MIDI CONTROLLERS - My hardware faders and knobs

hello everybody in today's episode we're going to be looking at knobs buttons and sliders and all those kind of controller things so if you're ready let's dive in actually a little bit later in this video we are going to be looking at the famous underwater keyboard i'm going to be plugging it in and seeing if it still works and i genuinely haven't plugged it in yet so it might just explode now i want to introduce you first of all to what is clearly a major failing of design look at this lovely piano does it have any flashing lights does it have any sliders what were they thinking look here's a perfectly nice guitar does it have any flashing lights does it have any sliders no so obviously pianos and guitars are rubbish what you need is buttons sliders all kinds of good stuff like that and above all nice flashing lights okay in all seriousness the reason why electronic instrument synthesizer samples and everything else need oh actually looking around this is a bit silly isn't it i have got rather too many anyway they're not all plugged in they're all here to be shown you know it's because they have lots of different components which you need to control in real time volume expression vibrato timbre and the filters all kinds of things and when you're playing a sampled instrument or an electronic instrument it's not a it's not a static dull dead thing it's a living breathing organic thing and you you know it's an instrument that needs to be performed and played you know with interest and passion and you can only do that if you're madly wiggling knobs about also it looks good if you're doing or giving it that you know if you twiddle knobs people assume you know what you're doing even if the knob doesn't do anything oh hang on you yes you haven't subscribed yet have you look it doesn't cost anything and there's a little button and there's a bell and you might enjoy this little life we've created here yeah good stuff let me introduce you to this one first of all it's got nothing to do with music but i just thought i'd clear up one of two things it's called an atom mini pro and it's a vision mixer so you plug four hdmi sources in there and you get one hdmi source out so if i'm doing something live it means i can have multiple cameras and the screen and everything else and it's really really good it's extremely good also it looks lovely because it's got shiny lights anyway right um the controller i've had for the longest time um is this one it's dead cheap it's a akai apc mini and it's not programmable in any way shape or form but the reason it's useful is these buttons start at what is it c minus two it goes right the way down to the bottom and you can for those key switches for [Music] libraries like spitfire for example which are right off the edge of the keyboard this is a very useful way of being able to do the key switches the way you do and if you did that it would be absolute chaos wouldn't it can you imagine um the yeah so you can do that without having to constantly transpose your keyboard down um so i've got a couple of these and i used to use them all the time but now because i've got the sac-8 i've also got the all those key switches actually programmed up there but there's lots of other ways of doing it anyway this if you haven't got um any other way of doing it that is a good piece of kit and it's dead cheap and worth it's you know worth its weight the thing i've been using most um in the recent past is this which is a platform uh m plus from icon it's these are very very nice faders they are lovely uh so you get eight faders and a master fader plus a whole load of buttons and if you spare no expense you can have some really tacky labels which fall off that's down to me um but every one of the buttons on this is programmable so you can program these for different controllers and so you can have cc one cc7 cc 11 all those kind of things now oh i just heard steam coming out of somebody's is what are all these controllers you talk about um the midi standard allows you to have uh it's 127 127 different controllers and they can all be some of them are preset to do certain things like this this thing here the mod wheel is always cc one on controller one um and this stain pedal which i've got down there is cc 64. um so some of them have got sort of preset um little lies where they're always doing the same thing but an awful lot of them are can be allocated to all kinds of things so for example if we look at this spitfire instrument here are the mic positions spitfire use cc22 as the uh as one of their mic positions and then cc23 is the next and cc24 is the next so what you can do if we take cc18 there okay now there's the filter if you right click on the knob in a lot of instruments it comes up and says midi learn click on midi learn move the fader and now this fader cc 18 is forever locked to the um high pass filter [Music] oh that was a bit loud sorry about that um to uh to the filter so it's nice and straightforward um [Music] it's magic that's why this is great because you get to stand there and put on your sunglasses you know you can drive all kinds of interesting things so look that's how you set up that's why cc is important that's why there's so many of them and why you can allocate all your favorite functions to a key service like that so the platform n plus is really good i really like it it's quite expensive uh but so it's not you know if you're uh looking for really inexpensive this is a good option this is the nano control 2. it's very straightforward it's just what is it eight freighters i mean look they're they're quite short and they're not the smoothest things well but it is entirely configurable and you can allocate these faders to what you want it's really easy to break you may notice most of the knobs have fallen off and and you just plug it in my mini but it's but it's inexpensive it's good value and if you want a hardware surface it's quite a good place to start um i'm not looking at software so i know a lot of you will say oh why are you not looking at lima for example um i've tried lima it's quite it's just a pain to set up um and i like something solid and good i fade on what i throw the fader up and down all that kind of stuff that's what makes my um heart sing um i've also got a raven as some of you will notice which is a big flat touch screen um in my main studio and that's astonishing so that you can you can mix and you can do all kinds of but again