NMCD

[Armistice]

How excitement...

Not really, but at least I can now actually play things into recordings instead of programming them.

Amazing what $379 buys you these days.

Nektar1.PNG

Nektar2.PNG

So I've got it talking to my VSTis in Reaper OK and can record MIDI tracks etc - not too hard - and if you have a look at the left above the wheels, you'll see a set of transport controls - one cool feature is that I can control the song in Reaper using them - so, start, stop, record etc. Neat. Saves getting up and walking over, pressing record, going back to the controller etc. Had to download a special .dll and make some adjustments in Reaper but it was all pretty easy.

What I haven't worked out is how to get it to talk to the Nektar expression pedal I bought, and how to assign things to the mod wheel, but I sense I'm starting at the wrong end and I have to go to the VSTi software to do that.

It does a staggering amount of stuff that I'm simply not interested in learning about. So long as I can play my little bits, and then go edit them in Reaper, that's all I need.

[Tadpui]

Nice! Is the GX a step-up from the LX series? It looks a little sleeker than my LX25. I did the same thing with mine...basically got it set up to do the few things I needed and never learned another bit about how the thing works

[Armistice]

Nice! Is the GX a step-up from the LX series? It looks a little sleeker than my LX25. I did the same thing with mine...basically got it set up to do the few things I needed and never learned another bit about how the thing works

I believe there's the GX, and there's the GXP which this is. The purchase was driven more by what was in stock at the local music store than any deep desire to have additional functions that I'll never use, but there's no doubt those transport controls are a really neat function. I don't really understand what the various Nektar ranges actually do. If the difference in price was thousands, then I guess I'd do a bit more research, but for a few hundred bucks, I really don't care.

I also didn't want "synth weight" keys - these are sort of semi-weight. I have an old 88 key Yamaha electric piano that, in theory, could have been used, but it doesn't have the wheels, for obvious reasons, and it's a beast of a thing with its fully weighted keys and it's just too big. I have it set up against the wall now as I'm trying to learn to play it. But going from full weight to synth weight would have been too weird.

Now that I'm not working, and don't need a work space on the desk any more, getting a keyboard seemed like a perfect fit.

As it turns out, it wasn't in stock despite it clearly saying it was on their website, but they didn't have anything else anyway, and I was too far down the rabbit hole on it, so I got them to order me one in.

[Tadpui]

Oh OK with the semi-weighted keys I'd say it's a definitely step up from the undeniably plastic feeling synth-action keys of the LX.

My wife has an upright Roland digital piano that has "real" keys on it. They do feel nice, but since I can't play piano to save my life, the plastic toy-like feeling of my little controller doesn't bother me much. I mainly tap in drums with it, but on the occasion that I do attempt to play a synth or piano part, I basically stick to chop-sticks

[Armistice]

I also bought it as it had separate power... or so I thought. No adapter in the box! Working fine off bus power so far though.

[Armistice]

@Tadpui - my learning journey has begun!

I remember when I first encountered MIDI in the 80s and I ran shrieking from the room and vowed never to engage again, but I sort of have to now - and obviously I "get it" as it applies to VSTI drums - but that's simple. Pick a number from 0 - 127.

Decided to work out how to put something, anything really, on the mod wheel. Pitch wheel seems to work by default - a tone up or down. Have to say I've always hated pitch bends on keyboards, so I doubt I'll be using it, but an assignable mod wheel, well that could be handy...

First thing I learnt was that you have to do all this in the VSTI - seems obvious, but it took me a few minutes to get to that realisation.

So I fired up Pianoteq and set up a Rhodes piano with tremolo on it - figuring that tremolo is a simple effect and it's easy to spot changes to depth and speed, which in its simplest form, is all you get to play with.

I figure I guy who's got a working relationship with computer programming in multiple languages should be able to crack MIDI!

Anyway, after countless light bulb moments over the course of 90 minutes or so, I've managed to assign both speed and depth to the mod wheel in a usable range - ie. you go from what you'd consider the sound you want to record, with the mod wheel fully down, to something that goes a bit deeper and a bit faster as you move the mod wheel up - sort of like you get on a Hammond organ via a slider or two.

I reckon there's a book in this. Keyboard MIDI for Guitarists. I'm actually writing all this down as I go and taking screen shots of various things as I work it out because I'm going so deep so quickly into areas I've never delved into before that I'm afraid I'll forget stuff.

After a bit of frustration, I'm starting to understand a few things, so now I'm headed back upstairs to see if I can also add a bit of overdrive to the mod wheel, as well as the two things I already have there, to really make the sound pop... it's becoming fun, not a chore.

