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REQ: MIDI "post-set" in songs and MIDI pre/post also in pauses

Started by pheldal, May 15, 2016, 03:08:58 PM

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pheldal

I'm implementing a MIDI-gateway to a digital mixing-console that let me do things such as increment or decrement the level of individual channels by X dB, as well as handle toggles for mutes and effects. This is primarily intended to adjust the level of vocal microphones depending on who is the lead singer on individual songs. If I raise the level of one or more microphone before a song I would also need a way to reliably lower them at the end of the song. This, and quite a few other automated tasks could be handled if Bandhelper was able to send a separate set of MIDI-messages also when a song is closed.

Part of what I want to do with MIDI is to control the light-rig, and it would be great to be able to associate MIDI-messages with pauses (pre and post like for songs).  Pre would typically be for messages to mute everything (especially effects such as reverbs and delays) except whoever may be talking, and focus the lighting on that person. Post would mostly be messages to undo the pre-pause-changes. The pauses could possibly be handled via "performance-layouts" where there for example could be a popup with a "pause" label and a "continue" button to move on to the next song when swipe is used to turn pages and there is a pause in the list between the songs. For practise or other purposes one would simply use a "regular" layout that ignore the pauses.

For lights/haze/smoke and other stage effects this would in many cases eliminate the need for manual intervention, and the audio-control options are going to be a huge help for small gigs where the economy doesn't allow for hiring a professional soundman.

arlo

That's on my wish list and I'll add a vote for you.

In the meantime, one way to accomplish this would be to create a song containing all the presets needed to for a pause and another song with all the presets needed to reset at the end of the pause, and add those songs to your show or perhaps to each set in your show. Then you would have to jump around and select song 1, pause, reset, song 2, etc.

This would be easier if you had multiple devices on stage; you could set up a show containing only the pauses and resets on one device, and have your actual show on the other device. Then use one device to select songs and the other to select the pauses and resets.

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). You can also edit your layout actions to send the Layout MIDI Presets upon song completion (Layouts > [layout name] > Edit Details > Actions). The song completion will be triggered by the end of an automation track, or the end of a recording if there's no automation track, or the defined song duration if there's no recording. You can also trigger the layout MIDI presets manually from an on-screen button or a foot switch. More info about the new version is here:

http://forum.arlomedia.com/index.php/topic,1785.0.html