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SoftStep 2 and two Eventide H9s

Get help from other SoftStep users.
irongiant14
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:11 pm

SoftStep 2 and two Eventide H9s

Postby irongiant14 » Fri May 25, 2018 9:23 am

Hi, I've been chipping away at my setup for a few months and am impressed with everything the SoftStep lets me do with the H9s but I need help fine tuning the ways that the SoftStep 2's keys adjust the H9 Control app's parameter knobs. I am in Standalone Mode, using MIDI Expander, with H9#1 connected by MIDI cable to H9#2.

I posted my recent setup on the Eventide stomp box forum, in a thread started by another user who shared a template I worked from to learn how to get going. The link is https://www.eventideaudio.com/community ... h9-control For the convenience of this Forum's users, I'll paste my words at the end of this post and attach the screenshots I took.

The issues I'm trying to understand today are:

1. To use Key 4 as an "expression pedal" for the H9s, I have used the Y Latch Source so I could theoretically find a sound I like and leave it there. But in practice, the knobs it controls jump from 0 to max instantly. From reading threads about similar topics*, I've tried adjusting the modline's Gain (0.5, 1.00, 2.00, 3.00) parameters, offsets of -32 and -64, Smooth (1, 10) and adjusting the key #4 thresholds in Advanced Editor settings but nothing I do seems to slow down the rate of turn. I wonder if I'm inputting the wrong values or the wrong combinations. Can anyone offer guidance, please?

2. In a SoftStep2 preset made to adjust the ten H9 algorithm parameters in H9 Control (KNB1), I am using Y Increment as the source. This results in a nice, slow, smooth virtual turning of the knobs in the GUI but does not recognize the range assigned in the H9's parameter map in the expression pedal patch, i.e. to set the floor and ceiling for the MIX parameter. I asked about this on the Eventide forum and was told, "For MIDI controlling expression pedal, MIDI 0 is the starts of all mapped knobs, and 127 is the ends of all mappings." Is there anything I might be missing on the SoftStep side that would make CC messages sent to "Set Expression Pedal Value" not be mapped to the set range? My hardware expression pedal stays in the map. I'm not sure what the difference is.

3. Sometimes using Y Increment as the source resets the variable to zero when I touch a key, which I don't like as much as when it increments / decrements from the current value. It seems like this happens only on the key's first touch. I can touch another key and go back to the first and it will not reset to zero- except when it sometimes does. Is there a way to stop this 'initialization' behavior and force the input to apply to the current value, through the modline?


* Threads that I found that address:

1 Key to activate and control Whammy Pedal
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2714&hilit=key+range&start=10

customization
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2390&hilit=pressure+live&start=10


FROM THE EVENTIDE FORUM

A long overdue thank you for sending me this extra help. I want to follow up and contribute what I learned setting up my SoftStep 2 and two H9s. Thanks to everyone on the boards for the help getting me going. Once I got it set up I guess I lost a few months just playing around. It's been really fun and productive. I made a screenshot of the LED management technique I found on the Keith MacMillan website, in case the Original Poster never got around to figuring it out. Thanks again for blazing the trail! You helped me so much, even though it took me what seemed like forever to figure this out. But in the interest of people getting down to it and making their music, here's how I've done it.



My build uses the Keith McMillan MIDI Expander with the SoftStep 2. One H9 [FLWR] is on MIDI Channel 1 and the other H9 is on Channel 2. They are connected by a MIDI cable so 1 can pass messages to 2.



PRESETS FOR THE H9s

Because SoftStep 2 has presets that can be scrolled through using the Navigation Key, I made a preset for each pedal controlling: H9 Preset incrementation/ decrementation, Input & Output Gain, performance key, expression pedal, an active toggle for that individual pedal and an active toggle for both H9s at once. I also made a dual use Tap Tempo Key that, if you press it down and hold for a few seconds, activates the tuner. They are mostly the same preset values for either pedal so I was able to just copy the preset and assign the Output Settings to Channel to 2 for the second H9's Preset.



PARAMETER CONTROLS

I also made a SoftStep 2 Preset Called KNB1 for the H9’s 1 through 10 “Set Parameter” CC numbers in “Assign MIDI CC messages to pedal functions” section of MIDI Settings in H9 Control. There are ten of these MIDI Controls and ten Keys on the Softstep so that works out pretty cleanly, although in performance they can be annoying because sometimes stepping on the Keys moves the value back to zero when I adjust the parameter. But it works to twist the knobs with my feet to find a sound in practice. As above, I made a clone of this SoftStep Preset and then edited the values for Channel 2 for the second H9's parameters.


I based the KNB1 layout on the TIMELINE Algorithm, so the Text Hints, by the keys, follow the GUI layout for TIMELINE. I had to do some experimentation to figure out which MIDI CC# to assign to which Key so the physical layout of the SoftStep Keys would match the way the knobs are placed in H9 Control. There are six knobs in the H9 control on top so it’s offset by one, which means that the top right knob is controlled by the bottom left key, which isn’t ideal. Now that I think of it, I should try putting FEEDBACK B on Key 5 all the way to the bottom right and sliding the others over to the left so the left most Key matches the left most bottom Knob. That’s not how it will be in the screenshots though.


In conclusion, I think I'm going to wind up making other presets that directly activate particular algorithms, as the OP did. But hopefully this post is useful to anyone lucky enough to have this particualr combo to play with.
Attachments
H9 SoftStep2 Pedal Preset.png
H9 SoftStep2 Pedal Parameter Preset.png
H9 Control MIDI Settings for SoftStep2 Pedal Parameter Preset.png
irongiant14
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:11 pm

Re: SoftStep 2 and two Eventide H9s

Postby irongiant14 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 7:58 pm

3. Sometimes using Y Increment as the source resets the variable to zero when I touch a key, which I don't like as much as when it increments / decrements from the current value. It seems like this happens only on the key's first touch. I can touch another key and go back to the first and it will not reset to zero- except when it sometimes does. Is there a way to stop this 'initialization' behavior and force the input to apply to the current value, through the modline?
Thanks to Evan, who answered the question above.
The first time you boot up the device, all the Y Inc sources will start at 0, so the first time you interact with the key, it will jump to 0 and then start counting up. The SS doesn't know what value the parameter it is controlling is set to, so it can't start counting from that value, or anything like that.

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