MIDI on Effects Processors

[Rumbler101]

Hi,

Does anyone ever use the MIDI features on effects processors or do you just initialize a patch/effect setting and just run your equipment through the processors?

Would be interesting if you could share some techniques if you do do this... never done it myself as I've always just turned it on and ran stuff through the effects!

Thanks.

[Ashe37]

Well, MIDI just means you can control it, change settings and or patches remotely.

[Rumbler101]

Well, MIDI just means you can control it, change settings and or patches remotely.

Yeah for sure. But on the whole, do people generally use the MIDI settings on an effects unit very often? I’m not sure.

[meatballfulton]

25 years ago when still using tape and most instruments had no onboard effects, I owned a couple of hardware effects processors and I did use MIDI to select effects patches for different songs. That way I could recall all the sounds I needed by sending program changes at the top of the sequence.

As more effects moved into the instruments themselves (and later into hard disk recorders and DAWs) I stopped using hardware effect units altogether.

[Ashe37]

sometimes MIDI was the best way to acess the parameters, too. I still have an Alesis Wedge around here in a box somewhere, but it has a much better interface than the Midiverb is it based on.

[madtheory]

Would be interesting if you could share some techniques if you do do this... never done it myself as I've always just turned it on and ran stuff through the effects!

Depends on what units you have, some were more flexible than others.

I keep an Alesis Quadraverb in the rack here because I like the resonator. You can play the 4 notes from a MIDI keyboard. There's a nice grainy monophonic sampler as well, but I rarely use it. I might just go buy the Lexicon plugin instead, that has a much better resonator.

I also have a Yamaha SPX90II, you can play the pitch shifter or use it as a pitch shifting sampler. It's pretty clean sounding though, and it's monophonic. So I mainly use that box for pitch shifted delay, again because I like its particular quality of sound.

When I had a Lexicon LXP15II I had 4 pots in a rack underneath, connected to the CV inputs. You could assign parameters and tweak stuff in real time, optionally record the tweaks as MIDI. It was very good sounding. But something like SoundToys EchoBoy is much much better.

These days I use 2 Korg KAOSS pads a lot. In real time, no MIDI just record several runs all back into the DAW and edit later. I usually have the KP1 as the sampler and the KP2 doing some random effect- it's fun not knowing what preset is selected! It's great for ear candy.

[Rumbler101]

Cool, thanks guys.