Korg Forums

myonatan4 · Joined: 20 Sep 2015 Posts: 5

Hey
I'm trying to use my sv1 as a MIDI controller. I know that the knobs are supposed to send CC
but I can't get it to work and on top of that I can't find anything about it in the manual.

Does anyone know how to configure this? BTW i've also tried installing the USB driver
And still there is no correspondence between my computer and knobs of sv1

Danke

alexbbrown · Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Posts: 16

> I know that the knobs are supposed to send CC

how do you know this?

monitoring midi events in Logic Pro shows nothing happening with knobs, but does show played notes.

myonatan4 · Joined: 20 Sep 2015 Posts: 5

So the only midi messages the sv1 sends are notes?? No nob control?

OpAmp · Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2015 9:43 pm Post subject:

Have a look in the manual, to the MIDI implementation chart...

It's indeed limited: note+velocity, Volume, Expression, Damper, Sostenuto, Soft, Effect On/Off. In brief, it looks like only the keyboard and connected pedals.
It recognizes a few extra messages as well.

Have fun.
_________________
microKORGXL, Kaossilator Pro, monotribe, SQ-1, volca fm, Kross 88 BK
Alesis SR18, Akai Miniak, Fender Strat, Line 6 Spider II 112, Zoom MS-50G

alexbbrown · Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Posts: 16

Note that the editor has no trouble reading and updating the console's dial settings, so there must be some mechanism, and that mechanism might be via midi.

More investigation required.

OpAmp · Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2015 8:20 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Indeed to be investigated...

I did not look into the editor for the SV-1, but typically on other Korg products, they have an extensive MIDI SysEx implementation (sometimes documented) to set parameters one by one and to retrieve/dump the program and all its settings as a whole in one large(r) SysEx message.
So in that case the editor requests first a dump of the whole program (which is more or less the read out of all the dials settings) and then updates parameter by parameter when you do edits in the editor.

The thing is that this does not solve the problem of using the SV-1 as a controller: the SysEx messages are Korg propriatary, no chance that other devices understand them. Secondly these SysEx are only received (when using e.g. the editor) but not transmitted when physically rotating a knob...

Bye
_________________
microKORGXL, Kaossilator Pro, monotribe, SQ-1, volca fm, Kross 88 BK
Alesis SR18, Akai Miniak, Fender Strat, Line 6 Spider II 112, Zoom MS-50G

alexbbrown · Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Posts: 16

Attaching iConnectMidi to an iPad, I find the following additional events:

Favourite keys send midi events
Sound type and subtype (Piano/ 1-6 etc) send midi events
Sound path on/off switches (amp, effect) send midi events

This seems to mean that as long as you don't turn the dials, you could drive one SV-1 from another SV-1 and get the same result (if they were configured identically)

myonatan4 · Joined: 20 Sep 2015 Posts: 5

Ok well thanks a lot alexbrown. I guess there is no way i can use it as a proper controller then.

This is my only problem with the SV1. KORG seem to deprive some important features from the users: like splitting the keyboard and controlling MIDI devices. I don't really get the interest behind this...

alexbbrown · Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Posts: 16

I have had no problem using it to control midi devices, the only thing that doesn't happen is that the knobs do not send midi events.

Even absent that, it's a perfectly fine instrument.

alexbbrown · Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Posts: 16

After connecting the editor, I find that the knobs send sysex events that are recordable in Logic or in MIDI Monitor, but cannot be used to control the device without some modification of the data packet.

For example, turning the DRIVE wheel to 90% sends: (pasted from logic)

3 3 1 25 SysEx 66 48 96 Korg
0 90 0 0 7 1 0 8 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

And by flipping the 1 to a zero and adjusting the level, I can control the drive wheel to set drive to 10, 50 100 etc:

3 3 1 25 SysEx 66 48 96 Korg
0 10 0 0 7 0 0 8 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 3 1 25 SysEx 66 48 96 Korg
0 50 0 0 7 0 0 8 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 3 1 25 SysEx 66 48 96 Korg
0 100 0 0 7 0 0 8 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

A sufficiently motivated person could write tools to map this to a more standard control, using core midi on the mac or ios. (I have no idea how things work on other platforms)

However, see next post - which explains how I got logic working.

(note I have no idea why I did't get any response from controls in the past)

alexbbrown · Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Posts: 16

Logic automation was able to map keyboard dials to (e.g.) synth parameters, for example: to map DRIVE control to Logic's Retro Synth Cutoff:

Add retro synth to project
open smart controls (or double click synth in main window)
select cutoff knob
click (i) info button
click learn
turn DRIVE knob up and down

this sort of works in the sense that it *does something* but there isn't a nice scaled linear response - it just sort of jumps around. Next let's tweak it.

click pencil button to open controller assignments and select expert view

Select the learned mapping you just created (probably the only one)
in the value section, set range to 0,100, and set it to unsigned, and mode should be scaled, with multiply set to 1.27.

Now the drive control on the SV-1 controls the logic software synth cutoff. neat, huh!

----

This works because Logic's automation is able to extract the variable part of sysex messages and understand what remains. For some knobs (EQ) you will need to examine the message format a little more carefully, since they send two bytes, not one, and I haven't looked at the format.

screenshot uploaded to http://imgur.com/fIXtCr4 if you need further guidance

TransEuropeExpress · Joined: 10 Jun 2013 Posts: 8 Location: Oslo