As I left the convenient windows path and walk along the rough linux roads, along the path I changed my AKAI Fire into a very nice Launchcontrol XL, which does the job great, but I run out of knobs and faders and buttons pretty fast.
I’m looking for a way to use the arrow buttons on the Launchcontol as shift buttons, so I could change the offset of the CCs or channels sent by the faders and knobs from the Launchcontrol to Rack. I found no way to set this up in the Launchcontrol Editor, but I could be wrong there. Maybe there’s module or (simple) technique to aquire this in Rack. I could save different user presets in the editor and change them, but this would not completely work.
The workflow should be like this: Fader 1 sends CC #1 on channel 2. I press DOWN and the channel changes back to 1.
Or think about using the “Mute” and “Solo” buttons in a Mixer. Press “Mute” and “Track Control 2” and track 2 is muted. Would work for “Solo” and “Track Control 7” also
This would save a huge amount of space on my desktop and enable me to buy christmas presents for my kids.
That seems to be solely for ableton and not usable outside of that program (the controller scripts that Live uses are specific to it’s API). unless I’m mistaken?
I would love to find a solution to this as well. I used to use Arsenal in Live and that also uses extensive shift functionality to provide a huge amount of control but I don’t think there is anything like this in Linux (or even generally outside of Live?). I occassionally see individuals who have created some kind of script of course it is for their use and not easily transferable to other uses/controllers.
Just had a quick look now and it looks like midizap can do it potentially, the manual mentions a shift state so this could be a solution?
Please let me know if you use this with your controller, I have been looking at getting that one but was holding off for exactly the reasons mentioned. I think I will look at setting up my launchpad with this too, at the moment it is dedicated to controlling Iverson Jr but this could make it much more powerful.
Ah yes you are right, I hadn’t realised it was just for Live - I came across it briefly the other day and the OPs request made me think of it… shouldn’t post before I have had my coffee in the morning
Isn’t Iverson Jr great! it’s an amazing performance tool - the probability fill knobs are a lot of fun. I’ve been working with the developer to make a Push 2 preset for it.
I’ve just tried midizap and it at least works, I was able to control cursor movement with the default config. I’ll have to have a think about how to use the launchpad with it as I realised it’s going to be a bit more complicated when I want to use the columns/rows like parameter sliders (bottom pad of a column being 0v and the top pad of a column being 10v, for example, and pads inbetween a relative percentage). Not sure if it is has the capability to do that though, on top of sending feedback.
It’s certainly possible to do most of what you want I think though, you can have up to 4 shift buttons which can be toggle or momentary. I’ve just bought the same controller so I’m hoping to set it up with 4 buttons which act as shifted ‘scenes’, one to control the mixer, the next to control a VCO or something etc.
I would imagine that we’ll want very different things from our setups but I’d be happy to share my config if/when I get it sorted out.
actually, midizap doesn’t work the way I want it to, so I tried this…
left midi-cat is assigned to a button on the launchpad and controls little utils’ BTN, which trigger 8face presets, which in turn are mapped to different launchpad-mappings on the right midi-cat. needs some finetuning, but seems to work
At the moment I have the Device/Mute/Solo/Record-Arm buttons set as shift states (which also light up when enabled). With none selected the faders control 1-8 volume on mindmeld mixer, buttons 1-8 mute and solo (with red and green LED feedback) and sends 1-2 for the knobs for each of the 8 channels (3rd row will be fx controls I think such as delay feedback and filter). Pressing Device changes this to 9-16. I still have 3 shift states that I haven’t assigned yet and haven’t really tested but should work.
my problem with midizap is, I’m using ardour and the launchcontrol works a control surface there. This makes it very cumbersome to switch between different jack configurations while switching between ardour and vcv
Oh I see, that makes sense. Do you mean you use both programs at the same time? If you are not then you could add the midizap start command before VCV Rack, I use a desktop file to start VCV Rack so it’s fairly trivial to change the command to ‘midizap -o2 -P ~/.midizapconfig && Rack’, or something along those lines and that way you don’t have to start it manually in addition to Rack.
I’m using VCV and ardour consecutively, VCV for creating sound and sequences and Ardour for arranging. I’m still in the process of adjusting my workflow, there’s so much to learn here . I’ll try out midizap some more, could also get it running via qjackctrl’s patch bay or so, thanks
Cool, glad to hear that! I might try the same thing with reaper. In case it’s useful or saves you some time I’ve made quite a lot of changes to my config so I’ll upload it here at the start of next week. I’ve managed to squeeze everything in to one midi channel except for the faders so you only need two midicats.
Let me know if you come up with some cool tricks for it, I’ve only scratched the surface of what midizap can do.
. I’ll try out midizap some more, could also get it running via qjackctrl’s patch bay or so, thanks 
!