I’m using the MC8 and now the MC6 Pro with Gig Performer | Cross platform VST/VST3/AU Audio Plugin Host.
If you’re not familiar with GigPerformer (GP) it’s a VST host that I stumbled onto several years ago to use as an alternative to DAWs or other standalone apps for live playing.
I’m very impressed with what you’ve done, and your users have done, in using the MC series and the ML loopers to control physical hardware. Really awesome stuff. I wish it all existed 20 years ago.
For better or worse I moved away from hardware about 20 years ago. My guitar pedalboards moved into software, my keyboards no longer make their own sounds, and my acoustic drumset became v-drums.
GigPerformer somewhat recently added the ability for users (or developers) to create “extensions” to integrate control surfaces (or other software or apps, etc.) directly into the program. Similar in principle to how you might see control surfaces integrated into DAWs like Ableton Live, Bitwig, etc.
My MC8 extension is up on GitHub at Morningstar MC8 GIgPerformer extension (github.com). It’s kind of hard to explain what it does without the context of what GigPerformer itself does. But if you look at that github repository there’s a pdf (and powerpoint) explanation (which is still work in process).
I haven’t yet “advertised” this extension here or on the GigPerformer forums because real life has been rather busy the past couple years. But with the MC6 Pro in my hands since yesterday afternoon my personal task for the weekend is updating the code to handle the MC8, MC6 Pro, and MC6 equally. But the code there is fully functional for the MC8. I really just need to put up a demo “Gigfile” and instructions for installing the extension so people can see it in action in 10 minutes or less.
As for the color aspect, I’ve written a similar GigPerformer extension for the Novation SL MK3 keyboards, which have color displays, RGB buttons, etc. In my opinion having color on a control surface makes it much more usable, not just more attractive. Especially when you’re controlling complex things, like an entire set for a live gig. The last thing you want to spend your focus on is your controller(s), and the ability to set up colors that are meaningful to you to signal what exactly a button or knob is controlling and what state it’s in with just a glance is huge.
e.g., if my MC6 Pro is in a mode where it’s set up for Song Select I want to know that as I approach it. Personally, I color code “Song Select” mode as orange on my controllers, Rackspace select as purple, and I may code things like “lead sound” as red, “clean sound” as blue, etc. Everyone will have their own preferences for that kind of thing, as I’m sure you know. I’d like to accommodate that in the MC extension (as I did in the SL MK3 extension) by allowing the user to configure it in their own “rackspaces” in GP parlance.
To translate that - if the user places a red button on their GigPerformer screen it’ll come up as a red button on their MC6 Pro. If they want the label text as yellow they make it yellow on the GP screen and it comes up yellow on the MC6 Pro. If it’s in Song Select mode they can tell, without having to read all the song titles. That’s the idea. Without the user having to make changes in the MC editor.
The nice thing about the SysEx interface is we can do all this through a single MC bank, and we never save changes to that bank. The extension just controls the displays, the MC just tells the extension which buttons were pressed.