What's the cleanest way of getting a gate from a controller button?

VCV Rack
1

Hi, I’ve been learning the ins and outs of VCV over the last few weeks. I have an alesis VI25 which has more buttons than anyone should have the right to on a keyboard of its size. My intention is to use these buttons to trigger fades by sending their gate signal to an envelope generator and manipulating parameters that way. Currently, it seems like MIDI-Gate will only work on MIDI notes. So, the best method I have is to MIDI map each of the buttons to the offset of an attenuator knob and treat the signal that way. This seems like a wasteful step considering that its a button that’s very clearly transmitting a direct on/off signal that should translate into a direct gate. Am I horrifically overcomplicating this?

EDIT: I’ve certainly figured out a better way to do this. I wish there was a direct midi gate, but the VCV pulses allows for a button to be mapped to a button that triggers or holds a gate signal.

Thanks!

2

Maybe this is your solution but my way of getting a toggle out of an external button is:

image

(note the Latching CV Triggers)

3

If you want to to trigger fades from a hardware button and you are using MindMeld Mixmaster, you can map your buttons directly to the mute buttons on the mixer and then use MixMasters built in fade automation in the track menus (the mute buttons then become fade buttons).

You access the track menus by right-clicking on the respective track labels at the top. You can have fade in/out times of 0.1 to 30s and can set the fade curve between log/lin/exp.

Depending on how the buttons on your controller work, the MM mixer mutes can be set to either trigger toggle mode or gate high/low.