surface control Combinations of Toggle, Switches, & Other Controller to One Parameter

[SketalDaz]

Hello. I have been playing with Cakewalk's midi assignment features as of late with my Alesis VI49 and thought up an idea that I hope will be greatly beneficial and doable. Looking at the attachment, you can see that my keyboard as customization where I can  edit the behavior of each knobs, pads, buttons, and keys -- including midi channels for each -- as presets on the hardware. What I was hoping that Cakewalk will eventually be able to do is allow the user to assign different combination of controllers to one chosen parameter.

Example Scenario :

Switch 1 / CC 48 (Toggle Button, Midi Channel 1, Trigger Value 127), Switch 13 / CC 64 (Moment Button, Midi Channel 4, Trigger Value 127), Switch 25 / CC 80 (Toggle Button, Midi Channel 2, Trigger Value 0), & Knob 1 / 20 (Midi Channel 2) are assigned to Track 1's ProChannel EQ - Low Frequency Gain Knob. The following statement will not satisfy the requirement or expectation of this parameter control connection:

• I don't press and hold down Switch 13 as I turn Knob 1 in order to increase or decrease the LF Gain Knob; doing this won't allow the switch's midi value to increase the trigger value specify to what has been specify in order to satisfy the "if" statement of this parameter; the midi value will remain at 0.
• In Alesis VI49 Editor software, I set Switch 1's "Toggle On" midi value to a number that is less than 127; even if I made sure to press Switch 1 to toggle it on, the midi value will not satisfy the parameters trigger value. Now, if I instead changed the trigger value to a number lower than 127 and kept the "Toggle On" value to 127, the toggled on switch will satisfy the specified requirement. 
• In the "Editor" software, I changed the Midi Channel of Knob 1 to channel 2; if I fiddle Knob 1 to increase or decrease the LF Gain Knob, the parameter won't recognize it as the assigned knob because the Knob1 is no longer sending data through Midi Channel 1.
  • Note: a potential satisfying scenario relating to this -- and knobs in general -- would be if I made Knob 1 as an assignment to the LF Gain Knob parameter via "Midi Channel" 2 and "Trigger Value" 50; then, assigned Knob 2 as my "Set Value" knob for the same parameter; as long I keep Knob 1 turned to a midi data value that's equal to or higher than 50, the connection will succeed and I can use Knob 2 to adjust the LF Gain.

I hope I explained this clearly ?.

Edited October 28, 2022 by SketalDaz
Clearity

[azslow3]

Your "scenario" sounds extremely (over)complicated for me... And you start with "MIDI assignment", which means limited to the project and particular track assignment, in addition without LED feedback.  All together that means the result is almost useless is practice.

Your controller is designed for Ableton and SoftSynthes steering. In Cakewalk I propose you use Control Surfaces approach with it. For anything fancy you will need AZ Controller (or write your own plug-in in C++). Then it is possible to do tricky assignments (if you really going to use them...). F.e. knob 1 select band in ProChannel EQ on the current track and  knob 2 controls its gain in endless imitation mode.

But better keep things simple and just create music with this keyboard, using it's transport (also throw Control Surface, but that is easy with Generic Surface or ACT MIDI) and the rest to control SoftSynthes (MIDI learn inside VSTi way). ?

[User 905133]

11 hours ago, SketalDaz said:

What I was hoping that Cakewalk will eventually be able to . . . allow the user to assign different combination of controllers to one chosen parameter.

I thought we could do this depending on the capabilities of our hardware and software. Or are you wanting for Cakewalk to be able to override the capabilities of the hardware and software users have?

EDIT: I think I figured out what you mean.  Do  you want (a) different things to happen (b) to a single parameter (c) based on different combinations of knob, slider, button, etc. states?  

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by User 905133
edits

[SketalDaz]

3 hours ago, User 905133 said:

I thought we could do this depending on the capabilities of our hardware and software. Or are you wanting for Cakewalk to be able to override the capabilities of the hardware and software users have?

EDIT: I think I figured out what you mean.  Do  you want (a) different things to happen (b) to a single parameter (c) based on different combinations of knob, slider, button, etc. states?  

