Automate a Midi drone in Synfire and Cubase 6.5

Hiya,
I'm sure you should be able to get this to work, I've had it working in ableton. Are you sure you want to use a midi drone though? You should also be able to automate controls of a vsti via synfire.
The only issue I had was with the access virus ti vst control plugin. This has 3 quick controls that are mapped to different things depending on the patch. I was unable to automate these ( turns out to be a feature of the vst) I had to directly automate the controls the quick knobs controlled.
Every other vst I have worked ok. The inbuilt ableton instruments aren't vsts so I had to use midi drones for these, but it was still possible.
If you search the forums I've posted a couple of vids that demonstrate this with live.

Not sure how it works in cubase but guess its similar to most daws... If you go to the section in the device in synfire where the controls are...then in the daw do the midi learn thing for a control, back in synfire either click the test button or move the slider. That should then set up the midi mapping between the two. You will have to repeat this for each control.

So basically its the same as with an external midi controller but you use the test or slider control in synfire instead of the external control.

So basically its the same as with an external midi controller but you use the test or slider control in synfire instead of the external control.

I'm not sure this will work ... actually kind of doubt it.

This is not the same as 'midi learn.' Cubase requires that you select a midi device/ controller for Quick Control and then learn controls 1-8 from that device. Then when you go to a track you can assign Quck Control 1 to 8 to any automatable parameter that is seen by each track. The Quick Controls don't assign global parameters to the DAW, but unique ones to each track.

If this would work, you would have to send out your CC messages from Synfire on a virtual cable, then select this midi port and channel in cubase and assign to each quick control 1-8 one of the CC parameters you'd identified in Synfire.

I think you would have to have the whole arrangement on a private midi device for this to work ... as when you set up the Quick Control it will only permit a single midi channel for the device. The CC control parameters are tied to each instrument, correct?

I don't know whether this could work with drones.

It might work with the virtual midi routing to Cubase I told Jan about before.

BTW, when I want to discuss the arrangement I hate calling the arrangement page 'instruments:' they are phrase/ prototyping tracks with a defined instrument assigned. I think this nomenclature unneccisarily confuses understanding SF.

When I think about this a little more, I see a bigger problem. The Quick Control device requires a single midi channel, but each instrument in SF requires it's own midi channel.

So, you could only have one instrument hosted in Cubase that could use Quick Controls (one track in Cubase), no matter how you routed it.

This is about the way Quick Controls operates in Cubase, not about SF.

The more I hear about cubase, the more glad I chose ableton as my daw. Synfire generates midi cc values on the channel used by the device, whether its via virtual mdi cables, midi drones or vsti drones. I hope you are successful getting cubase to react to them.

Hi jan,
It's just a personal opinion based on the problems you have been experiencing. I'm not saying ableton is better than cubase, just I've had less problems working with synfire, soft synths, external hardware and ableton than you appear to experience. Ableton isn't perfect but there seem to be work arounds like using midi drones to talk to ableton native instruments. That seems to be the only issue I've had working with synfire ( touches wood).

So, you could only have one instrument hosted in Cubase that could use Quick Controls (one track in Cubase), no matter how you routed it.

When i use HALion4 multitimbral i can assign sounds on different midi channels with the quick control parameters (different) belonging to that sound 

I'm confused: so you have a work around and no problem?

When you use Halion multitimbral, each timbre is on a different midi channel and, if you set up multiple audio outputs, on a different audio output to the mixer. Quick Control doesn't care if the the track has midi or audio data.

Within Cubase you could set Quick Control to different parameters on any midi track inputting to Halion or on any of Halion's audio outputs. 8 Quick Control can control can control up to 8 different parameters in each track. For example, if you had 16 midi track input to Halion and 16 audio outputs from Halion, you could control up to 256 DIFFERENT parameters in with the 8 Quick Controls on a track by track basis. When I say different, I don't mean the same parameter on different tracks ... although you could do that. I mean entirely different.

However, to do this the Quick Control device itself can only be controlled by a midi hardware inputting on a single midi channel.

You seem to be wanting to use Synfire to control Quick Controls so that you can then use Quick Controls on each of the different Instruments/ Tracks in SF.

Since each instrument outputs midi on a different midi channel, this could only be done ... if possible ... from one Instrument/ Track.

You could possibly have a track setup with an assigned instrument but no phrases to control this. Unlike what you can do in Cubase with Quick Control to automate and then forget the Quick Control setting on a track by track basis, you would have to be changing from Synfire each parameter in each track set to Quick Control #1, for an example, at the same time.

To me it sounds inefficient, overly complicated, a headache and a mess.

But if you have found this work around, I would love to hear about it.