NanoPad2 in Logic 9 for Track Selection

Here's a simple dream: select any of the first sixteen tracks in Logic's Arrange using the pads on Korg's NanoPad2. Pad 12 = track 12, pad 5 = track 5. Hit it and be on my way. Stop grabbing and dragging multi-button rodents while orchestrating on the fly. Stop hitting bank shift and puzzling buttons on LC.

I know Track Select can be done by MIDI because Logic Control does it. But NanoPad2 does not appear as a control surface (even though Kontrol Editor is loaded, Write Scene has been accomplished, and "PAD" shows up as a port in Environment).

Please, fader8, shiv, or any other gurus, assist if you can. Either I need to tell a MIDI controller to pick a track using Environment transformer, or perhaps I need NanoPads 2 to appear as a control surface and enter in those nutty track / bank select messages that LC generates.

For now, the nano series are basically 'dumb' controllers and have no useful software written for them. The user is limited as to what can be programmed.

The bigger controllers have software/firmware written that will do some of the things you ask for. The nano series does not.

So for now, you are kind of stuck using key commands for 'next' and 'previous' track selections.

Plowman said:

or perhaps I need NanoPads 2 to appear as a control surface and enter in those nutty track / bank select messages that LC generates.

OK, try this out.

Open Control Surface Setup and manually install a Mackie Control. Select its icon and change its port parameters to your nanopad ports.

Program the nano button press with a Note On, C0, channel 1, velocity 127 and a button release with a corresponding note off. That should now select track 1.

Track 2: C#0

Track 3: D0

etc.....

See if that works for you.

You two are always scary. You and The Big Lebow-dot.com-SKI.

Well, interesting day. Fader8's out-of-the-box thinking works... to a point. The top 8 pads now choose Tracks 1 to 8. But now, we have to deal with Fader Bank selection.

In Korg Control Editor, I assigned the TOP row of pads to generate the right first note (by the way, here it works with C1 upwards, not C0), and then a second note A#2 to select the "left" or first bank. (In a song of sixteen tracks, this would be the first set of 8 tracks.)

Then I mouse clicked on track 11 and hit the first pad. It reset to Track 1, selecting the right bank. So the A#2 thing worked.

Great breakthrough. I assumed that I could set the lower set of pads' second Note send to B2, to select the right most bank.

But Logic freaked. It acted as if I was sending a stream of A#2 / B2 commands, and the bank select indicator on the left part of the track list in Arrange bounced up and down.

I thought it might be a defective pad, but all pads do this when B2 is introduced as a second note send.

Might there be any other way to have the top row of pads choose tracks 1 - 8 (left most bank) and the bottom rows 9 - 16 (right most bank)?

Is it possible that Logic is not getting note offs for A#2 and B2? I notice in an Environment monitor that C1 through G1 note ons do not appear when I hit the pads, only their note-offs. I assume Logic sees it as a control surface now and appropriates the note ons.

Okay. On the Controller Assignments Page at the bottom right, there is a "Key Repeat" box. It needs to be unchecked for the bank select commands (A#2, B2).

This requires the pads to be hit twice to select correctly, an unwanted but tolerable side effect.

Fader8, you wrote, "...a button release with a corresponding note off. That should now select track 1." I'm not sure what you meant by this. I see no way in Korg Control to change note off commands. I'm misunderstanding, but I'm wondering if this has bearing on the need to hit the pad twice.

Plowman said:

(by the way, here it works with C1 upwards, not C0)

Ah, Korg... I'm quoting the Yamaha C3 is middle C system.

Quote

Is it possible that Logic is not getting note offs for A#2 and B2? I notice in an Environment monitor that C1 through G1 note ons do not appear when I hit the pads, only their note-offs. I assume Logic sees it as a control surface now and appropriates the note ons

Note-offs do not appear in my environment monitors when I select a channel on my Logic Control, so yeah that could be part of your problem. Not sure what to suggest, but if you need to know what a Logic/Mackie Control sends for any button push, let me know.

Wait! Are your buttons sending actual Note-Offs or are they sending Note-On velocity zero?

