I have several VSTs which implement “keyswitch articulations” as variations of a sampled instrument, and I have figured out one way to implement that on a guitar, but it seems like a hack, and I’d like to find a better way, so I’m asking here.
What I’ve done so far is to implement a transposer on a footswitch press, which momentarily moves the octave down where I can actually play the keyswitch note (which is frequently in the C0 or C1 octave), and this does work, but I couldn’t call it “fluid”, especially since there’s no guarantee that the keyswitch note I want is anywhere related to whatever key I’m playing in. 
I’m still pretty new to the MIDIverse, but if I’m reading things correctly I may be able to get a programmable device like the Airstep which is capable of sending an actual MIDI note from its footswitch. This would be lovely and simple, I think, but can anyone confirm that it does in fact work with MG3, as essentially a secondary MIDI note input? (I’m probably going to get me an Airstep regardless as it looks like a useful piece of kit in general, but confirmation is always good!)
My real question, here, is: is there any other way to implement such a note-driven keyswitch articulation, that I am missing? I’ve already got a couple of controllers that can send MIDI CC messages, but what the software wants for its keyswitch articulation is a note. Is there any way to use a CC message as a trigger to send a note instead?
Thanks for any illumination here!
Most DAW’s have logical editors where you could transform CC to Note messages. Most foot controllers can be configured to either send PC, CC or Note messages. What equipment do you have?
I’d like to be able to do it standalone/live if possible, but I admit I hadn’t thought to look at having the DAW do it.
For DAW I am running Waveform 11 (but just installed v13; haven’t looked at it yet), and for footswitches I have two units not really designed for full programmability: one is an old IK BlueBoard, which is preprogrammed to send fixed CC messages only (CC20-CC23 for the four footswitches and CC12 and CC13 for the two expression pedal inputs); the other is a Boss MS-3, which is surprisingly programmable for a “guitar loop switcher and multieffects” device, but cannot send out MIDI notes, and does not have any MIDI-in to be able to support responding to incoming events.
(I just last week learned about the XSonic Airstep, which intrigues me greatly because it seems to be wildly programmable, including notes and listening for incoming events to trigger. But I haven’t got one yet! )
I do have a desktop controller that can send notes (Korg NANOPad), and I may be missing something obvious with that, but when I figured I’d validate this idea of “send a keyswitch note from a non-guitar controller”, I couldn’t immediately get it to work.
I see, you prefer standalone mode. Is the IK Blue Board programmable through some software?
I can imagine that a MIDI machine could do the transformation of a CC to a note (I’ll experiment and let you know).
The XSonic Airstep for sure would work.
one more question: what instrument(s) are you using to change the articulation via key switches? In Kontakt for example you can run scripts for that.
Just to post back to this–my T&E time is really disjointed–thank you @Dutti67 for asking this question. It turns out that my Blueboard is programmable, to a point, and looking into that question has actually made that device usable for me again. That tickles me immensely!
But it is not programmable for note messages. As far as I can tell, there is a rudimentary “mode B” in which it will send preprogrammed notes (C3, D3, E3, and F3), but I have not found anything that suggests I can reprogram them, which makes it essentially useless for keyswitching, since most instruments are already listening in that range for their primary purpose.
And FTR, I took the plunge and ordered an Airstep, so I should shortly be able to try the keyswitching idea both by kicking a footswitch already on the Airstep (sends the note message natively), and also the idea of kicking a footswitch from another controller (e.g., MS-3), trapping that message as a receive trigger on the Airstep, and then sending out the note message in response. That seems like a bit of a hack, in a way, but if it works it would be a clever way to use a different controller to “send the note” with the Airstep being the proxy agent that makes it happen.
And if that works, I’ll certainly post about it back here!
