Traktor Pro with VCI-100 (MISA 4 Deck, 32 HotCue, Master Tempo, Key Locks, Preview)

DJ Software & Apps Controller Mappings
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VCI-100 (no overlay) with TPro (4 Deck, 32 HotCue, Master Tempo, Key Locks, Preview)

DJ TechTools Community

This is my first post but I’ve gained valuable insight into controllerism from everyone contributing to the forum over the last few months.

This TSI closely resembles the official 2.2 DJ TechTools MIDI mapping with access to 4 decks and the Loop/FX1/FX2 section. The Juggle mode is altered and gives access to 2 banks of 4 buttons for each deck. Additionally, it provides access to what I feel are useful tools in Traktor like Key Locks, Master Tempo, designation of Master deck, and the Preview Player. There are also some minor changes to the locations of buttons and sensitivity settings. Overall, it provides me with a more straighforward correlation between the software and the controller.

I also use Ableton and have recently purchased an Akai APC 40. I am hoping to create a TSI mapping for using the VCI-100 and APC 40 together in Traktor in the next couple of weeks. If anyone has some feature requests or good ideas on how the two controllers can complement each other, please let me know. With the upcoming update to Traktor claiming to provide 4 FX banks, the extra knobs will certainly come in handy. I’ll then look to transfer over some of the functionality this setup provides to a more portable one using the VCI-100 and the Korg NanoKontrol.

Lastly, thanks to Ean for setting up this community and for everyone involved in keeping it going. I feel it is the most vibrant and positive forum for digital music creation and DJing on the internet. I hope I can be a vital part of advancing it.

misa+

***UPDATE: For use with the DJ TechTools 2.2 Overlay, check out this other thread:
***VCI-100 and TPro (MISA+DJTT 32 HotCues, Preview, Key Lock)

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Sounds interesting .. could you go into a bit more detail on the exact differences and how to access the features you mention?

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I created a guide for how to access the features and use the TSI mapping and is posted as the MISA_VCI100_01_00Guide.pdf in the original post.

Basically, two of the three large buttons on the top left of the controller act as modifiers for the four small buttons next to them. As the default, the small buttons map to Snap, Quantize, CD Mode, and LFO Reset. Holding down the first large button turns them into Key Locks for each deck. Holding down the second large button turns them into Master Tempo controls: Mode, BPM Increase, BPM Decrease, and Tap. Holding down the SHIFT button (center button in browser section) turns them into Preview controls: Load, Jump Forward, Jump Backward, Pause.

The third large button on the top left of the controller toggles the four buttons below each jog wheel between Default Settings, HotCues 1-4, and HotCues 5-8.

There are some other changes to button locations, in particular with the FX section. I think you’ll find the layout key and guide posted as attachments in the original post helpful in sorting everything out.

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Very nice.
I agree that the large buttons for snap and quantize are “wasted” in the DJTT TSI. I guess with the keylock being the big button, it should be easy to press and hold, while searching for the relatively small buttons to keylock the given deck. I kinda like playing with keylock as an effect now and then, but I am not sure if given the size of the buttons I will manage to do this quickly and precisely enough. Atm I just have these mapped on m laptop keyboard. Maybe a better, albeit limited approach would be to use the vinyl button with your keylock button to keylock the focused deck A/C or B/D.

I think you have a small issue in the PDF guide where you explain the tempo button, since you show the key lock button in the image on page 6.

I very much like what you did for the preview buttons.

I need to checkout how you do the hotcue remapping, but if I understand this correctly, this change should be able to be applied to the DJTT TSI. So when using the DJTT TSI, it would be nice if it could be limited to turning on the juggle mode via the little knob. Then while the the juggle knob is enabled and one pressed the juggle on button it switches between the hotcue banks 1-4 and 5-8. Disabling the juggle knob then gives you the play/pause/etc buttons and holding the juggle button gives you hot cue points 1-4.