Hey, can your Korg thingy send a series of 4 different controller values on a single button? If so, we could try making Logic think it's a CM Labs Motormix!

Ok,

Now that the cat is out ...

You could set up buttons in the Environment and leave the nanopad unchanged.

Extending the tracks beyond 8 is possible by copy/pasting as many more control assignments as you need. All you need to do is change the: CS parameters: Control Name, Fader Bank, MIDI Input, and Valve Change.

For example, the Value change of the Logic control Ch 1 would be 90 18 7F.

The 18 part is what will get changed.

18 (ch 1 )

19 (ch 2 )

1A (ch 3 )

1B (ch 4 )

1C (ch 5 )

1D (ch 6 )

1E (ch 7 )

1F (ch 8 )

20 (ch 9 )

21 (ch 10 )

22 (ch 11 )

23 (ch 12 )

... etc

The original value of the nanopad buttons would be the in value of the environment button. The button then change the midi value to a note value and goes out an IAC driver object.

It doubt it makes much sense to you?

I think my Labor Day weekend will be lost to this task.

"Are your buttons sending actual Note-Offs or are they sending Note-On velocity zero?"

They have been set to send Note On at 127, per your instruction. I don't think note off values can be selected.

"Hey, can your Korg thingy send a series of 4 different controller values on a single button?"

No, the Korg Kontrol Editor for the NanoPad2 is ... um.... must be polite.... "basic." It lets you set the messages as four notes OR four CC's OR four program changes.

"The original value of the nanopad buttons...." Yeah, no problem there. Out of the box, I think they're set to the General MIDI drum notes.

"It doubt it makes much sense to you?"

Shiv, the concept absolutely makes sense to me. As a Control Surface Newbie and Never Wanted to Be, I had deduced from the Controller Assignment page what values the Logic Control unit was spitting out, but the one thing I could never do was bridge my work in Environment INTO the Control Surface page.

For example, I have never successfully routed my Logic Control into Environment. In this case, it's coming in Port 4 of a Unitor II with just an old school MIDI cable. Even when I directly cable the Physical Input's Port 4 into a monitor object, it shows no messages. LC, of course, is working, triggering commands as usual.

So when you say, "The button then change the midi value to a note value and goes out an IAC driver object," I wonder if that is the great Northwest Passage, the point of access I never understood, the way I bridge the transformers and macros from Environment into the Control Surface page, or at least have it behave as a Control Surface.

So again, the CONCEPT of what you're suggesting I certainly understand. But in the past I have attempted to control track selection by simple MIDI commands and failed.

I didn't know about the middle set of digits. Thanks.

Now, a simple set of KC's for track selects 1 to 20 would make all this easier... but I digress.

One thing I've learned: In Control Surface setup. Channel Strip View Mode has to be set to Tracks. Otherwise, if there are more than sixteen tracks and its set to Arrange, the bank allocation gets confused.

It also occurs to me that I can probably set the F1 to F8 buttons on LC to select tracks 9 to 16 (once I get what Shivs is describing). Then I may fling my Korg thingy back to the salesman.

But I have to say, if I can get this thingy to work, those sixteen track selector pads sitting on my master controller are chimp-simple to locate and hit. Winds, brass, aux / perc, and strings, right there in front of me. A simple dream.

Plowman said:

No, the Korg Kontrol Editor for the NanoPad2 is ... um.... must be polite.... "basic." It lets you set the messages as four notes OR four CC's OR four program changes.

So, it can send up to 4 cc messages from a button?

Quote

For example, I have never successfully routed my Logic Control into Environment. In this case, it's coming in Port 4 of a Unitor II with just an old school MIDI cable. Even when I directly cable the Physical Input's Port 4 into a monitor object, it shows no messages. LC, of course, is working, triggering commands as usual.

Wait. You already have an LC? You should have said so. That changes things. The dummy LC you just installed for the nano, is it in the same CS group?

Yes, up to 4 messages per pad. I'm clumsily proving it as I write.

(By the way, when a port is set to a Channel Surface object, it just stops showing up in my Environment. I guess I still don't know how you two can drive CS changes with macros. More below. To prove the Thingy's ability, I first have to reset the Port of the dummy so that it no longer works as a CS, hence allows it to be read in a monitor in Environment.)

