Midicontroller

Hello,

I have got a little question about extern midi controllers. If I connect for example the Behringer FCB 1010 to my PC, will the status LED of every pedal show the status of this pedal in Guitar Rig 3? Will the Floorboard know wheather this pedal is activated or not? Will the Display show me my actual sound number?

If it doesnt I could achieve the same effect by modifing a simple qwerty keyboard extending it with some nice knobs, right?

Am I right, that the POD X3 Live wont really help me as not all of its pedals transmit the required midi information?

Thanks a lot for your help,
Yannis

 

Epa chamo

I've got and FCB unit and the panel doesn't really show the numbers displayed in the GR software. It just shows settings or the patch and bank internal to the FCB unit. This hasn't been a problem however. If you configure it right whatever switch you step on will light up. You will need to send a MIDI note from the FCB. When I step on it and foot switch lights up the GR component it is also activated. If I step on it again the light is off and the GR component is deactivated.

Don't know about using a keyboard or using a POD X3. The latter should work if has midi out functionality (not just pass through) but you will need to check.

 

Epa chamo como estas... jeje

OK, thanks a lot! But Guitar Rig 3 doesnt really send anything back to the pedal, does it? I mean, lets asume you activate an effect in your pc with your mouse. Does the board get this? Or does it just change the LED Status with every click you do?

 

There is no way to sync the led's on the fcb to what is actually happening in guitar rig.

That is why I have my FCB led's set to momentary instead of latching.

If you select something on the fcb and then change the preset in guitar rig, guitar rig will not update the fcb and the fcb will get out of sync.

Lets say you use the stompbox mod chip in the fcb.
The preset has a fuzzbox and it is saved in Gr so the fuzzbox is normally off.
You step on a stomp box pedal to turn on a fuzz box,
The led on the fcb lights up and the fuzzbox turns on in Gr.

Now you step on the same preset button again.
This will go back to the stock preset with the fuzzbox being off, but the led on the fcb is still on.

I run my fcb as momentary led's becuse I reset my presets back to stock by stepping on the preset pedal. If I turn on a wah, a octaver and turn off delay using the stomp box pedals, the quickest way to get back to the stock preset is to just step on the preset pedal instead of turning off 3 stomp box pedals.

Hope this made sense to you.

 

Yes, it did make sense to me and is exactly what I expected. So i guess Im gonna buy the original controller...

One little question left. How often do you use the expression pedal? Could you live with a controller without it?

Thanks a lot,
Yannis

 

I think it depends on the music you play and your personal preferences. You could do some cool things with it. You could use for your typical wah and volume control but you can also assign it to any parameter to come up with some really interesting sounds.

I say get it if you like to experiment plus is more fun

 

Hello, Yannis.

With the UnO firmware expansion for the FCB1010, you can indeed set up your pedal LEDs to be in sync with the status of the effects in Guitar Rig. Note that Guitar Rig and the FCB1010 do not communicate with each other, so you will have to take care to get everything setup correctly yourself in advance.
It takes a bit of extra set up work, but it can be done.

For more information about the UnO firmware expansion, see this Yahoo!Group: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/fcb1010_uno/

Here is a thread about this specific topic in that Yahoo!Group: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/fcb1010_uno/message/2385

Also, here is a thread on this forum where EL34xyz and I get into a lengthy discussion about this topic: http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59024

What I was doing with the FCB1010 fit my needs very well, but that was not the same for EL34xyz. Hopefully you can find a solution that works well for you.

Cheers.

 

It sounds nice, Ill try to get a cheap fcb... Thanks a lot!

How does your MacBook deal with GR3? Im gonna buy one to. 1 GB enough?

Thanks a lot!
Yannis

 

I recommend getting the fcb only if you plan to get the UnO firmware expansion for it.

My MacBook handles GR3 quite well. I've used it for live performances for about 3 years (actually with an iBook in the beginning). For most of that time, I got by with 1GB just fine. Recently I upgraded to 2GB of memory. The biggest difference is I can now get below 5ms of latency. (It was around 10ms, I believe, with 1GB).

 

I say 1G should suffice and you can always get more (specially if you are running other apps). I run GR with 1G of memory in a Mac desktop as as standalone app and inside of Logic (ocasionally) and I get around 7-8ms latency which is pretty awesome.

 

No you cannot sync your led's with guitar rig.

Guitar rig would have to be able to send a command back to the fcb to only turn off an led. This command does not exist.

Tell me how you can send a command from guitar rig to the fcb to turn off a LED?

If you read the scenario I described above, and you understand the scenario, you can see there is no way to correct the situation.


As for the expression pedal question, I use both of them all the time.
The right one is my wah wah pedal and the left one I use for cool pitch changing effects or changing delay lengths.

 

I've described in detail (in the thread linked to above) how I was able to manually get the FCB "in sync" with Guitar Rig. This was a good solution for me, and I used it in live performance regularly.


Yannis (or anyone else with questions about using the FCB with Guitar Rig), you are likely to be confused by the conflicting statements in this thread. I suggest you visit the Yahoo!Group I linked to below, and ask some questions to the members there to help you decide if the FCB (+UnO firmware) is a good choice of MIDI foot controller for you.

Good luck.

 

It's a case of using the wrong term to describe your situation.

You cannot sync the led's to Guitar rig, period.

You may have an acceptable setup for your particular situation.

I bet I can get it out of sync with just one press of a pedal on my fcb.

send me the .sys file and the bank and I'll test it.

 

Not correct.
However, I did realize that we were using the term 'sync' to mean different things, which is why I began putting "in sync" inside quotations marks.

Note that I was careful not to say something like "you can sync the LEDs to Guitar Rig". Rather, I pointed out that it is possible bring them "in sync" (i.e. to move or occur at the same time or rate, like synchronized swimmers) with what is happening in Guitar Rig, or in other words 'force' them to agree through a process that I admitted takes a certain amount of effort.

But really, its ridiculous to quibble over semantics like this, since the point I was making in this thread was quite clear. Especially since I provided a link to the thread were you first demonstrated to me how my approach does not work in your particular situation.

Absolutely, and I was very clear about that from my very first post in this thread. I even pointed out specifically that my approach didn't work for you, and suggested that it may not work for others.

That is completely unnecessary and totally beside the point. I know you can get them out of sync, because you explained to me how you would do it in the thread I linked to above. Toward the end of that thread, I even pointed out the limitations to my approach, which I first realized because of that discussion with you:

"Certainly there are limitations to what can be achieved by combining GR3 + FCB1010 (UnO), and using previous and next preset switches falls outside of those limitations, unfortunately.

I suppose I was lucky enough to find a compromise in functionality between the two that was very useful/logical for me, and therefore didn't feel like a compromise."


I think that original discussion you and I had is quite informative about what is/isn't possible with GR3 and the FCB. I've seen it linked to from another forum as an example of one approach to programming the FCB.

Anyway, that's enough from my end.
---
In post #7, I 'misspoke' when I said, "Note that Guitar Rig and the FCB1010 do not communicate with each other ...". Since obviously the FCB1010 does transmit messages to Guitar Rig, it would have been more accurate to say, "Note that Guitar Rig does not communicate with the FCB1010."

Ok, 'nuff said.

 

Yes, it's just the nuance of terminology involved here.

In order to have perfect sync between GR and a midi device, GR woul have to report back to the midi device and the midi device would have to respond to that information.