Controlling guitar pedals with MIDI

richardyot

This is probably a niche interest, but for anyone that has MIDI-controllable pedals, such as Strymons, or Boss multi-FX, Line 6 etc... creating a control surface in the Midi Designer app can save a lot of menu-diving and knob twiddling.

In my case I have a trio of Walrus Audio pedals (R1, D1, and M1) that don't use menus but instead have combinations of switches that need to be toggled or held to access secondary functions, and creating a MIDI control surface has really unlocked the potential of these pedals by making all the controls instantly accessible.

The M1 pedal has 6 modulation algorithms with a whole bunch of parameters, it can create a lot of different sounds, but the Tweak and Tune knobs control 12 different functions between them, so you have to toggle switches and/or hold the Bypass switch in order to access all the controls, it's quite fiddly:

Many pedals also involve a lot of menu-diving to access secondary controls, which again is fiddly, and often difficult to remember.

Enter MIDI Designer, an app that allows you to create your own custom control surfaces. Obviously this is nothing new to those of you who use hardware synths and groove boxes, but I haven't seen it mentioned in the context of guitar pedals. The app is pretty easy to use, and works extremely well, and you can create more or less any kind of control surface you want, with complex controls that change multiple parameters if you need that kind of thing.

These are the control surfaces I've made for the Walrus pedal above, I can access all of the functions directly on the iPad, and it's a million times nicer to use, and just makes everything accessible and immediate:

tahiche

Interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve done something similar with Loopy Pro and my Voicelive3. I have a line6 midi foot controller mapped to loopy buttons, then in loopy I send midi CC’s to change Voicelive3 parameters. Sort of like midi cascading.
One thing that annoys me is that a lot of guitar pedals/multi fx cou I’d actually work with midi but they’re “capped”. My zoom b1on multi fx, the Vox Adio air gt… they have app editors that use midi or sysex under the hood, it’s just not exposed or documented. It’s frustrating to know that it’s there yet not usable.

richardyot

@tahiche said:
Interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve done something similar with Loopy Pro and my Voicelive3. I have a line6 midi foot controller mapped to loopy buttons, then in loopy I send midi CC’s to change Voicelive3 parameters. Sort of like midi cascading.
One thing that annoys me is that a lot of guitar pedals/multi fx cou I’d actually work with midi but they’re “capped”. My zoom b1on multi fx, the Vox Adio air gt… they have app editors that use midi or sysex under the hood, it’s just not exposed or documented. It’s frustrating to know that it’s there yet not usable.

It sounds like your setup is geared more towards live performance (with the foot pedal), whereas mine is about accessing secondary or hidden functions - but of course both of these things can be combined.

I'm not familiar enough with Loopy Pro's MIDI CCs to know how deep they go, but MIDI Designer can fire macros and send Program Changes to trigger different presets, so maybe all of this can be combined to take the MIDI cascading even further: Foot pedal into MIDI Designer, then to Loopy Pro, then back out to hardware.

BroCoast

I control my ME-5 with MIDI but it's just basic program changes.

jrjulius

@richardyot said:

@tahiche said:
Interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve done something similar with Loopy Pro and my Voicelive3. I have a line6 midi foot controller mapped to loopy buttons, then in loopy I send midi CC’s to change Voicelive3 parameters. Sort of like midi cascading.
One thing that annoys me is that a lot of guitar pedals/multi fx cou I’d actually work with midi but they’re “capped”. My zoom b1on multi fx, the Vox Adio air gt… they have app editors that use midi or sysex under the hood, it’s just not exposed or documented. It’s frustrating to know that it’s there yet not usable.

It sounds like your setup is geared more towards live performance (with the foot pedal), whereas mine is about accessing secondary or hidden functions - but of course both of these things can be combined.

I'm not familiar enough with Loopy Pro's MIDI CCs to know how deep they go, but MIDI Designer can fire macros and send Program Changes to trigger different presets, so maybe all of this can be combined to take the MIDI cascading even further: Foot pedal into MIDI Designer, then to Loopy Pro, then back out to hardware.

I’ve not used MIDI Designer to compare directly, but Loopy Pro’s MIDI capabilities are pretty impressive — you can configure multiple actions for each input type, in any order (e.g. tapping a button sends a PC message, then waits 50ms for the patch to load and sends a CC message that ramps from 0-127 over five seconds; double-tapping or swiping the same button can have a different set of actions, etc.).

Back to the main topic: I’m definitely coming around on MIDI-enabled pedals. I always used to think it was excessive, and a few years back I actually sold off just about anything I had with a hidden parameter, but since then I’ve gotten into Red Panda’s pedals in a big way. Before selling my Digitakt, I actually set up a really fun template using the LFOs and P-Locks to control the Tensor while I played guitar. I’ve been meaning to do the same thing in Loopy but so far haven’t built it out.

There’s a lot of potential with MIDI!

richardyot

@jrjulius said:
I’ve not used MIDI Designer to compare directly, but Loopy Pro’s MIDI capabilities are pretty impressive — you can configure multiple actions for each input type, in any order (e.g. tapping a button sends a PC message, then waits 50ms for the patch to load and sends a CC message that ramps from 0-127 over five seconds; double-tapping or swiping the same button can have a different set of actions, etc.).

That's good to know - thanks