it's quite hard work setting up and the downside for me with the raven is it has to use its own set of key commands within your door so if you're used to your own key commands uh you can't use them you have to use the ring which is fine if you're going to use the rainbow top i've got a friend who absolutely swears by two ravens yes stephen yes you are raven man and and it's brilliant you know it's just like watching somebody conducting an orchestra he strokes his you get the gist if you're into this and you put in the time outcomes are wonderful for me i'm quite impatient and i like physical things and which brings me to my latest um acquisition which is this which is a stream deck um stream i come very late to the party with streamboat and people have been raving about these for ages and i just missed it somehow what it is it's quite it's a programmable set of buttons they come in three sizes this one is the xl um and it has what is that 32 buttons it's entirely configurable so i've got them for example set up for play and stop uh i can turn the click off um cycle record i've got the quantize down the bottom um i can look this okay this is quite cool i'll show you let's let's have a little demonstration of how it works okay let's go into let's record oh hang on turn on the click okay let's just do that for the moment let's now go select bounce i know render render render okay then we're going to go normalize that's pretty cool then we're going to go reverse and then we got it so you can see that you can do all this if you set up the key switches right you can do all these kind of cool stuff hey that's all right what happens if you do pitch shift oh picture pitch shift no i haven't set it up right i'm still learning with this because i literally was setting it up this morning what you get is a bit of software and you can uh for example here's the delete key if let's take one okay i'll do the if you want to just assign a different thing to it you go there's a number of ways you can do this but hotkey is the best one so take hotkey drop it there replace yes then you can call it um you know genius and this is a special button which i've invented which allows you to automatically create the greatest tunes of all time and the keystroke is [Music] not telling you um that's really silly okay okay so then you put in a key switch and then it comes up look genius and you push that and it writes automatic music and it's just like great isn't it isn't that cool it's very and then you can add you can add um these um special you can add backgrounds to it and you can put names and it all comes up on here and i think it's just lovely because you know how much i like a good flashing light and that is a really good flashing light just before i go any further did i mention this how to write music is my online course that takes you through every step of the process how to get going chord progressions tune writing developing and arranging your music six hours of exclusive video tutorials a course text packed with tips and a supportive online community get more out of your music and sign up today so stream decks um also come pre-configured for a whole load of other bits of software like um uh obs wire cars i mean there's tons of stuff out there which which will you know do it do wonderful things so those are the main what am i using most of the time at the moment i use the s88 which is already pre-configured with all these uh buttons and knobs um so the knobs down here are pre-assigned to my favorite uh control continuous controllers and the buttons are assigned to um key switches down here um i use the stream deck which is lovely which just allows me to get on with that kind of thing um i'm not using the platform quite as much as i did now i've got all these other things but broadly look the reason it's worth getting into all this is um if it's really easy for you to add this level of expression while you're playing your music will be better people will like your music more because it makes them it gives them interest it gives them excitement it kind of you mean you can make the thing grow you can make it more realistic or more interesting if you're not trying to be realistic it's just great okay so it's super good and um everybody needs to get into the habit of playing and doodling around with controllers at the same time and that's it really so look so now you know all the bits and pieces i have on my desk and the ones i'm mostly using at the moment are stream deck and this uh and a little bit of that i don't use these two i use this one um with the portable setter kit because i haven't yet found a keyboard that has lots of nice knobs as well as being micro and can go in my backpack but i'm working on it oh before we go do you remember when i did this to a key station 88 let's dive straight in well i did promise you we're going to plug it in and see if it still works ready let's give it a go it is there's no water in it that's a good sign right okay now i've genuinely not plugged in this at all so i have no idea it could just blow up i think it's unlikely it just i think it's more likely just not to work whoa green lights green lights look look little green lights that is promising are you ready nothing why am i surprised that's not so good it's now completely dead i'm just going to play with this for a couple of seconds see if i can make it work did you hear that which only goes to show you can but shouldn't dive into a swimming pool holding a keyboard and it'll still work afterwards [Music] better than it was before it didn't work before and now it does okay that's just utterly bizarre well blow me down um so that's all i've got for you for today um so if you uh haven't subscribed yet shock horror yes i'm talking to you um why not just push the subscribe button it doesn't cost anything remember the little dingly bell stuff because we do this quite a lot and bits of music theory bits of music tech all kinds of interesting things if this is your kind of place then come on down and i will be back very soon um boldly going where no other musician goes okay see you soon bye

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 125,576

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, Music Education, how to write music, icon platform x plus, stream deck xl, akai apc mini, atem mini pro, korg nano control 2, midi controller, best midi controller, cubase, cubase 10.5

Id: tIA3i0dplRA

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020