Sending midi Notes to SLM to trigger Midi Presets mid-song

[drumm1n]

Hi Arlo.  I have a question about using SLM's Remote Control feature to trigger other midi devices. I've already searched the tutorials but couldn't find my answer there.
http://www.arlomedia.com/apps/setlistmaker/tutorials/remote_control.html

My Setup: SLM controlling 3 external midi devices: Roland V-drums; Roland SPD pad; VoiceLive Play GTX Vocal Processor.

What I want to do: Use the SPD pad to trigger SLM to then send out midi PC messages to other midi devices. Example: hit SPD pad 3, sends Note 108; SLM receives 108 and that triggers SLM to send a user defined PC message to the other midi devices (including the SPD device).

Restriction: my SPD can only send Note Messages and nothing else. But as a drummer, I can't be poking at the screen to send midi messages mid-song. Heck, I can't even reliably use a stomp box to trigger messages (I've tried but in too many songs I need my feet on the hi-hat and bass drum. Plus it wreaks havoc on the rhythm!).

What I know: SLM can receive a Note Message from my SPD, but the actions seem to be limited to: Previous/Next Screen/Page/Song/Document, Show/Hide Document/Notes, Start/Stop Recordings/temp/AutoScroll, Pitch, Volume Up/Down, Midi 1/2/3/4/5 Send. That's all useful, but I need to trigger Midi Preset 'X' (which would then define a PC message to whatever devices I wanted). Can this be done? Or could this be added?

What exactly is Midi 1/2/3/4/5 Send and could this be used for my purpose?

BTW, the upcoming feature to be able to send midi commands mid-song (timed with lyrics or at a point in the recording) is a related feature, but won't work for my purpose because this is for live performance without a recording playback. Therefore, there's no way of SLM knowing exactly when to trigger midi events short of me telling it by hitting a trigger.

Thanks!

[arlo]

What I know: SLM can receive a Note Message from my SPD, but the actions seem to be limited to: Previous/Next Screen/Page/Song/Document, Show/Hide Document/Notes, Start/Stop Recordings/temp/AutoScroll, Pitch, Volume Up/Down, Midi 1/2/3/4/5 Send. That's all useful, but I need to trigger Midi Preset 'X' (which would then define a PC message to whatever devices I wanted). Can this be done? Or could this be added? What exactly is Midi 1/2/3/4/5 Send and could this be used for my purpose?

You can use the MIDI 1-5 Send actions to trigger one of the first five presets attached to the currently selected song. So if you want to play the next song and you've attach three presets named "Verse", "Chorus" and "Solo" to it, then you could map one incoming MIDI note message to the Next Song action and three more MIDI note messages to the MIDI Preset 1-3 actions. Then you could strike one of the SPD's pads to change to the next song, and another pad to select the Verse, Chorus or Solo preset when needed.

Just remember that you can't map a drum pad directly to a preset ... you probably wouldn't want to because you only have a limited number of drum pads. Instead, you can map a drum pad to one of the presets for the currently selected song, which will hopefully be fewer in number than the number of drum pads you have.

BTW, the upcoming feature to be able to send midi commands mid-song (timed with lyrics or at a point in the recording) is a related feature, but won't work for my purpose because this is for live performance without a recording playback. Therefore, there's no way of SLM knowing exactly when to trigger midi events short of me telling it by hitting a trigger.

That's correct, but this feature should work well for performers who use backing tracks. Also, automating the document scroll position doesn't need to be as precise as some other actions, so that feature will be a nice alternative to auto-scrolling for some users.

[drumm1n]

Thanks Arlo, your suggested approach will get it done but would necessitate adding a generic preset (in my example, a PC message to toggle the state of the voice processor) to every song.  Is there a convenient batch method to do this for lots of songs?

You're right that assigning a single midi preset to a single pad doesn't scale, but I still like the idea of being able to specify a system-wide midi preset that isn't specific to a song for those special PC's one might want to send.

Drumm1n

[arlo]

I'm not sure what you mean by "toggle the state of the voice processor" ... do you really need to send the same program change to it for every song?

In the upcoming version 3.4, you'll be able to attach MIDI presets to other MIDI presets, so if you already have other presets attached to songs then you could attach a new preset containing this repeated message to those existing presets. That would be more efficient if you are using the same presets for multiple songs and the number of MIDI presets is less than the number of songs.

I don't currently have a structure in place to map a remote control action directly to a MIDI preset, but I'll add it to my wish list.

[arlo]

In the new app version released today, you can add one or more MIDI presets to your layouts to make them available from any song (Layouts > [layout name] > Edit Details > MIDI Presets). Then you can set up a remote control action to send the layout MIDI presets, or send them automatically from a song completion action. More info about the new version is here:

http://forum.arlomedia.com/index.php/topic,1786.0.html