My tryst with a Arduino based control surface (like Korg Nano Kontrol)



Tryst of being a recording artist + sound engineer + song writer + guitar tech + pedal builder + electronics geek + Praise and worship team member + etc + etc
One of the many things that you want to do in the little time you get (make) in between being a full time husband, full time father and a full time employee at a MNC is making those hours / minutes count… make it matter as they in my company…
I have been enamored with this concept of making things as simple as it gets (KISS – keep it simple stupid – popularly known).
Coming to the point…
This is in context of having something recorded… like a song idea or something like a demo.
One of the pains of doing this recording thingy alone is this... You need to click something on the computer and quickly get yourself setup in front of the mic and / or position your guitar correctly in front of the mic and the problem gets compounded if you are going to be playing the guitar and singing…
Was wondering if there was something that can be done to make it SIMPLE / easy… a light bulb moment.. J
The DAW that I use is Mixcraft (a wonderful piece of software for a price that it is a downright steal for all the things that this guy offers - http://www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/).
Now a good thing that Mixcraft offers is an Android and IOS app to start, stop, record (on the same wifi network) etc… but this also I felt was a little cumbersome…  and soooo me knowing some programming and electronics, wondered if I can have a small foot switch kind of thing that can start playback, stop, record by STOMPING….
Now what I have done is created a small Arduino based MIDI controller to send MIDI start, stop and Rec message to the DAW via the MIDI port.


This is the project….












 There are a lot of tutorials available on Mixcraft's website on how to configure a control surface... it is pretty straight forward.

Comments

Janzaib Masood said…
Hey friend. I like your story . I am also like you.
1:08 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My tryst with hacking a Zoom MS-70CDR

Image
You feel like kicking yourself when y ou know you have a great piece of equipment, with the most amazing sounds but the usability is downright hard...KICK KICK KICK I picked up the Zoom-MS70CDR and instantly fell in love with it.. the sheer size of it,  for that much amount of power is actually insane... it is so small that it snugly fits in to any small sized pedal board. But the only draw back of this device is the usability.. it is not very good to say the least.. I wrote to Zoom and asked them if they plan to change anything about the usability, I gave them some suggestions too, but they came back with .. Dear Sir, Thank you for your suggestion. We do not want a price boost by the increase in functions and the chips for the converter. Anyway your opinion has been noted. We will forward your email to person in charge for future reference. Sincerely yours, ZOOM Corporation << I kinda felt.. okkkkkkkkkk... I understand.. Being the electronics freak, I wondered,...
Read more

My tryst with hacking a Zoom MS-70CDR - Part 2

Image
Making something is one thing, making it unique is another thing altogether .. but making that usable after the lightning strike of an idea is something nice and the feeling of doing that is something indescribable. That indescribable thing is what I am writing about. After making the MIDI controller for the MS70CDR, I found out that, though it worked like I wanted it to, it was not practical to use it live. And so I set about making that smaller / compact to set it on a pedal board... There was no sense making to too small, where the foot switches cannot be used without interfering between themselves.. and also there needs to be a USB shield along with the the Arduino... So I split the two.. make the Arduino UNO + USB shield into one small box and then make the foot switches into another one. This is the brains unit (Arduino UNO + USB shield) I took a simple Hammond 1590 box. Added a 15 pin D type connector (to connect the foot switch box) and made provisions for the USB cable ...
Read more

My tryst with the Zoom G3X

Image
While my tryst with the zoom 70CDR continues, I happened to see some demos of the Zoom G3X and when I did dig deeper found that this processor in fact is loaded with features. So began my tryst with this Zoom G3X. At the onset this processor is loaded with the same kind of effects (though not so many) like the MS70CDR (which I love by the way), this has some nice Amp modelling and some decent dirt pedals. As in my previous blog, the major drawback for me in the MS70CDR were these things… 1.        No easy way to TAP TEMPO the tempo and use the TUNER 2.        No way to use my existing pedals / 70 CDR  in such a way that I could get dotted eighths 3.        Had to use a Amp modelling pedal like the Tech 21 series to get a decent sounding tone when running into the PA /mixer To address these drawbacks, when I saw the Zoom G3X, I jumped at it. And when I found out that the same MI...
Read more