8.3 Using a Generic MIDI control surface

All the references in this section point to an external site, obviously we need to create documents and have them point internally to fix this issue.

Ardour can utilize generic MIDI control surfaces to control various aspects of its GUI.

8.3.1 Connecting the MIDI control surface

In Ardour, all gain faders, panners, mute/solo/rec-enable buttons and all plugin parameters can be controlled by MIDI Continuous Controller (CC) (which is called MIDI Parameter Control in Ardour). Ardour can also send MIDI "feedback" whenever gain, pan or plugin state changes, so that external motorized control surfaces can reflect parameter changes caused by automation etc. In addition, MMC commands are supported. Generic MIDI control surfaces do not use the MCU protocol.

You need to have a MIDI port set up to deal with MMC and/or MIDI Parameter control as descibed in Section 2.2, “MIDI Configuration”. Your control surface (e.g. a Behringer BCF2000) has to be connected to the correct Ardour MIDI port.

8.3.2 Setting up the MIDI control surface

To use a generic MIDI control surface in Ardour, choose the "Options" menu, then choose the "Control Surfaces" submenu, then select "Generic Midi".

Ardour can send feedback to the control surface, allowing it to reflect changes caused by automation or by mouse interaction. You can enable feedback by choosing the "Options" menu, the "Control Surfaces" submenu, the "Controls" submenu, then selecting "Feedback".

To control e.g. a gain fader, use Ctrl+Button2 on the fader. The message "operate controller now" should appear. Move the desired fader or knob on your control surface. The fader on the screen should start to move as you move the slider on your control surface. If you activated MIDI feedback and your control surface supports it, it should reflect changes you do with the mouse.

You can configure MIDI control for virtually all faders, plugin parameters and switches by using Ctrl+Button2 on it, then moving the desired control on the control surface a bit.

The assignments of the MIDI controls are saved with the Ardour project. For each new project, you have to assign every control manually. To avoud this, you can use a template, see Section 2.3.5, “Session Templates”.

8.3.3 MIDI commands used to control Ardour

Controls in Ardour are controlled with Change Control (CC) MIDI commands. Those commands can be sent on arbitrary MIDI channels. Faders and other continously moved controls are controlled with CC commands with a range of 0-127. Buttons (e.g. Mute buttons) are also controlled with CC commands, where a value of 0-63 switches the button off and a value of 64-127 switches the button on.

Ardour also receives and sends some MMC commands, such as play, stop, locate, punch in and punch out. Make sure you configured Ardour to listen for MMC commands as descibed in Section 2.2, “MIDI Configuration”.