Good question… Google says the Axe Fx sends out tuner info on CC 15, so we’d need a tuner VST that will either send midi output or let us attach a widget that reflects the tuner output.
Melda’s MTuner will output pitchbend. I’d have to think about whether there’s a practical way to manage this in the extension.
Hi Vindes,
I’ve been programming all my sounds in GP after making a layout for your SL mk3 extension. So far it’s working beautifully. I’ve now been thinking about foot control and stumbled upon this.. wow. Amazing work.
I was wondering, does this extension work well together with the SL extension? Any drawbacks? If that’s the case I ought to invest in an mc8pro.
My use case: since I’m using a Rackspace per song I was thinking id simply add an 8 button panel to all my rackspaces so I can populate the buttons with any function I want to have at my feet for said song.
Thanks again!
Jop
The two extensions work independently and do not interfere with each other.
The basic design is the same. Everything is done through widgets, and the naming conventions are pretty much the same except the SLMK3 extension is looking for widgets that start with “sl_” and the MC8 extension is looking for widgets starting “mcx_”.
The only meaningful limitation is that if you wanted a button on the SLMK3 and a button on the MC8 to control the same widget you can’t really do that directly, because you can only name the widget “sl_” or “mcx_”. You can work around that by creating two different widgets and linking them.
Right! So it’ll be a familiar workflow. I think I’ll go for it.
Very thankful for the work you’ve put into this.
Hi! Back again, I got the MC8 pro! I got it to work, but only when I connect the mc before starting up GP. When I disconnect and reconnect the mc it no longer displays the data. With the Novation extension it reconnects automatically which is amazing, could that functionality maybe also be added to this?
For festival change overs and such I’d like to have my laptop set up with the gig file loaded beforehand. Also if there were an accidental disconnection it would be problematic to have to close and reopen GP.
Hope this is possible! Thanks again.
Jop
Yes, that should be possible without too much difficulty, I think. Give me a few days and I should have an update.
Great! And would the momentary functionality you added to the SL extension also be possible here?
In case someone else runs into this: I had some issues with latency, a button press would take almost a second to process. After messing around in the Morningstar editor this morning I found the solution: Disabling the double press actions on all switches and setting the switch sensitivity to 5 did the trick. I don’t know what I’m missing out on without the double tap functions but for me it’s way more usable this way.
Also: there’s a way to disable the bank name and number to reduce clutter on the displays (I will use only one bank): Under controller settings there’s an option named bank/preset font size. Setting this to ‘hidden’ will remove the bank info but the song / Rackspace names will stil be displayed.
This integrates so nicely with GP it’s amazing.
Three more questions:
I know I’m posting a lot of feature requests here, I hope it’s not too much to ask.
Cheers
I’ll have to think about how that would work. The pads on the SLMK3 always send a press and release message, so there it’s just a matter of processing it.
With the MC series the extension is built around the ability to use different types of presses (regular press, long press) and from a functional standpoint a regular “press” action won’t be produced until the physical button is released (because the MC is waiting to see if it’s a long press or double press).
It’s been on their list of “work in process” for what seems like more than a year now. I don’t blame them, as using the MC’s in this way is a pretty fringe use case. So far I have not figured out a workable way to do it with the current firmware.
It’s certainly possible, but because of how it’s coded it might be a pretty messy and involved change.
That’s something I hadn’t come across before and it really shouldn’t do that. I’m pretty sure it didn’t do that when I originally wrote it (for the MC8 [non-pro]) but as I modified the code to make it compatible with the MC6 and the Pro versions I probably did something sloppy with the range checking. I’ll fix that.
I could program the buttons on the MC to send a press and a release (press: note on / release: note off) and just disable the long press or double press functions. For my use case that would be no problem at all but I don’t know if programming this into the extension would be problematic?
Totally understandable indeed.
Sounds problematic. I could always just program radio buttons manually in the cases where more than 4 song parts are needed.
Thanks!
I tried this to see if the extension would process it as momentary but that didn’t work unfortunately. If it’s not feasible to accommodate momentary buttons in the extension I’ll try to work out a different way to approach this. Maybe I could have the MC change to a different bank whenever I need momentary switches and program them ‘the old fashioned way’
Yes, the extension is definitely not set up presently to accommodate that. It just ignores note-off events. I will add it to the to-do list, but it’s not likely to happen in the next few weeks.
On a different note, Morningstar now has a mechanism to allow changing the display colors through the sysex protocol, so I will be working on implementing that.
Great, that would be a nice addition
Hi,
I often get a reboot on the mc8 pro when I switch gig performer to setlist view. Does this happen for others as well?
Since I don’t switch GP views live im not too concerned but it’s a bit annoying since I have to restart GP to reconnect the extension.
Are you able to replicate this reliably?
If it’s crashing the MC8 then it’s probably a firmware bug. My guess is we’re sending a sysex message it isn’t responding to correctly and causing it to crash.
What version firmware are you on? If we can identify a string that’s causing the crash I’m sure they will fix that quickly.
I can fix it so GP will at least reconnect after it reboots.
This extension has been updated to version 1.1, which now incorporates setting display colors on the MC Pro units through GP widgets, and a “Reset midi ports” function (under the Extensions dropdown menu in GP) that should allow reconnecting to your MC if it disconnects and reconnects.
I’d like to make the re-connect process fully automatic, but without consistent success thus far.
Not really, it happens almost every editing session (sometimes very often) but not every time. I’m on the latest firmware (v3.13.6).
I’ve just installed the new version of the extension but the reconnect midi ports function doesn’t work in my case unfortunately. Also, there’s something strange happening to the displays with this version, there’s a lot of yellow dots on there. I haven’t yet programmed any button colours.
The dots are a function of what it is doing for default colors in the absence of you specifying what you want. Open the example gig file in the zip download and copy the color widgets from the global rackspace into your global and you should get better colors.
Are you on Mac or Windows? After you try the reconnect midi function on the Log windows and show me what it says when trying to reconnect. You can open that log widow in advance and clear everything else out and just copy what shows up after trying to reconnect.
Great, I’ll do that. Nice to have default colors, great idea.
I’m on Mac. This appeared in the log file:
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8 Pro)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6 Pro)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match Morningstar MC6 Pro Port 2
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8 Pro)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6 Pro)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match Morningstar MC6 Pro Port 2
MCX: Using midi in Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8 Pro)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6 Pro)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match Morningstar MC6 Pro Port 2
MCX: Local GP Port does not match Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8 Pro)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6 Pro)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6)
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match Morningstar MC6 Pro Port 2
MCX: Clarett+ 8Pre does not match Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8 Pro)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6 Pro)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6)
MCX: Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2 does not match Morningstar MC6 Pro Port 2
MCX: Using midi in Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8 Pro)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC8)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6 Pro)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match MIDIIN2 (Morningstar MC6)
MCX: Local GP Port does not match Morningstar MC6 Pro Port 2
MCX: Local GP Port does not match Morningstar MC8 Pro Port 2
