This one might seem a little obvious, but my template patch has expanded to include a MIDI Controller mapping facilitated by MindMeld PatchMaster and some stoermelder modules. I had the idea that if I made a PatchMaster layout that looked like my controller and had big labels, it might make the mappings for performance a bit clearer, and a bit more flexible. The template patch is now pretty much the top two rows seen here:
My MIDI controller is a very cheap model (a clone of a Korg NanoKontrol 2, which is already cheap…) with four switchable “banks”. I laid out four copies of its knobs in PatchMaster. MIDI-CAT has “pick up” mode and ranges set up to work with PatchMaster when banks change and CCs are moved from their previous value. It also has a little slew by default for each CC to try smooth out the MIDI stepping … I tried to balance responsiveness and smoothness (Does VCV MIDI-MAP do a better job of smoothing? It felt a bit more “dynamic”, but that could all have been in my head).
I mapped slider CCs to the mixer, with a limit of 79.4% in MIDI-CAT so they hit ~0db at MIDI value 127. They also got reversed because they were in the way while using knobs … so to reduce volume of a channel I have to move the slider up .
The final piece is GLUE to add labels relevant to the current patch. PatchMaster has labels on its controls, but I think GLUE labels are easier to pick out at-a-glance.
This means my default template patch has a sensible MIDI set up straight off, and creating mappings is much more obvious about what on the controller maps to what in the patch… I think…
There are some commercial modules in this patch, but the free ones should give you an idea of what’s going on:
Within the pattern of using a S&H to pull a bass note from a sequence, there may be a concern that the range of notes sampled will fall outside the range for a nice bass. A common approach to limiting the range of notes is to use a VCA and re-quantize to the same scale as the sampled sequence.
There’s something I don’t quite like about this, but I can’t put my finger on what it is. Forgive me if the below is so common that it’s barely worth mentioning, but I thought a little about using octave shifters and comparators to constrain the octave range of the bass voice:
The S&H / bass parts are lined up beneath Orca’s Heart. From left, we have the S&H, the output of which is instantly lowered 4 octaves.This goes to the A of a comparator, with B’s offset at -2V. It also goes to a second octave shift, which lowers the signal by a further octave. Each octave shift is sent to the logic switch (LGSW). The comparator’s A > B output is sent to one of the logic gates of the LGSW, which is in OR mode.
The end result is, we get the -4 octave sampled V/Oct signal to the bass voice unless that goes too high, in which case the comparator instructs the LGSW to switch it out for a -5 octave signal.
But in the end I found a module that does this already. Orange Line Fence. It keeps your note CV within a certain range. This might or might not work for you?
But I like your approach.
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