Pablocrespo
Senior Member
I have made some of that with arduino and a local company that builds controllersWhat the world needs is a "Left Hand Section" that's just a little box, like what's on the left side of the A-88mk2 and the Doepfer LMK-4. Then you could use a Casio digital piano or whatever you please, or even strip out the key bed from your favorite existing controller or synth, build it into your desk, and not worry about what to do about mod wheels etc. You could call it "Leftie". Such a box could have:
- USB-MIDI as well as 5-pin MIDI in+out with merge so you can patch it in line with your keyboard if you want - or not. It might be convenient for some to be able to separate the MIDI inputs from the keyboard and the left hand section.
- Ordinary wheels, but THREE of 'em, like on the Yamaha SY-99. Sprung pitch bend plus two ordinary wheels for Mod + Expression. For many users this would be enough, and they wouldn't even need faders or knobs.
- An option for drum pads, but small ones similar to the A-88mk2, not a full MPC-style gigantic 16-pad square. Either two rows with 4 or 6 pads per row, or a single row of 12 or 16, with software assignable LED colors and data types, and the ability to have either the notes themselves or just the LEDs "latch" so if you're using it for keyswitching you can see which one was last pressed and is therefore active.
- An option for knobs and / or faders. Definitely 100mm faders, not those shorties, and since an 8-knob panel is about the same size as a 4-fader panel, maybe there would be two available spots to put the panels in so you could have 4 faders + 8 knobs, 8 faders + 0 knobs, or 0 faders + 16 knobs.
Heck, you could almost build this out of EuroRack bits at this point, and indeed that might be the shortest path. There are so many eager EuroRack makers these days that it would probably be easier to convince one of them to tool something up rather than trying to turn the battleship HMS Roland. A standard 3-rack-space EuroRack size is just about perfect - 100mm faders will fit, and Doepfer already make a pitch+mod wheel module (although it's CV only). There are a variety of shallow "skiff" style enclosures that would sit nicely in the available space, and there might be one that's the right size already. All that's really missing is a MIDI brain for the thing, and this might already exist - I've just lost track of the hailstorm of Euro stuff lately. But at NAMM I'll be scoping for such a thing, or the way to put one together with all the cables inside so you don't have front panel spaghetti over there.
I've been digging around in the Livid Instruments site looking at their Builder series, which would make something like this possible but... hassle. But their Builder Brain might be the CV>MIDI engine that we'd need.
I have 16 knobs (with buttons for banks)and 8 100mm faders, I also have a steinberg pad cmc but I only use it to trigger expression maps.
I have disassembled a yamaha digital piano and it plays great. I have it in a sliding board beneath the desk (still looking for something nice with 7cm height)
I haven’t found a solution for pitch bend yet!
I will have them plot the controller names once I decide the best config:
The company is
Design your MIDI controller, we manufacture it-YAELTEX Custom
Yaeltex is an Argentinean company in which we passionately dedicate ourselves to the manufacture of custom MIDI controllers for digital artists. Know Us!
yaeltex.com