How to make the minibrute respond to velocity - tutorial

[Seb]

Hi everyone,

Cool trick I discovered recently to get your MiniBrute's filter to respond to the velocity. I don't know if this has already been discussed or not, but anyway.

What you need :
Minibrute
A host that can route midi from one track to another (Ableton Live 8 or 9 for example)
USB cable to send and receive MIDI on the Minibrute
MIDINoteToCC.vst plugin

The general idea is to use midinotetoCC to convert the velocity of the minibrute's keyboard into CC1, which is the CC for mod wheel.
Then to send what comes out of the midinotetoCC plugin back to the Minibrute, so that the velocity of the keyboard now controls the mod wheel value.
Since the mod wheel can be routed to filter frequency or LFO amount, there's quite a lot of things to explore ...


I'll make this tutorial for Ableton live. I guess it can be adapted to other hosts.

- From the MIDI preferences panel, activate the Minibrute as input and output midi device

- Load midinotestoCC on an empty MIDI track
put the parameters at the according values :

note to cc : off
Velocity to CC : 1 (velocity goes to the Mod Wheel CC)
High velocity : 127
Low velocity : 1
High VCC value : 127
Low VCC value : 1
VCC rest value : Off
In Channel : any
Out channel : same as input
Thru : off

- On this MIDI track, select : MiniBrute (unknown) as input
[In] monitoring
no output

- Create a second MIDI track
Input : your first track with midinotetocc plugin on it
input channel : midiNotesToCC
[In] monitoring
output : MiniBrute (unknown)

Now on the minibrute, use the Mod Wheel control parameter to send to Cutoff

If everything was done right, you should now have the velocity of your minibrute keyboard controlling the cutoff of the minibrute filter.
which is f***ng awesome!!!
Try and work with a very low latency setting, otherwise there will be some delay between the note and the filter control, so you will get wierd result at the beginning of each note.


Let me know if that works for you or if I forgot to describe one of the steps.

[Seb]

You thought that was all? Silly you, there's plenty more!

The Mod wheel can also control the LFO amount.
The LFO can control pitch, metalizer/hypersaw, filter and VCA.

Just switch the Mod Wheel assignation to LFO amount, and now your velocity will control LFO amount.

that's cool, but not awesome.

To make it awesome, use the MiniBrute connection plugin, and make sure the LFO key retrigger parameter is set to "on"
Therefore, the LFO will reset each time you play a new note.

Set your LFO sync to "free"
Waveform to "square wave"
rate to the minimum.

I think the LFO at minimum rate has a period of 10 seconds. With a square wave, that's 5 seconds at max value, and 5 seconds at min value.

So with the trick described above, you will now be able to have a constant control over pitch, cutoff, metalizer/hypersaw and VCA, with the velocity. It only works if you play notes that are shorter than five seconds, otherwise the LFO goes to the min value which doesn't sound great.


Seriously, velocity control over these four parameters, with independent (bipolar) amounts, that's a lot of possibilities.
And you don't have to limit to the square wave with slowest rate, anything else will do!


Maybe this has been covered before, in which case this entire tutorial was useless, but otherwise, this is a seriously fun thing to try out!!!

[Seb]

Here is a video that shows the result of this tutorial. This is some raw Minibrute recording, using this technique. The Mod Wheel destination is set to Cutoff, therefore the velocity controls the cutoff frequency.

Forgive the terrible playing and video quality!

[sihaz]

clever :-)

[Paf]

Hi,
Anybody knows of an ios app that could do this conversion?
Really missing velocity sensitivity but not fancying bringing my laptop on stage just for this..
P

[croteaup]

That is an awesome trick, unfortunately, the vst plugin doesn't seem to work. No CC sent. I use ableton live 9.5 on mac.
Anyone experiencing problem with the midinotetocc vst?
So frustrating, It seemed so close grrrr...

[Stakker]

Thanks for the tip! In case somebody is still reading this thread:

An easier way to do this in Ableton is by using the Expression Control and ControlChange8 Max for Live devices. Just drop them into your MiniBrute track. Click the Velocity Parameter Map button in Expression Control and then click Param1 (1Mod) in ControlChange8. That's it.

Lower "Max %" to control how much the velocity modifies the modwheel.

[Tjohei]

Could you use Midi Solutions Event Processor for this? The minibrute sends its midi info from the midi out to the Event Processor, which translates velocity to mod wheel, and sends it back to the minibrute via its midi in. Would this work?

[megamarkd]

Could you use Midi Solutions Event Processor for this? The minibrute sends its midi info from the midi out to the Event Processor, which translates velocity to mod wheel, and sends it back to the minibrute via its midi in. Would this work?

I've not played with CC7 on the Minibrute, but assuming it's enabled (it not listed in the MIDI chart provided with Brute Connection, though nor is CC1 and it most definitely receives that) you could have it do an event swap for velocity to channel volume/CC7.  I've tried using a similar work around with my Volca Beats by programming a varying set of values to it's instrument part levels to try to animate the percussion, but I'm guessing that is because of the Volca's levels working on a linear scale for it's part levels.
If you already have an Event Processor you can program the event swap and see how it goes, if not, try programming some CC7 events in a sequence along side some notes and listen to what happens.

[Stakker]

Hey, great idea that Event Processor, thanks! Would be a completely standalone solution, even uses MIDI for power. A bit expensive investment just to get velocity though... Anybody have one already and could test it?