Such a nifty trick! Midi over WIFI

[biro]

I understand that having a router in my pedalboard makes me look like some facebook addict. But what I'm trying to do is actually a completely different story. About one year ago I saw Muse performing in Milwaukee and I was really impressed by Bellamy's use of the Kaosspad. As far as I can understand, he Kaoss Pad is actually in his pedalboard and he controls it via midi with a touchpad embedded in his guitar.

Well, I happen to own an iPhone, so I've decided to try to use it as a control surface in order to achieve my ultimate goal: looking extremely cool.

I'm just messing around while controlling the whammy pedal simulator in guitar rig, but still I think it's a pretty good example of what one can create out of pure boredom (and of the endless capabilities of Guitar Rig, of course).

[CraigPlaysBass]

This is very cool.

[biro]

I'm trying to move on to associate one of the pads on the iphone to the start/stop loop machine button in guitar rig. more on that when I'm done with the next video.

[CraigPlaysBass]

That sounds great, a breakdown of what and how you are doing it would be sweet!

[charic]

Patent it quick mate

[biro]

ok, and here we go:

I'll try to explain everything I've done as thoroughly as I can.


First of all, I'm only covering the PC side. I know for sure that you can do that on a mac even more easily, but, as I don't have one here, I'm not able to provide any explanation. What I know about it is that OSX should have a native utility to handle midi over wifi messages, but, hey, that's all I know, and it's definitely not much.


[b][/b]what you need:[b][/b]

a musical instrument/microphone/et cetera;
a laptop with an audio interface/integrated sound card;
an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch;
an iOS application called iXY[url="http://www.cmsoftwaredesigns.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=59"](link)[/url];
[url="http://nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html"]A free virtual midi driver like LoopBE1[/url]
a server application known as DSWiFiMIDI - download it from [url="http://code.google.com/p/dsmi/downloads/list"]here[/url];

then:

1) install loopBE1 -> it's also free;
2) unpack DSWifiMIDI in a folder you like (I created a folder within dropbox since I'm always scared of accidentally deleting things);
3) run LoopBE1 and DSWifiMIDI;
4) within the DSWifiMIDI window, choose LoopBE as the default midi output: this will eventually allow to rewire the incoming midi signal from your iPhone to your favourite DAW. Like this:

[url="http://postimage.org/image/ovarnj7o/"]http://postimage.org/image/ovarnj7o/[/url]


5) open your DAW and be sure to add and activate LoopBE1 as a midi input.


[b]And what now?[/b]

Well, whilst the procedure might be slightly different for other DAWs, the procedure in reaper shows some general principles which could come handy to refer to even while working with a difference sequencer.

First of all, open reaper and create two tracks.
Open a guitar rig instance as an insert on the first track; feel free to arm the track and switch the monitoring button on.
On the second track, right click on the "arm recordin button" and select "input: MIDI" and in the dropdown/dropout menu coming out select "all midi inputs".
Once you've done that you have to create a send from track 2 to track 1. Why? Because this way you will manage to send a midi signal to guitar rig while simultaneously being able to feed it an audio input.

so, holding down ctrl, click on the send/receive area of track n. 2 and drag and drop a send on the same area on track 1. This should come out:

[url="http://postimage.org/image/1j6humvk4/"]http://postimage.org/image/1j6humvk4/[/url]

basically, let it send every midi signal, and prevent it from sending audio - although it won't happen anyways.

Now, arm track 2 as well and press the monitoring button. As far as the DAW configuration goes, your job is done.

You only have to configure guitar rig and you are good to go. click again on guitar rig until the window gets in the foreground, open a preset you want to be able to control, click on the "options" button to open the correspondent pane. click on "controller" and select "add a controller". associate the controller with the device you want to controll (e.g. whammy pedal, delay feedback, amount of distortion...), then press learn.

all you have to do now is open iXY on your phone and start moving your finger across the screen in the desired direction. remember you can control (as I am given understand) 4 different parameters on two pads with a split screen. of course, you can also associate more controllers to the same movement on the X or Y axis.
as you move your fingers on the iPhone you should start seeing a movement on the controller

[b]and you're done![/b]

hope this helps

Edited August 31, 2011 by biro