MIDI mappers: mapping your controller to your brain

[lethal_pizzle]

Elegance! You nailed it! Do you think using the actual loop trigger pad (it triggers the loop on release) as the shift key itself will work? More elegant than using a dedicated shift button even (my shift button triggers a 'backward loop')?

[DvlsAdvct]

I think that's definitely do-able. I like using one shift key that shifts EVERYTHING. So, for example, I have 8 buttons that can switch between Hotcues, beatjumps and loops. So there's two buttons. And then I have a third button that shifts whatever is active. That way no matter what I'm doing I go to the same place. Then again, I have 64 buttons to map.

You'd need the trigger to hit on the release, and I would have the signal only cancel IF you hit another button. So, you can hold the button down and release it on time to give yourself a ramp up, OR you can press another button and change what it's doing. That way if you decide to not loop you have a way out, AND you don't need to worry about timing the release of the button as much.

[lethal_pizzle]

You've pretty much nailed the loop function implementation there.

My shift implementation has the 8 buttons to the left of the machine pads act as pad modes selectors which are momentary if pressed but can be 'locked'. One of the 8 buttons is always 'locked' and lit.

So you could have your 'TRANSPORT' mode locked and want to access a cuepoint. You'd hold 'HOTCUE' and select the relevant pad. Release 'HOTCUE' and the pads are back in 'TRANSPORT' mode.

Want to do a hotcue routine? Hold 'HOTCUE' and press the 'LOCK' button. Hotcue mode is now locked and you don't have to hold the button down, just hammer away at your hotcues. Want to stop a deck and come back to hotcues?. Hold 'TRANSPORT' down and press 'Play/Pause'. Let go and you're back to your locked hotcue mode.

It's basically the same as how the buttons are deployed in the Maschine groove box software.

In addition to this there is a dedicated 'shift' button that provides secondary function to the pads, and 'context sensitive' shift functions, whereby the pad itself is the shifter and accesses secondary functions to other buttons outside the pads and the pad mode buttons (the loop shift described above is one such function).

Context sensitive shifts are actually quite useful for controllers like Maschine where you re-use the pads to such a degree that labeling them becomes cumbersome.

[DvlsAdvct]

Also, something to look at...

I'm playing with the SCS mappings and they have one feature i love. If you press a preset button it toggles. If you press and hold another preset button, when you release it the preset reverts to whatever was last toggled.

[lethal_pizzle]

So like the 'hold' function in Traktor, but instead of returning to 0 it returns to whatever it was before you pressed 'hold'?

[DvlsAdvct]

Exactly.

[lethal_pizzle]

Here's a new one: having my Play/Pause button (on the Maschine pad) only work with the shift button.

Benefits:
1) no accidental deactivation/activation of tunes
2) intuitive control of other parameters

eg: the play/pause button makes the track play and pause when you hit shift + play/pause. When you hold the play/pause button by itself, it itself becomes a shift, allowing you to change track functions in the top-right hand screen (eg. Sync, Master, Nudge, gain etc.) What do we think to this?