Speaking as an owner of the current DJTT overlay, I do not see that much value in the changing of the positions of the sync and loop buttons. Would be nice if you can keep those in their current position as much as possible, then again I guess you like having the blue lights for the sync button?

I have not fully grasped what you did to the FX section, but I think so far I prefer the DJTT TSI and find it more intuitive.

So in conclusion I think I want to stick with the DJTT TSI at this point. However I want to look into getting the above mentioned modification to the juggle mode so that I can access the 5-8 hot cues. I also want to look into adding the support for previewing. I might also use the snap and quantize buttons as a shift for the vinyl mode button to be able to set the keylock for each deck individually regardless what deck mode is enabled.

Since I am also looking at the smart mixing approach, I actually might drop the scratch mode entirely and reuse those for smart-low-swap and smart-high-swap buttons. I just do not see myself scratching. I will also use the gain knobs for smart-low and smart-high. So I still need to find one more knob for the frequency splitter.

For seek I will use the large endless rotary knob on my AK1, though this requires that I first select the focused deck. For this I am pondering what buttons to reuse. Maybe if I add that keylock A/B and C/D shift button (as a replacement for the DJTT snap/quant buttons), I can also use it to select the focused decks with the FX selection buttons of the DJTT TSI (though I have to look into how I can prevent this changing the lights .. hope that is possible).

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So what I would love for the DJTT TSI FX deck selection section. The LED’s always show the current FX selection in Traktor. The little buttons alone work as in the DJTT TSI.

Now if I press the snap button and one of the buttons with the scratch button, I will toggle the keylock for deck A or B (depending on what side of the VCI I press the scratch button on). When pressing the quant button and one of the scratch buttons I will toggle kelock for deck C and D.

If I press the snap button and one of the FX bank select buttons, then I can select the focused track from top the bottom (A, B, C, D).

Pressing the quant or shift button with the FX deck select buttons would work just like in your setup. So quant would handle the master temp and shift the preview mode.

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Great! Thanks for taking a look at the mapping and giving your thoughts. I’ve already started planning some changes to it myself. I like your thought of assigning Key Locks to a large button. I believe the VINYL button changes the MIDI CC and notes sent by the jog wheels through firmware, so that may be problematic. Maybe holding KEY LOCK and pressing SYNC, although there is some benefit in being able to access all four decks and changing their status with a single hand. I also like your idea of accessing the Load function for all four decks with the small buttons.

HOTCUE simply switches between the modifier value of 0, 1 , 2 then back to 0. I’m not sure how the modifiers are set up in the official mapping, but I would think there would be a quick way of implementing that change.

I don’t have the DJ TechTools overlay for my VCI100, so the current button placement actually makes more sense to the standard labels on the controller (PLAY assigned to Play button, PAUSE assigned to Cue/Pause, SYNC assigned to Sync). I imagine there are many users like you though, so if there are some requests, I can make an alternate that maps to the overlay better or that implements some of my features into the official mapping.

I hope I provided some different ways of thinking about how the VCI100 could be used.

PS
I too noticed the error in the guide depicting the TEMPO button as the KEY LOCK button. I’ll try to update that soon.

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Great job on looking at things in a fresh way! It’s work like this that inspires the community to keep pushing the envelope. Misa, just as an aside, what program did you use to do your mock-up layout? Illustrator I presume. And also, what did you use as the starting images? Is there an unflattened djtt illustrator file out there somewhere?

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Thanks. I used the PNG file that is downloaded with the official DJTT TSI file. I opened it up in Fireworks and brushed over all of the existing labels. Then, I put in my own labels using Illustrator. I can upload my AI or blacked out PNG file on the forum if you like.

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Actually I have been thinking about the hotcue 5-8 support. I think what I really would want is the ability to switch on a per deck basis. This way I could duplicate a track to the other deck and have access to all 8 hotcue buttons for a single track. Of course this requires even more buttons to handle the “shifting”, since I would need two switches to handle each side separately.

