Christian has said in the past he uses two wheels/sliders for strings. I think one was for velocity and I can’t remember what the other was for (both were related to volume I think).
I’m looking at the Arturia MK2. It has two wheels on the left side, but one is a pitch wheel that springs back. Is that ideal to use with strings for velocity/volume or not really?
TL:DR: Not really. Pitch bend isn’t an ideal way to control CC data - however, as far as I can see, all the Arturia MKII models with pitch bend and mod wheels have several other faders and knobs that you can configure to send CC data - or you could record the controllers in two passes, re-assigning the mod wheel to output CC1/11.
Some more detail:
- The setup Christian uses (as in this recent video) is to have two adjacent faders assigned to output MIDI continuous controllers (CC): CC1 (modulation) and CC11 (expression).
- As you mention, pitch bend wheels are sprung, and return by default to a centre value - you’d have to always be holding the pitch bend if you wanted anything other than the central value - unsprung wheels can be set and left alone.
- Although the Arturia keyboards are very configurable, the manual I looked at (v2.2.0 for the 61 key version) says specifically that you can’t map pitch bend to any other function (section 8.3.1) - so you’d need additional code somewhere in the system to do the remapping.
- CCs can have a value between 0 and 127 - MIDI pitch bend outputs a value between 0 and 16383 - so to have the pitch wheel generate CC data, its values would need to be mapped to the range 0-127
I’m not sure whether this is helpful, but since I’m on a budget my solution to this has been to use one of the cheaper M-Audio keyboards (Keystation 61 MK3) which has a mod wheel (outputting CC1) and a single mappable fader which I have assigned to CC11. Although they’re offset, the wheel and fader are close enough together to allow me to control them with one hand.
I’ve also built a home-brewed MIDI fader controller from an Arduino Leonardo, but I find the controllers on the keyboard good enough almost all of the time.
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Thank you so much for all the detailed info! Very much appreciated.
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hi i came to be a little disruptive… if you’re using logic THER IS A WAY… i made a video about it a few years ago during covid when the nerding for the weekend happened BUT if you’re getting any of the bigger arturias there’s literally no point on doing such a thing cause like mentioned before, they have other faders that you can use… HOWEVEEEEER in the case of something more budget, you could if you’re willing to open the thing and get rid of the spring in the pitchbend wheel… im sharing the video link here showing how i did that
big disclaimer tho: there is literally no point on doing this if your keyboard has other faders, this is a solution meant for on the go rigs and things like the mini lab that has a touchbar instead of a wheel.
also second disclaimer: i did this in logic por X i have no clue how to do it in other DAWs BUT… eh… you can try if you want
here’s the video https://youtu.be/U_0oVk0nf0Y?feature=shared
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I’m currently using Korg digital piano, which doesn’t have any faders and my first solution was to get cheap 25 key midi keyboard and use it’s mod wheels as CC controller. Just need to be added as additional midi input in Kontakt. However, this requires more desk space and I later decided to build 3 fader CC controller - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ymXCc3FZG4 for about $80. Still have a few pcb boards left.
Pitch bend isn’t really meant to be used for expression controll.
Would it be possible to map CC1 and CC11 both to the mod wheel? He tends to move them in close sync anyway.
Kind of. What you can do is remap expression and dynamics controls to both be either CC1 or CC11 instead.
Your controller can only send out one CC message but on the computer side you can have that one CC message to control multiple things.
For example i am working on a sampler instrument that has a drive control and it’s set in a way that the control changes both drive and volume at the same time to match volume but it’s only one knob and only one CC message but linked to 2 things.
I wouldnt recommend that for your particular case because sometimes you want the soft sounds to come thru or the louder dynamics tone but very quiet in the background for example…. BUT the answer is yes you can but it’s the other way around
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