 

You're close but not exactly what I was trying to illustrate. Just to be clear, it isn't about over writing the information that the keyboard sends to the DAW; it is about letting the user customize how Cakewalk interprets those information when triggering and adjusting the value of a parameter whether it is a plugin or the DAWs surface. Certain actions on the midi controller must be met first in order to trigger that parameter. Only then the user can adjust the values of that parameter using the chosen button / knob assigned to it to do so.

Alternative Perspective

On a gaming controller (PS4), the LEFT JOYSTICK is used to trigger and control the direction of a character's walking animation. When, the player press and hold down the R2 button while using the LEFT JOYSTICK , the character starts to run. This means that the R2 button is use to trigger the running animation while still allowing the LEFT JOYSTICK to adjust the values of the character's direction.

-------

I am sorry for the confusion and I hope this makes more sense. Anything detailed in programming will inevitably sound more complicated "on paper" then it actually is. If users only saw  Cakewalk's source file(s) and not its UI, majority of them will think that the DAW is too complex for their needs. This is why I hope in the end the developers themselves understood what I was going for with my explanations.

[azslow3]

May be I better repeat in other words... Cakewalk has Control Surface API for that purpose. Since there can be any logical "wishes", just adding more options for "MIDI assign" can't cover them.

 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

Problem with the Control Surface API is that it's hidden for many and it's not intuitive to use, much like many of the functionality CbB has which was inherited from SONAR.

[SketalDaz]

2 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Problem with the Control Surface API is that it's hidden for many and it's not intuitive to use, much like many of the functionality CbB has which was inherited from SONAR.

Hi Bruno,

thank you for adding your perspective to this discussion. Although I personally didn't have too much of a problem to locate the Control Surface API and understand majority of its feature before creating my initial post, I can still empathize towards those who do had a hard time because, for one, the documentations are vague in most feature explanations. So, the user is left to understand the feature through trial and error, which is not necessarily a bad thing if the user end up discovering a workflow that is different from what the features was initially design to do and could be beneficial to everyone (hence my initial post). But, to those who just want to find a feature that a DAW is expected to have, most of them are left "hanging off a cliff".

[User 905133]

I typed up this reply yesterday with the intention of double checking it.  Never got to doing that.  ?

Thanks for the additional details.  On my XP I explored the use of several PC game controllers for MIDI, so I get the idea .  IIRC the controllers had utilities and there was also a Windows utility (or maybe there were third-party utilities) that could be used to map the controller parameters that Windows knew to MIDI.  (Its coming back to me--Pro Pad hand held game controller, Wingman stick controller, MixMan controller [definitely used a third-party utility with that for MIDI] , and even a Nascar steering wheel and pedals controller--which I thought of using to do "Autobahn.")

So, I can see something like: If the gas pedal is down, the wheel, buttons, and level could send certain midi data/control certain parameters or something like that, but if the gas pedal is up, different things could happen. 

A few years ago with Cakewalk and my nanoKontrol [1], I very successfully used azslow3's AZController for some basic functions, but nothing as complicated as what I imagine you want--basically matrixing MIDI to extend what MIDI usually does.   I defer to AZ and if you haven't looked into AZ Controller already, I would encourage you to do so! [I see he chimed in on this since I wrote my reply.  I defer to AZ.]

Just remembered--I also used a WACOM tablet with some third-party programs to send MIDI data to hardware synths.  Hmmmm.  I just remembered using an academic-oriented program called ChucK [real time scripting language kind of thing primarily intended for audio] to route MIDI data on-the-fly.

 Anyhow, I think I better understand. Thanks for the explanation.  

[SketalDaz]

@User 905133 Yes, you are on track on what I was trying to explain. And, no problem, I found joy explaining in depth and it helped me solidify the vision of how will use this feature in my workflow.

Edited October 30, 2022 by SketalDaz

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

13 hours ago, SketalDaz said:

Hi Bruno,

thank you for adding your perspective to this discussion. Although I personally didn't have too much of a problem to locate the Control Surface API and understand majority of its feature before creating my initial post, I can still empathize towards those who do had a hard time because, for one, the documentations are vague in most feature explanations. So, the user is left to understand the feature through trial and error, which is not necessarily a bad thing if the user end up discovering a workflow that is different from what the features was initially design to do and could be beneficial to everyone (hence my initial post). But, to those who just want to find a feature that a DAW is expected to have, most of them are left "hanging off a cliff".

And this is my point. I want to make music, not to learn the implementation details of MIDI in the hardware I'm using or CbB's.