Topic by Hil

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  • Hil
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  • Registered: 29-05-2020
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Topic: Two-way MIDI communication with external control surface

Hi,

I'm playing around with building some custom external controls for Organteq, based on a Teensy LC micro-controller board. There's great support for the MIDI protocol with these boards (they use a modified form of the Arduino development environment) and so it's all fairly straightforward if you've got some basic C/C++.

The big limitation though is that Organteq only receives MIDI input. It can't output MIDI (as far as I can see). So, if I have some LEDs on my controller (eg illuminated buttons), they can't change in response to changes in the Organteq GUI. If for example I load a different preset, or change the combination, in Organteq, my controller's buttons don't illuminate/extinguish according to the new settings.

I can get this two-way behaviour (to some extent at least) if I 'wrap' Organteq in a VST host like Cantabile which supports it. I can set up 'bindings' in Cantabile which respond to changes in the Organteq GUI and output MIDI to my controller. But it's quite clunky and difficult to set up, and I'd love to have this facility in the Organteq standalone.

So here's the feature request: when you set an Organteq control (eg a stop) to operate in response to a given MIDI command, you can also have it output this command when it is changed from within the GUI. That would enable a proper two-way binding with an external controller such that both GUI and controller displays always 'agree'.

I think this sort of thing is quite important for a software organ because changing combinations and stops during a piece is routine for organists and so an easy, and preferably tactile, way of doing this is fairly essential. If you've got your eyes on the music you can't also have them on the Organteq GUI and so the controller also needs to display the current settings faithfully.

Anyone else interested in this?

Hil

Reply by samibe

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  • samibe
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  • From: Boise, Idaho, USA
  • Registered: 28-12-2019
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Re: Two-way MIDI communication with external control surface

That's what I would like. My organ can run Organteq and move the stops but it takes a lot more effort to set a preset (or snapshot) because I have to set the preset on the organ and Organteq separately. My organ has another mode where it will output midi but the stops will only move if corresponding midi messages are sent back to the organ.

Reply by mfwiniberg

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  • mfwiniberg
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  • Registered: 10-01-2020
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Re: Two-way MIDI communication with external control surface

Hi, I use Novation Launchpads with Hauptwerk - which supports them directly and will send the state of stop tabs etc back to them to illuminate the buttons accordingly.

As Organteq doesn't (yet?) do this, I used TouchOSC on a tablet to make a remote controller for Organteq, because this allows feedback on the state of controls to be programmed on the control surface itself.

It would be nice to have feedback from Organteq when its stops etc are moved, whether by touch on screen or via an incoming MIDI message.

(A lot of people want to play a system like this using a console with control surfaces that react to the state of the digital organ - hence this requirement)

Reply by rjsilva

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  • Registered: 07-11-2017
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Re: Two-way MIDI communication with external control surface

Just adding another vote for this. Although I use the memory system on my organ console rather than Organteq's, and I use my computer 100% headless, there would be times where it would be useful if stop/registration changes in Organteq would send the MIDI messages to my console to reflect those changes.

Last edited by rjsilva (28-07-2020 03:10)

Reply by lizny

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  • Registered: 11-04-2020
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Re: Two-way MIDI communication with external control surface

Chiming in. I'm building my own VPO console, it has no combination memory of it's own. I depend on VPO software to process piston signals and send midi messages back to the organ to move the stops.