BR-800 as Control Surface

[BuleriaChk]

Hi, all,

Well, I'm back to considering the BR-800 yet once again; my primary use will be as a DAW interface to Ableton Live, specifically for live performance.  I'll just have to do my MIDI programming in Live or Sonar  (sigh).

I want to use one of the faders to control the A/B mix, and a second to control an effect, with the others controlling track volumes.  Is that possible using MIDI learn, or are the faders "welded" to the tracks?  Is there an Ableton Live template, or can we just go in and assign them ourselves (no big deal)?

Thanks,

Chuck

[Geir]

I can't say I've any expertise in this matter, but it would surprise me if that wasn't possible.

[BuleriaChk]

Hi,

I'm happy to report that I've tried it, and it works very well indeed.

In Ableton, I've assigned faders 1,2, and 3 to volumes for guitar, flamenco, and mideast accompaniment respectively, track 4 to reverb time, tracks 5/6 to reverb mix, track 7/8 to bass drum volume, and L/R to master.  The reverbs and bass drum are in effects/drum racks, so I've set up taptempo and masterFX as buttons to set focus on the effects (I have to use ctrl/alt/l to get hide the device view, but I can try to make that a one-button function in the future....

So that more than make up for the lack of midi in/out on the device.  In fact, I also understand that the VS-20 can be used as a control interface for live, so I may even get one of those as a backup.... (I just wish the VS-20 had knobs for device control - it would have been SO easy.  Maybe next time....)

[BuleriaChk]

I've been checking out the Roland V-Studio 20 as an all-in-one audio interface/controller for Ableton Live (my go-to live performance DAW), and it works great; much better than the BR-800 (although the BR-800 now plays a role as backup for accompaniment tracks).  I use it with a netbook, and for Live, the combination of keyboard and midi via the MIDI learn functions makes it a very flexible and useful controller for live performance.

That said, Guitar Tracks Pro (the DAW that comes with it) is pretty limited as is, although it probably can be tweaked, and the effects for the VS-20 are underwhelming (they say they are derived from the GT-10 like th BR-800, but I don't believe it - the BR-800 effects are MUCH better). At least from my tweaking....

But I find that Live has pretty good effects for acoustic guitar already for my applications.