And then, there must be a way to save all this somehow, somewhere, so I don't have to do it every time - best try to work that out as well.

Down the rabbit hole I go... see you all in a month... By which time I expect to have gone full keyboard player and be looking at keytars and thinking "You know, they're not that bad..."

[Tadpui]

Nice, glad you're getting it all working to do your bidding! Soon enough you'll be up to this guy's level

(sorry I can't figure out an easy way to resize the this image)



My little LX has some knobs that I'd learned how to assign through MIDI Learn, but I seem to have unlearned how to do MIDI learn. Most likely you can try to right-click on some function that you want to control in the VSTi and hopefully there's a MIDI Learn option in the context menu that pops up.

As for saving...I guess it's a matter of figuring out whether it's easier to set up the controller to send the MIDI signals that the software expects, or to set up the software to expect whatever the controller is sending. Then figure out how to save it and recall it. I'm at a loss of how to do either. I think Reaper will at least save any things you change in your current project...but I have no idea about the best way to bring all of that setup into your next project.

[Armistice]

Nice, glad you're getting it all working to do your bidding! Soon enough you'll be up to this guy's level

(sorry I can't figure out an easy way to resize the this image)



My little LX has some knobs that I'd learned how to assign through MIDI Learn, but I seem to have unlearned how to do MIDI learn. Most likely you can try to right-click on some function that you want to control in the VSTi and hopefully there's a MIDI Learn option in the context menu that pops up.

As for saving...I guess it's a matter of figuring out whether it's easier to set up the controller to send the MIDI signals that the software expects, or to set up the software to expect whatever the controller is sending. Then figure out how to save it and recall it. I'm at a loss of how to do either. I think Reaper will at least save any things you change in your current project...but I have no idea about the best way to bring all of that setup into your next project.

So I've been noodling away and doing my best attempt to be Liberace!

I didn't even know what MIDI Learn was until you mentioned it - nice tip - thanks!

Here's something else I've learnt - so I was searching for a better Hammond B3 organ VSTi - free, natch - and found one eventually. So I installed it just fine and it pops up the way it should in Reaper. Now that swirly effect that you get with these things, I've always known that to be the Leslie speaker, without ever having given Leslie speakers and their engineering much thought.

I assumed it was just a continually variable thing which you controlled (on the real B3) somehow - but when I looked at the GUI for this B3, it simply had a Rotary switch with 0,1 and 2 on it for options. Which, now that I think about it and how old these things are and how you played them back in the day, makes sense. No mod wheels back then. Drawbars. So a simple switch to turn it on to one or two settings or off, and because it'll be a small motor turning a heavy speaker, the speed change isn't going to be instantaneous, and so it's that slowing down and speeding up that gives you the great woo woo effect. Got it. Makes sense completely.

Anyway, so I'm constructing a tune with the B3 in it all the way through - I put the rotary switch on the expression pedal (that I also bought with it) and that was easy enough to control while playing - off, sort of halfway, fully stood on - to get the appropriate level of Leslieness happening. Sounded great as I was playing, but because I mixed the final track a fair way down, it was a few days before I realised that the Leslie thing wasn't happening. It was stuck in one position.

So I went into Reaper and found that the MIDI instructions had been recorded, but they weren't being applied to anything. Hmmm.... What to do?

I played around with playing the track out as audio to another track and manually working the Rotary knob on the GUI in real time, but I couldn't actually work out how to do that - which was a surprise to me - so back into the MIDI settings I went and found MIDI Link. So when I established a MIDI Link back to parameter 11 - which was the expression pedal in the list - and voila - the Rotary knob is going during playback. Excellent...

Didn't think I'd have to do that though. You'd think seeing the instructions were recorded it'd just apply them to the recorded track, like it does with a sustain pedal, but not so, apparently. Live and learn...


And speaking of sustain pedals - I have an old 88 key Yamaha electric piano, with sustain pedal... so I plugged the pedal into the Nektar device only to find that it operates in the opposite way it's supposed to! All the way down, no sustain, off, full sustain. Tried working with that but it was just too hard. And of course, seeing this thing is over 20 years old and is a pedal sold with that particular piano, there's no polarity switch on it to make it work the other way. So I had to order a Nektar sustain pedal as well ... now installed and working fine.

Back to the studio this morning... I'll emerge in a few months with the album that Tangerine Dream never got around to doing... perhaps.

[JD01]

I never really got into recording MIDI and couldn't be arsed to learn

[rayc]

Leslie speeds were often pedal based with a significant "ramp up" & down which is much sort after in VSTi land.
I have a vst that does nothing but Leslie "rotation" and allows automation of speed. volume and something else I can't recall. It was freeeeeee years ago.