The Korg Kontrol Editor allows four notes or CC's or program number to be set per pad.

I see no way that one pad can send any combination of notes, CC's and program number. But yes, once you've chosen the kind of message to send, it can send four OF those messages.

Each pad can be programmed to behave as a toggle or "momentary." When momentary and set to send a CC, it sends CC(#) 0 then CC(#) 127 immediately. As toggle, it first sends second byte 127, then second byte 0 on the next tap.

(These values may depend on settings I don't fully understand.)

Yes, I do have a Logic Control. Currently the dummy LC / Nanopad is not linked. I assume they're linked when they go into the same box together in Setup.

Is it possible to post an Environment such as shivs suggests, or is the cat better left near the bag (if no longer inside)? Months or years ago, I launched a thread trying to puzzle track selection from Environment / simple MIDI commands, but it went to way of ... well, of Logic Control units.

Plowman said:

Is it possible to post an Environment such as shivs suggests, or is the cat better left near the bag (if no longer inside)? Months or years ago, I launched a thread trying to puzzle track selection from Environment / simple MIDI commands, but it went to way of ... well, of Logic Control units.

I could but the concept will have been stolen and will end up for sale at a steep price on a site in Pottsylvania (by the evil Boris Badenov a.k.a Hemlock Soames).

Here is a short video of how it works.

The nano pad (or any controller) is left as is and is cable into the Environment to the buttons. The buttons are set up to ... well you know how it works.

From an earlier shiv post: "Extending the tracks beyond 8 is possible by copy/pasting as many more control assignments as you need."

Bingo. Now I get it. You select the control/parameter in Controller Assignments, copy it, paste it, re-title it to the (new) target track number in Controller Name to preserve sanity, change the target track in the small box to the right of "Channel Strip: [ fader bank ]" and then feed in the two middle digits per shiv's instructions above.

This has allowed me to lose the second note send from NanoPad2 (fader bank shift) all together, and now the pad needs to be hit only once.

For simplicity's sake, in the Korg Kontrol the pads are set from C1 to D#2, choosing tracks 1 to 16.

"Here is a short video of how it works." Umm, here's a short video proving that it DOES work, but not necessarily how.

Many thanks, guys. I couldn't have done it without you.

fader8 said:

Ah! I get it now!

Ah! I get it now!

 

Yeah, after finally locating my shivermetimbers secret pirate decoder ring, I managed to work it out.

Ooops, something fell out of my pocket.

The enclosed 'com.apple.logic.pro.cs' goes into the ~/library/pref section before booting Logic. Be sure to make a copy of your current CS assignments before replacing it with this one.

You can use whatever controller you have, but it may be better to use a second (cheap) dedicated controller. Simply assign the inputs of the Environment buttons to the CC# your controller buttons send.

Personally, I would still use the next/previous key commands. This concept should work for the ones who need immediate track selection when playing live.

Track select.zip

Argh. 'Tis no man, but a remorseless hacking machine. Not since me matey Ski discussed the length of me Physical Input has so much treasure been a-flung upon the waves.

Be not deceived by the bottle in his hand, for Shiver is drunk with power.

I know this is an old thread but I'm hoping someone can help. I had it working yesterday but it's not working today for some reason. It looks like it is working in the Controller Assignment pane and in Midi Environment but not in the Arrangement Pane. Here's a quick video showing the issue:

Any idea why it would select the tracks in the Arrange window?

Presently you've got the Mixer layer in the Environment open.

Open up the Mixer pane (command 2, or click the Mixer icon in the Control Bar in Main)

Set the Mixer pane to Tracks (not Single, not All).

Does it work now?

As I looked into it, I had the same observation. I had to click on some Tracks in the Mixer window with the mouse to wake things up, it seemed. I'm on Logic 10.4.8.

It's good to know I am not the only one who benefited from the help of Fader8 and shivermetimbers those many years ago.

I've got a related question. Some of the tracks are not able to be selected via the controller. I think this has to do with the fact that they are multitimbral. Any way around that? Here's a quick video of the problem.