Right now I am still very much confused about how to best understand how to change the mappings in these complex TSI’s you and Ean have provided. I have tried to follow things a bit with a midi monitor. At least Ean’s TSI also doesnt have any comments, which makes things even harder. I will dive into this over the weekend.

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I’m about to leave town for the weekend, otherwise I’d help you out with the specifics of the TSI file. You may find out that you’re running low on modifiers but there is probably a workaround. FYI, on my TSI, the top left buttons are assigned to modifier 1, 2, and 3. The SHIFT button is assigned to modifier 4. Post the questions you run into over the weekend, and I’ll answer them when I get back on Sunday.

For the DJTT TSI, maybe you can use the little knob to activate JUGGLE mode and then use the JUGGLE button to toggle between 1234 -|- 1234 and 1234 -|- 5678. You could even have a number of different configurations you could scroll through with the JUGGLE button. Have fun digging into it this weekend. Let me know what come out with!

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ok .. i have already gotten some interesting results.
i now have the shift action to get the previews going. i chose a different order. from top to bottom: load, play/pause, seek forward, seek backward

i also turned the cross fader into a deck focus selector when shift is pressed. also if i press snap and shift i get a keylock on the active deck.

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hmm .. i am stuck with changing the juggle mode to support 5-8. it seems the “juggle on” and the “juggle knob” are both the same modifier 3. this is also why pressing the juggle on button, while the juggle knob is active, deactivates the juggle mode, which i consider to be a serious bug. know i am not sure how to proceed, it seems that the DJTT tsi already uses up all available 8 modifiers, so i cannot add another modifier. and this will probably not help anyways because then all the normal mappings would need a third modifier. hmm i so feel that it must be possible .. somehow.

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What if the knob changes mod3 from 0 to 1 to activate JUGGLE mode and make HotCues 1-4 accessible on both sides. Once mod3 is equal to 1, the JUGGLE button can toggle between mod3=1 and mod3=2. Mod3=2 assigns 1-4 on left and 5-8 on right. You can go back and forth until you turn the knob back to mod3=0 and return to the default transport controls. Or you can do away completely with the knob and just use the JUGGLE button to swith between mod3=0 to 1 to 2 back to 0. You’ll have to add in several lines of assignments for the HotCues in different states of mod3.

I don’t have my personal computer or VCI with me, but it seems workable. I’ll help out if you haven’t got it to work over the weekend.

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ok am getting closer to complete my concept:

  1. normal mode (sync, drop, pause, play on each side), juggle button LED not lid
  2. holding juggle button OR juggle knob switches to hotcue 1-4 on each side for each deck, the juggle button LED is lid
  3. holding juggle button AND juggle knob switches to hotcue 1-8 for the deck in focus, the juggle button LED is lid

For this purpose I only want to use a single modifier because in the end I also want to include a deck c/d modifier to toggle deck selection between A-C and B-D.
So I made a table with the different states and values I want to assign to the modifier.:

mod | bt. | bt. led | knob | b1    | b2    | b3    | b4    | b5    | b6    | b7    | b8    |
0   | 0   | 0       | 0    | dA s  | dA d  | dA p  | dA pl | dB s  | dB d  | dB p  | dB pl | 1) normal mode
1   | 0   | 1       | 1    | dA h1 | dA h2 | dA h3 | dA h4 | dB h1 | dB h2 | dB h3 | dB h4 | 2) knob on
2   | 1   | 1       | 0    | dA h1 | dA h2 | dA h3 | dA h4 | dB h1 | dB h2 | dB h3 | dB h4 | 2) button on
3   | 1   | 1       | 1    | dF h1 | dF h2 | dF h3 | dF h4 | dF h5 | dF h6 | dF h7 | dF h8 | 3) button+knob on

short explanation of the above:
mod = modifier value
bt. = juggle button
bt. led = juggle button led
knob = juggle knob
b1-8 = the 8 buttons at the bottom
dA = deck A
dB = deck B
dF = deck with focus
h1-8 = hotcue 1-8
s = sync
d = drop
p = pause
pl = play

Example: dA h1 means deck A hotcue 1

I got it working .. well almost.
For test purposes I assigned another button that selects the deck based on the modifier value. So for value 0 it selects deck A, value 1 deck B, value 2 deck C and value 3 deck D.

