Ardour & nanoKontrol

Hello!

I’m trying to use Korg NanoKONTROL2 with ardour, but it has problems with buttons like record, play, etc…

The buttons on controller can be set to toggle or momentary mode.

  • In toggle mode, first press of button sends note on, second press sends note off.
  • In momentary mode, pressing button sends note on, releasing sends note off…

And my problem with ardour is: note off also triggers function. So in either mode, ardour is more or less usable with controller. For example (momentary mode):

Pressing record sets recording on (like Shift + R). Pressing down play starts playing with recording … but after releasing button (with holding button I cannot play instrument :slight_smile: ) moves playhead to start, disables recording and starting playing again. So, result is about 100msec recorded sound…

With toggle mode it is better for first time - when I use stop button, controller doesn’t know about it, so then i need also press record to push it down, then play to push it down (ardour starts playing) then stop. Then controller is useless - using keyboard is much more comfortable than this…

BUT! Lot of people using nanokontrols with success. So it looks I am doing something wrong. What is it? Thanks much for your replies, I hope it is clear what my problem is (my english is very bad, so I don’t know, if you will understand). With google, I haven’t found anything about this :frowning:

Thanks!

You’ve said aboslutely nothing about how you’re trying to use the Nanokontrol 2 with Ardour? What did you do?

OK,
I am sorry - I’ve just used pre-defined preset nanokontrol2 (without master) in control surfaces.

the nanokontrol2 midi-map has a note:

“Set the main “RECORD”, “loop” and the track “Solo” “Mute” and “Record” button to toggle”
see https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/midi_maps/Korg_nanoKONTROL2.map

I assume that means to leave other controls at momentary and only change the ones that are mentioned to toggle.

Hi x42!
As I’ve written in my first post, these buttons are really set to toggle. The track buttons (solo, mute, record) it works really great. But setting global record to toggle and play to momentary causes recording only few hudreds miliseconds of record (when I’m holding play button), then it jumps to beginning and starts playing again without recording anything, because Ardour reacts to note-on (when pressed) and also note-off (when released).

And, also, when recording stops, record button is still shining, so two press are required to set recording again.

After work, I’ll try to look at map file to remap buttons to whole exact midi message sent by controler (with velocity 127)…

I ran into the same problems when using the NanoControl2 map, so I edited myself. Indeed, the global Rec button wouldn’t stick and some other things I can’t remember. I will upload the map for you so you can download it.

As a matter of fact, I have made a map for the Yamaha KX controller keyboard series too. I would like to contribute both files for inclusion of the next version of Ardour, but how do I do that? By the way, both maps are zipped, and downloadable at http://www.aberkrom.nl/tijdelijke_ophaaldienst/ardourcontrollermaps.zip

Thanks Gerard, I’ve added the Yamaha_KX25.map (Ardour 4.4-257-gff1f4e9). As for the NanoKontrol I’ve opened a ticket in the bug-tracker to discuss if we should rather update existing midi-maps or add another variant: http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=6684

To contribute to Ardour, please see #28 at http://ardour.org/styleguide.html
Issue trackers (github or mantis) are a lot more useful compared to forums for keeping track of things and one can attach files there as well.

PS. Would you mind adding your email address to the midi-maps after your name? For cases like the nanokontrol it’ll be great to be able to contact the original author.

@x42, I added my e-mailaddress added to both files and uploaded the zip again at aforementioned webaddress!