Having trouble with control surfaces

[michellj]

I'm using an Edirol PCR-300 MIDI keyboard with Waveform. The keyboard and joystick are working, but I'm having difficulty using the knobs, pads and sliders. In Waveform's "Settings" menu under "Control Surfaces" I click the "Create Custom Control Surface" button, selected the input and output device, named it and then click the "Edit Control Mappings" button. I click the area that says "Click here to choose a controller," the line turns from gray to blue and it now is says "(Move a controller)" but when I turn a dial, hit a pad or use a slider nothing happens. I'm at the point described in this video at the 4:10 mark.

If anyone can help I'd be grateful.

[michellj]

I think the problem has to do with the fact that the driver has to be turned off for the midi keyboard to be recognized by Traktion Waveform because it's no longer supported by my current Mac OS version, but in order to create a custom control surface and edit control mapping, you need to be using a driver.

[Peter Widdicombe]

On the Edirol, is there a choice of " controller type" and output device mappings, and if so, which one is selected?
Are you using USB or MIDI ports?

[michellj]

Using a USB port from Edirol to Macbook.

Where do you find the controller type and output device mappings? Are the output device mappings the 16 factory preset control maps that come installed on the Edirol (ones for Logic, Cubase, Garage Band etc in this case)? I've been using factory set control maps 10 (for Logic 7), 1 (for SONEAR LEAASONAR 5 MCR-8Model 3), and 0 (DYNAMIC MAPPING - something Roland was developing at the time) and none of them seems to make any tangible difference in the performance. It looks like Roland stopped providing control maps to download for this model a long time ago. I've read the full instruction manual but it doesn't make much sense in terms of how one would pair it with Waveform. It's almost like 2 different languages reading the two manuals together.

I've done workarounds with MIDI learning in Waveform and button-to-note editing in the Edirol for buttons where you can map them to really high or low keys that aren't used much, then map those keys to things like Play, Stop, Record, Home, and the pads to keys that correspond to drum kits, but so far can't get the sliders and knobs to do much of anything.

[michellj]

I should probably try to create a new control map with the editing software, but I'm not sure how to proceed. I want to be able to control volume, effect wet/dry levels, and things like ADSR on synthesizers etc with the sliders and knobs. The options in the editing mode to assign to the knobs and sliders are as follows.

-Channel message
sub menu:
- channel pressure,
-polyphonic key pressure,
-control change,
-program change,
-program change (min-max),
-bank select +program change,
-program change - dec,
-program change -inc,
-RPN,
-NRPN,
-Encoder simulate
-System Realtime F6 (This looks like transport commands?)
it's got:
-F6 (tune request),
-F8 (timing clock),
-FA 9 (start),
-FB (continue),
-FC (Stop),
-FF (system reset)
-System Ex.
-Free message
-Tempo

I'm guessing control change under the channel message heading is what I'd want? This then asks for a control number (not sure what this is referring to) and min and max values that can be set from 0 to 127.

[michellj]

There is a video where a fader is set to control volume, so it's assigned a channel message-> control change -> and then given number "7 for volume in most cases" (how do you know what numbers functions will have in different software, and Waveform in particular?)

[michellj]

Ok, so once I edited the R9 knob for a control change and then assigned "control number 7", I was then able to go back into the custom control map in the Settings window and then when i moved it, it finally recognized it and I was able to assign a function (in this case plugin master volume) to it. Ok, this is good. It shouldn't be too hard to manually set all these now. It would still be nice to see a list somewhere of all the functions the control numbers default to and where the numbers come from.

[michellj]

maybe this? https://cmtext.indiana.edu/MIDI/chapter ... hange2.php

[Peter Widdicombe]

I have an Akai MPK unit, and set IT to send Mackie MCU or MCP-style messages, and that seems to work "well" in that Waveform Custom surface. Last fader does master volume, first 7 change first 7 track volume, etc.

[michellj]

i could try some of them and see. at least i know i can manually program it now