems to initiate learn mode. The help text and images do not match what I see in this dialog box. Buried in the F1 help text are these paragraphs (they should be shown near the top of the help instead):

Quote

ACT Learn button --enable this button to enable ACT Learn; disable it to disable ACT Learn. The Active Controller Technology Enable checkbox must be enabled in order to use ACT or ACT Learn. If you want to assign a button to toggle this button on and off, use the ACT Learn command in the Button command menu on the Options tab. Note: all ACT Learn buttons in SONAR are linked together--they are really the same button.

The procedure for using ACT Learn is to enable the ACT Learn button, move some parameter controls on an automatable plug-in that you want to control, move an equal number of knobs or sliders on your controller/surface that you want to assign to control the plug-in parameters that you adjusted, and then disable the ACT Learn button.

The above tells me that the learning mechanism should work similarly for Cakewalk and Ableton, assuming that the DAW transport resides in an automatable plug-in. Unfortunately, I don't think MIDI data from the nanoKontrol is reaching Cakewalk for some reason. The docs do not mention what happens when data is received; presumably some sort of user feedback is presented that should make it obvious that data has been received. If true, what should I expect to see?

Update: Ableton does not see MIDI data either. I ran the Uninstall Korg USB MIDI Device program, and saw that the driver was corrupted. Uninstalling and reinstalling results in a corrupted driver again. That is clearly the first problem to solve. Suggestions?

Also, the nanoKontrol has a Scene button, and it is unclear to me if it affects the generated MIDI data. I tried all 4 scenes, and pushed the Stop transport button for each scene. 

Thanks,
Mike

Edited April 9, 2019 by Mike Slinn

[msmcleod]

The nanoKONTROL comes with software to define what CC messages it can send out. Each set of CC mapping is known as a scene. You can have up to four scenes.The "Scene" button on the original nanoKONTROL is used in conjunction with the cursor buttons to go from one scene to another. 

To be honest though, I'd keep things simple and ignore the scene button for now and just go with whatever it's configured to as is.

You need to get Cakewalk to "learn" the CC mappings for each of Cakewalk's operations:

I found some old instructions here (it's really difficult to find ANY information on the original nanoKONTROL !):

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227221018/http://untidymusic.com/midi/setting-up-nanokontrol-sonar

here's a video about ACT:

 

[Mike Slinn]

I updated the docs here. As you can see, although the Korg nanoKONTROL driver reports as corrupt, it works fine.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Mike Slinn