12. MIDI

MIDI control and mapping

A footswitch that records and undoes the last take, a pedal that moves to the next practice step, a knob for the practice speed, the faders of a controller on the mixer’s faders: any pedal, pad, key, knob or fader on a MIDI device can drive Stab. You show Stab what it should drive, then move or press the control; that’s learning it.

Learning MIDI controls

Available on every platform.

Learning a control for something on screen

The quickest way is from the thing itself. Right-click it and choose Learn MIDI for …, then move or press the control on your device. What can be learnt this way:

• In the Mixer: a track’s fader and pan, and a bus’s fader.
• In the Sound pane: a knob, slider, switch or choice of a device.
• In the Transport pane: its buttons, each for its command.
• In the Playlist pane: a step, which the control then plays.

A pill over the pane says what Stab is waiting for (“Move a knob or fader for Lead Volume”), and once you’ve moved it, what was learnt (“Learnt: CC 7 → Track 1 Volume”). When something already has a control, its menu says which (“MIDI: CC 7 on Keystation”) and offers Forget MIDI.

Learning by touch

Learn MIDI Control (⌃⌥⌘K)Learn MIDI Control (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K)Learn MIDI Control (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K (⌥⇧⌘K on a Mac)) (the Transport menu or the Transport pane › Record › MIDI Control) waits for you to touch something: a fader, a knob or a Transport pane button (“Touch a fader, a knob or a Transport button to learn”). Touching it changes nothing; then move or press the control on your device. Choose the command again, or press Escape, to stop learning.

Learning for a command

The Transport pane’s record menu (right-click the record button) has a MIDI Control submenu:

• Learn MIDI Control: learning by touch, as above.
• Learn for a Command: then press the control. The commands: Record, Capture, Undo, Redo, Play / Stop, Stop, Loop, Punch In and Out, Metronome, Count-In, Wait for Me, Listen, Slower, Faster, Normal Speed, Previous Marker, Next Marker, Add Marker, MIDI Step Input, Look Here; and Previous Step, Next Step (of the playlist that’s on), and Speed (a Knob), which turns the practice speed from 25 % to 200 %, 100 % in the middle.
• Footswitch Presets: a set learnt in turn, one press each: Record · Undo · Loop, Previous · Next Step, Slower · Faster, or Play · Record. The pill counts them (“Press a pedal, pad or key for Undo (2 of 3)”).
• Forget This Song’s Controls: the controls learnt for this song’s sound settings (below).

The same buttons are at the top of the Mapping tab of the Audio & MIDI pane.

What a control does

• A press runs a command or plays a step: a note, a program change, or a pedal or button pressed down. Letting go does nothing, so a sustain pedal used as a footswitch works.
• A knob, fader or the pitch wheel sets a value: a track’s volume or pan, a bus’s volume, the speed, a sound’s setting.
• Soft takeover: a knob or fader moves its value only once you’ve turned it to where the value is now, so nothing jumps. Move the value another way (the mouse, undo, automation) and the knob has to catch it again.
• Relative: an endless encoder sends “up” and “down” rather than a position. Turn on Relative for it in the Mapping tab, or in Settings › Audio & MIDI, and it moves the value from where it is.
• A knob turned is one undo step once it rests for half a second (“MIDI Control”).

A control learnt for something isn’t also played or recorded. A device whose kind is Controller (MIDI devices) only ever controls: its notes and knobs never play.

Where controls are kept

Controls belong to the device that sent them, and to you, not to the song:

• Commands, steps, the speed, faders and pans are kept with the device, in this device’s settings, and work in every song. A fader is learnt by its place: the first track’s fader in one song is the first track’s in the next.
• A sound’s setting (a knob in the Sound pane) belongs to that song’s sound, so it’s kept in the song file, for your device. It’s never undone, nor sent to others when you play together.

Learning a control again replaces what it drove before.

The Mapping tab

The Mapping tab of the Audio & MIDI pane lists everything learnt, each device’s and this song’s, a row each (“CC 64 → Record”, the device under it), with Relative for a knob, Learn Again for a new control for the same thing, and Forget. Presets saves a device’s controls under a name (Save … as a Preset…), puts a preset’s on any device (Use Preset, replacing its own), and deletes one.

Its Monitor tab shows every message that comes in, the latest first, with what it drove: the way to find which controller number a pedal sends. Click a control’s line (Use for… ▾) to bind that message to something without pressing it again.