Here is a screenshot:

Note that the 6 hold commands set M3 to the follow values from top to bottom: 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 3

What works:

  1. normal mode works just fine
  2. holding either the button or knob works just fine

Issues:
3) holding both the button and knob doesn’t work

Specifically when I turn on the juggle knob and then hold the juggle button it works as expected. However when I release it doesn’t jump back to just juggle knob on (it stays at M3=4). Furthermore when I then press the juggle button after that again, it jumps back to normal mode (M3=0). Also when I disable the juggle knob and then enable the juggle knob again while already holding the juggle button it doesn’t set M3=3, rather it sets M3=2. When I release the juggle button then, it stays at M3=2 which is correct.

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Hmm .. now things are really getting wierd .. it seems like the order in how i define the midi mappings matters.

Also as you can see in the above mappings, i am doing M3=0 checks and setting to the same value as if M3 would not be set at all. It was my understanding that an unset modifier has the value 0, but I guess not.

Really fishy stuff. Maybe its time to give up on modifiers and move to bomes. Especially now that I discovered that there isn’t really much hope in trying to use tools to merge differences between tsi’s due to the crappy XML format Traktor Pro uses to store its preferences.

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lsmith: From my understanding “hold” won’t let a modifier go back to the previous state, but just sends it back to default (zero) when released. Can you set things up so that the juggle functions just work as a toggle instead? That way you turn the unit on (M3=0), then the first time you hit the juggle button or knob it goes into it’s variable state, and stays there, switching between your various values when you turn it on or off? IE setup a duplicate modifer, to enter the sequence from zero, then the various modifier commands to do what you are wanting. I’m sorry about not being more specific, but I haven’t looked at this tsi yet…

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Ok, got it to work using bome’s. juggle button + juggle knob = hotcue 1-8 on the focused deck. also fixed the bug where pressing the juggle button when the juggle knob is turned would take you out of juggle mode.

Here is the bome script and my current TSI with all its modifications.
For now I did not remove all the modifiers, but I might eventually do this.

I should also note that I keep finding commands, that do not seem to do anything in Ean’s TSI. I guess a resizeable preference window (I have hopes this will come in TP 1.2) will go along way to help find stuff like these kind of accidental mappings.

Edit: I have removed the attachments. Instead check out my blog posts. It contains links to the current versions of the code and a video showing off the implementation.

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i just watched your vid…i’m glad you were able to implement everything you were looking for through bomes

i too was thinking about trying bomes out, especially since the VCI-100 and the new APC40 have several MIDI note and cc values repeated…and it seems you have increased control of LEDs as well

how was your experience with bomes?

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Bomes so far as given me the flexibility to do what I want with fairly minimal fuss. The stuff in the video took me 3-4 hours to implement with zero prior knowledge of bome’s.

That being said, bome’s tries really hard to keep things simple. So some things require more so called “translators” than necessary. More over it forces you to write all the code using their forms which provide drop downs for the different type of control structures, expressions and assignments. As a programmer I wouldn’t mind just being able to call the underlying API directly. But I think that for non programmers this helps a lot in keeping things somewhat structured and maintainable.

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lsmith- It looks like I may have to purchase and learn the bome’s software too, I want to develop a hybrid TPro/Live set-up that it seems can’t be done without a translator. But, what is your honest opinion on the learning curve for someone with no scripting experience? I know you are a programmer, so think back before you knew what you know now:smiley: I’ve got a good head for logic and have the TPro modifier system in the bag, but how friendly is bome’s for the non-programmer?