Staring at the droids

Morningstar Gear Planning Strategies
1

Since finalizing my pedalboard setup over the past month, I have spent a lot of time (literally) staring at the floor trying to envision the best way to program the sucker.

On the board I have:

TC Polytune Mini 3>
Strymon Compadre>
Strymon Sunset>
H90>(via stereo insert)
HX Stomp>
Strymon Flint

All being controlled directly by MC8 except the H90 with received MIDI thru from the HX Stomp. I may decide to connect the MIDI out of the H90 back in to the MC8, but I don’t know that this will work the way I would want it since the only option is transmit, as thru would send the MIDI Clock back into the system causing freakout.

I’ll be adding a Pedalnetics 3 x front aux switch which will serve as bank/page navigation:

  • Left switch: Bank down
  • Right switch: Bank up
  • Middle switch: Toggle page
  • Middle switch (double tap): Go to last bank/page

Probably will add some additional options for bank switchs such as go to first bank/last bank via double tap or…something tbd.

So here is how I am thinking it will all lay out:

  • Home page to bring up a stock set of presets on start and navigate to setlist banks
  • Setlist presets will load starting presets for song and then jump to a “Perform” page
  • Perform page will have stock presets such as: Intro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Solo, Tap
  • Performance presets will trigger snapshots/footswitches on HX Stomp which can then be programmed to generate additional MIDI messages (as needed) for the H90
  • Page 2 of the Perform bank can have additional features such as Expression message select via scroll, maybe direct control for H90 Hot Switches, or maybe some on-the-fly control over the Flint via scroll messages for mix, reverb decay, trem intensity, tap subdivision, etc.

So - the way I envision it all working is that the HX Stomp really will generate any additional MIDI messages within a song preset to pass along to H90 and those will be assigned via Command Center to the 3 snapshots plus 3 foot switches giving me 6 change options within a song.

The way I am manage boost volume right now is by using the MC* wave engines to ramp up/down the volume of the H90 Program out setting, which I have assigned to the Program Hotknob. Assigning to the Program Hotknob allows me to set fixed start/stop positions within H90 that can then be ramped via a 0 to 127 CC change. Controlling the Program output via direct CC control does not provide that kind of precise db setting I am looking for; either way - this allows me to ramp the volume over the course of one measure before/after the solo.

Anyway - we’ll see how well this plan works once I get to programming but, I do like the idea of having a fixed “Perform” page that is sending out known commands for all songs so that, the page I am spending most of my time on works the same all the time.

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Hi,
if you don’t mind I’ll give my two cents.
On a surface level your plan is pretty neat. A clean and logical approach. But you have to consider that you’ll have to press a lot of buttons between songs, which might cause problems especially live.
I’ve set up my gt core in a similar way, but I use the gt’s foot switches to scroll through banks/setlist. The gt will send midi to the mc to boot the performance page and to allign the toggles of the mc’s presets with the currently active blocks. That way I know which fx are active atm and I can disengage them or engage additional fx if needed.
The reasoning behind this is that I can switch between songs on the fly with one button, this is especially important if you want to have short transitions between songs

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So this is an interesting point/idea where, in my case, the HX Stomp would be doing all of the song “initializing” including the bank/page/toggle states on the MC8.

I will have to do some re-thinking of the MIDI routing. I am just realizing I can turn on the “Ignore MIDI Clock” setting on the MC8 to avoid the problems I was having previously and just connect the MIDI Out/Thru of the H90 to the MC8.

I am still partial to finding a song on a page list of the MC8 rather than scrolling. In an ideal world then next song would always just be the actual next song on the setlist but, I have never joined that band and calling audibles seems to be pretty common.

But I am at generally going to be two clicks away from any song in this setup. Returning to the song list (and I can even setup a switch option to return to page 2 of the song list rather than land on page 1 and navigate to page 2)>select song. The “Intro” switch is kind of a redundant as each song should load in the state it needs for the intro but - as a failsafe it seems nice to have.