After some initial frustrations with looping my guitar using Dwarf (clicks at the beginning of the loop, which I now suspect were caused by me, monitoring the sound via DAW, with just enough latency to throw me off) I started working on a patch that would allow for some live jamming/performance.
With a basic sequenced drum loop, the clicks basically stopped being an issue (drums masked them and helped me start on time despite the latency) and now I’m giddy to start building on my initial idea. I had so much fun looping multiple instruments yesterday with just my guitar/Novation Launchkey Mini and Dwarf, that I’m now severely sleep-deprived.
Anyway, I’d appreciate your help with improving the board (picture attached).
This should be easy, but for some reason, I couldn’t figure it out yesterday (hence that TAL-Noisemaker which is not connected to midi for now). Say I’d like to split my keyboard between multiple generators. Example: C1-B1 bass, C2-B2 drums, C3-B5 piano, C6-C7 synth… how could I achieve that? EDIT: And/or simply switch between inputting midi notes to only one instrument at a time.
Bonus question. I find myself a bit unhappy with the level to which Launchkey Mini can be customized (pads can only send note info, not CC), but if I’m able to put all my pads on a different MIDI channel than keys… can I then use those pads for CC info to, for example, arm ALO loops (using MIDI to CC Dwarf tool) without messing up my ability to use the keyboard to make the sounds?
I was quite happy to discover that Dwarf has plenty of power on tap for a basic set-up, but I could see this becoming a limiting factor down the line. Any power-hungry plugins/useful optimizations I should know about?
I’ll end here for now. Thanks in advance for all the help.
You could do it in different ways. Most likely, a combination of any two of these three would do it:
Use different midi channels;
Split midi notes;
Use different midi input sources for different plugins.
This is possibly the simplest solution:
With this one you can split the midi note range amd have C3-C4 (for instance) be sent to a specific midi channel and drive whatever synth/plugin you’d like.
For splitting notes alone, use this:
Then you can filter/demix midi channels with this one (for a single channel)
or this one for more than one channel at the same time:
(and bear in mind that you can map these filters, so you can for instance employ a midi footswitch to open/close one channel. That can be used in a solo section.)
This too can be mapped to a midi note, midi CC, or an external switch (the Launchkey, for instance).
Or else, you can use a footswitch or encoder in the Dwarf to set the midi input with this plugin:
You’d need to assess whether or not it is able to send CC messagens on its own. However, you can convert a midi note to CC with this plugin:
(My experience with Novation gear is that the pads only send a note value, but I cannot tell for sure regarding the Launckey).
“With great power comes great responsibility (of making great music)!!”
Thank you so much for the comprehensive answer! The Key-Range and/or Channel Filter seem like exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for investing a bit of your time to save some of the frustration my research would inevitably produce. Really appreciate it!
I’ve managed to use the combination of a MIDI Channel Filter (cause apparently it’s common for drum pads to live on MIDI channel 10, which is also true for my controller) and Key Range filters, to create a patch in which I can control and loop, drum/bass/keys/percussion generators with one keyboard. I’ve also added a somewhat comprehensive guitar rig (amp, cab, overdrive, reverb, and delay), some reverb for one of the generators, and even a touch of room reverb + glue compression to liven up the whole thing. This may not be the peek of complexity but I’m positively surprised that Dward can be realistically used as a standalone box for a “one-man-band”:
Naturally, I decided to check what would break this board, and adding a reverb before my drive for that sweet, sweet Shoegaze sound did it… until I changed the buffer size to 256 bit. After that, I added a Big Muff and still had CPU to spare with latency being at a very acceptable (albeit noticeable) level:
I will try to optimize this patch, and probably share it with the community, once it’s good enough, but I’m so happy that what I already have, seems perfectly usable, maybe even gigable (after some polish and control assignments that make sense).
Did you share it in the pedalboards section? You should, it looks very nice. I myself would give it a ride.
True. It’s been like this since the 80s. The MIDI specification reserved channel 10 for drums, so that syncing would be easier. Remember that midi is a serial protocol, so it “scans” channels 1 to 16 sequentially. If all drums are on the same channel, there’s less chance of a beat come in slightly delayed.
