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Using Korg nanoKONTROL2 as remote control for Cakewalk knobs, buttons, and faders


Starship Krupa

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I've been trying off and on for years to get my Korg nanoKONTROL2 to control things in Cakewalk.

I would like to use its faders, knobs, and buttons to control plug-in parameters. I would like to use its buttons to trigger Matrix cells. I'm not that concerned with controlling track parameters like volume and mute status and all that, but it would be nice to have Cakewalk respond to the transport controls. Nice, but no big deal.

So far, I've been able to use its buttons to trigger Matrix cells, but that is the only useful thing that I can do with my nanoKONTROL2 in Cakewalk.

I tried again tonight and it went exactly as I expected, which is to say that I remain unable to control plug-in (or any other) parameters. I can still trigger Matrix cells with the track control buttons, though.

Although....that's not 100% true. I have succeeded in getting the channel 1 volume slider to toggle the bypass status of Meldaproduction's MModernCompressor and to move every visible control on whatever other plug-in has focus. I was not trying to get the volume slider to toggle MModernCompressor's bypass, but that's what I got. I was trying to map Attack, Release, Ratio, and Threshold to the nanoKONTROL2's faders and knobs.

So I set it up in Preferences as a Cakewalk Generic Surface, which was what another post suggested. Then I went to Console View and enabled Options/FX/Show Assignable Controls. I did it this way because Creative Sauce had this method on his channel once and it looked like just the thing. I find the documentation to be....unhelpful on the topic.

As Mike described it, it seems relatively straightforward: here is a list of 4 controls. I assign one control to be Attack. I right click on my new "Attack" control and select Remote Control. I click on "Learn." I twiddle a knob on the controller. Cakewalk says "aha, he wants to control it with that knob he's twiddling" and assigns the twiddled knob to the right-clicked upon control. Simple.

Unfortunately, the instructions also want me to understand the difference between "Note On," "NoteOn/Off," "Controller," "Wheel," "RPN," and "NRPN."

I think I get Note On vs. Note On/Off. You use the former for toggles and the latter for momentaries. "Controller" I also think I get, that would be a slider or knob, a continuous thing rather than a button. "Wheel" seems to refer only to the pitch wheel on a MIDI keyboard controller. I'm good so far. It would seem to suggest that the buttons on the nanoKONTROL2 transmit Note data and the knobs and sliders transmit Controller data. The Korg doesn't have a pitch wheel, so I don't have to worry about that.

Then, however, things get considerably more difficult. There's the matter of "RPN" and "NRPN." The first time I encountered the term "RPN" was back in the 80's, when I learned never to borrow a calculator from an engineer. Then I saw it along with "NRPN" in MIDI implementation sheets and took it as proof that the MIDI spec was indeed created by engineers. I have no idea what the terms mean. The engineers I knew were really into RPN back in the 80's, maybe they decided that the MIDI spec wouldn't be complete without it. 

The documentation says "NRPN: If your MIDI controller can send NRPN data, enabling this button causes the selected control to move as the NRPN data that your MIDI controller changes." There seems to be a word missing or incorrectly used there, but I don't know. I don't know if my controller can send RPN and/or NPRN data. I'd be fine with just Note and Controller, if I could get them to work.

Whatever, when I clicked "learn" and moved the first fader, it toggled the bypass on MModernCompressor. It still does that. "Learn" seems to be a one-way street. When I right click on the assignable controls, there's no selection for unlearning or clearing or whatever. This is, believe it or not, one reason that it's taken me over 4 years to even get this far: I'm afraid of assigning controls and not being able to un-assign them. The documentation says to clear it, just right click on the control and select "Disable Remote Control," but that option is greyed out on all my controls. I also notice that whatever plug-in has focus, that same fader will do a variety of things. With Softube Spring Reverb, that fader moves all of the visible controls. Same with T-Racks Tape Echo.

This is what my Control Surface module looks like. Going by the text on there, is it possible that something got corrupted?

image.png.e515870556dc9af9bec5f435d8ed1504.png

Help.

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Beyond help? Perhaps.

Anyway, I gave it another swipe today. I made....progress.

This time I tried it with no control surface selected in Preferences.

I was able to map the knobs and faders to various pan and gain knobs in channel strips. Not as lucky with the buttons; I can map them to trigger Matrix cells, but they seem to only be able to do momentary. I tried mapping one to a mute control and it muted as long as I held the button down, but then unmuted as soon as I released it.

I also got the Assignable Parameters to respond....but they didn't actually change anything on the plug-in itself. The readouts change as if it's responding, but the plug-in doesn't want to know.

Since I had thought that Cakewalk needed to be told that a given MIDI device is a control surface, this all came as a surprise.

I still don't get the business about Cakewalk Generic Surface or ACT or whatever. The advantages/disadvantages of each, what they even do, given that Cakewalk will (sort of) respond to my controller without any surface set up in Preferences.

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May be I have overseen and you have mentioned that already... but have you switched nanoKONTROL2 into CC mode? Leaving it in DAW mode is looking for troubles till you use MackieControl plug-in.

For RPN/NRPN/CC/etc. , find some source for reading about MIDI messages. "MIDI 1.0" standard from what I remember is not free and midi.org web site is getting worse and worse with time...

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I did switch to CC mode. I putzed around with the ACT Control Surface and yes, it did help.

I don't have great luck with Learn so far, rather typing in the controller number works best. Since I have the attention of @msmcleod, the dev team's control surface top doggie, is the dev team aware that the Cakewalk Arpeggiator doesn't respond to Control Surface messages? The buttons' appearance changes, but the actual functions don't work.

@User 905133 has an extensive post on this, and I can confirm the behavior. Being able to control the arp is pretty important for live performance and improvisation.

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