Re: affordable portable usb foot-controller with pedal

[Sjaak Overgaauw <tcplugin@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Rainer Straschill
<moinsound@googlemail.com> wrote:
> ...which is basically a problem all of us are facing to some degree,
> not only with regard to MIDI controllers, especially if your music
> contains a large portion of improvised material:

It also depends on the type of instrument you are using and the genre
or style you play. As a keyboardist, I often can't see the fc pedals
well while a guitarist has a clear view towards the floor. In addition
to that, if you take your time to build up your piece, you have much
more time to push the right button, switch banks etc In that case,
even guitar players could use additional hand controllers to change
effect settings for example.

I still don't know what works the best for me, so I have been testing
with 3 controllers at the y2kloopfest ;-) 2 hand controllers and 1
foot controller. Several functions were setup multiple times on
different devices, like record. To give you an example, all my
pre-loopers like Augustus and Crossfade Loopsynth were setup on the
Korg and on the Novation on template 1. Template 2 of the Novation
contained all the looper functions like half speed, reverse, pan,
volume, feedback (per track) plus PC's for Mainstage + input gain.
Anyway, it appeared that I have used the Novation to control the
looper, the Korg to control the Mainstage pre-loopers and I have used
the Gordius to initialize all devices to an preset stage. I prefer to
have a dedicated controller for a group of functions and if possible,
I try to avoid to switch banks/templates or "group of functions"
because that easily leads to mistakes, at least with me. But banks
offer you multiple sets of functions which I definitely need so

> How to manage the tradeoff between a simple, small and easily
> controllable setup and the possible wish for a huge functionality?

So, this wasn't certainly my last setup change. The next major change
will be the way I have setup Mainstage. My pre-loopers will be moved
from the concert level to the patch level and I will use multiple
layers on different midi channels to trigger different sounds in stead
of using program changes to switch to a different (single sound)
patch. Only the loopers will stay at the concert level, that's ok.
This will further simplify the setup of the pre-looper controllers, I
won't need as many which is good. To be continued :)
--
Sjaak Overgaauw
http://premonitionfactory.com/
http://livelooping.be/
http://euroloopfest.com/