Control Guitarix or any other software from Ardour

I cannot find an answer to that, though it seems obvious. Someone must have asked that before. Since I do not even know for what technology to search for (MIDI CC, OSC,…), I ask for the initial idea.
I would like to change the preset of Guitarix at certain points in the timeline of Ardour. (The reason is that I do not want to buy a hardware pedal that would allow me to do that manually right now - maybe I’ll need it later - even if, this automation seems usefull anyway)

(Guitarix is connected using an insert at an audio track.)

Guitarix accepts midi CC messages for preset change as noted here

I found a lot about MIDI CC and Automation by searching this forum and the internet, but I could not map the results to what I want to do.

Can someone help me, please?

1 Like

Had some time and tried it:

MIDI track in Ardour with a controller automation. Controller 4 is used: “foot controller”.
Set the controller to “Play” and insert automation objects.

Connect the channels output to the Guitarix MIDI in of course.

Use the MIDI learn function in Guitarix to choose the controller number (Options-> Live MIDI switch). (While the automation objects in Ardour are playing)

Play with the MIDI automation values. I found out 0 mutes and 82 changes to the next preset so far.

Edit: It seems the option “Include MIDI in presets” in Guitarix is mandatory. I set it before and when I leave it out it does not work. (MIDI learn has to be done in the presets menu afterwards (“Next preset MIDI switch”)

Made it.
I found out that Guitarix uses

midi program change messages

for

preset select

as noted here.

Searching for the quoted terms together with Ardour lead to:

Typically Program Change and Bank Select messages are collectively referred to by the singular term Patch Change.

from the Ardour manual

Patch change has a nice manual page that I was able to follow:
Patch Change - The Ardour Manual

Bank and program corresponds to the banks and presets in Guitarix.
(Banks start at 1, presets start at 0 in Guitarix GUI - so take this into account when setting the values)
(Bank has MSB and LSB. MSB is most likely always zero)

Hope this helps people who also have no idea which technology should be used for controlling Guitarix from Ardour.

3 Likes

Outstanding! Great job working through the problem and sharing. Besides the dilemma at hand, this post also stands as a great example for the problem solving process in general. Kudos!

This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.