I just wanted to share a little project I started working on a few days ago.
I was looking for a "first synth" to buy (owned a Peak before so not a real first) and couldn't decide between the Take 5, Hydrasynth, Argon8, Cobalt8 or Modwave.
During my research, I stumbled upon the creations of SFC Soundforce, who creates tailored MIDI controllers to control OB-Xa, Minimoog, or Prophet VST.
While it seems nice, the price point is not (I get why it is what it is, but I'm not ready to put 400€ into a MIDI controller with a nice panel).
This reminded me that I have this old Zero SL MkII, which has been collecting dust for years, with 8 encoders, 8 knobs & 8 faders, plenty of buttons, that I could use to create a similar setup.
I'm a UX/UI designer in the everyday life, so I quickly identified the big challenge: find common ground to make all the controls of both the OB-Xa & the Prophet 5 fit on this very linear panel, making it readable and efficient.
HOW IT WILL WORK, HOW IT WILL LOOK, HOW I WILL DO
It's basically going to be a metal panel with printed layout information on it. Another option is to make a nice gold dust print on beautiful blue black paper and to add a panel of plexiglass with all the cuts on top of it.
Once the design is fully complete, I will go to the fab lab nearby and do the specific printing and laser cutting to have a panel that perfectly fits the Zero SL MkII.
The next step is basically MIDI mapping all of the controls to the VSTs. This last part is quite long but at least I'm 100% sure of what I'm doing at this stage
The visuals attached don’t display the final design; it will look way better. It’s merely a map to position the knobs and faders and everything.
I will probably go with custom metal knobs to get a bit more of the Prophet 5 look and feel.
THE ENCODERS, KNOBS & BUTTONS SETUP
You can see how I intend to set up all the knobs and buttons.
All the main controls are on page 1: OSC control, envelopes, filter & LFO configuration.
I like the idea of having faders to control the filter cutoff and resonance because they are pretty lengthy and allow very precise and slow adjustments.
On page 2, you get extra stuff that you tend to use less often, like routing modulations, arp & secondary stuff.
The top right map displays how things are laid out on page 2. It only uses the first row because this row is made of encoders, and it will switch the position of knobs & buttons when going from page 1 to page 2 (while knobs would have a pretty heavy value jump occurring).
HELP NEEDED
As music maker/synth lover, what do you think about it? The project, the layout, the overall functionalities? Are there other things that you would have done another way? Let me know, I'm really eager to collect some feedback
