FC300 with Mainstage 2 (and Logic 9)

Started by awediohead, October 29, 2009, 04:21:48 AM

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awediohead

Hiyas All!

I don't own a VG99 - though reading posts here certainly has me intrigued - but I do have a FC 300 which I bought recently in order to control Mainstage 2's Pedalboard (I use Tech21 Character series for amp sims), and probably (as I explore more) other effects plug-ins such as those in NI's Guitar Rig. Clearly and understandably most of the info here is specific to using the FC 300 with a VG or VB so I just thought I'd post to see if anyone here could give me some tips that'd help me get the most out of using it with Mainstage or Logic.

My biggest question - given I bought it two days ago - is how much I'm going to need to program the FC 300 and how much I can get away with simply using it in CC mode and having the various bits of software LEARN what I want the various pedals to trigger. The bonus of this is obviously that if the FC 300 stays the same and outputs the same, then I can switch between apps (Mainstage and Logic) without having to reconfigure anything and basically have one easy to remember layout. The downside is that I suspect that in not getting "underneath the hood" with the FC 300 I'm missing out on being able to do some cool things that would be useful both live and in the studio.

So far in CC mode I have CTL 1 and CTL 2 mapped to Play/Stop and Record respectively, with the pedals 1 to 5 mapped to change pedal states in Pedalboard and the expression pedals to Wah and Volume. I've yet to map pedals 6 to 10, but I'm thinking about using them to change patches, tap tempo - that kind of stuff. It works fine but I can see I'm going to run out of pedals pretty quick - so a further question is whether its possible to program the FC 300 so that the CTL 1 and 2 pedals change the CC bank 1 through 5? That way I could possibly assign a CC bank to control PedalBoard, another for "transport" and tap tempo and maybe even a third to control a different channel strip altogether - perhaps with vocal effects on it.

I'm kinda brainstorming the possibilities here - which are pretty exciting - but I suspect that with a little more understanding there might be a better approach that would give me more flexibility long term . . .  for eg I notice most folks here seem to use the SysEx mode and I'm wholly ignorant of what that does or even what it means really! Maybe that's just for using with the VG99?

Right - already too long for a first post - so I'll shut up and hope someone can point me in the right direction :)

cheers

PS I don't suppose there's a software editor for the FC 300 that someone's put together? I know there isn't an official one - which is a shame really. There's a decent one for my Edirol PCR keyboard and I can't imagine it would take very much for Roland to tweak that software to have it receive and dump to the FC 300.

Brent Flash

Welcome to the group awediohead!  :)

Here are a couple of things.

No, there is not an editor that we know of for the FC-300.
Yes, SYEX mode of for the VG-99. SYEX stands for SYSTEM EXCLUSIVE, MIDI messages.
You may want to explore the other modes. The FC can be switches from one mode to the other with a foot switch.

fokof

I use my FC300 with my VB99 but I bought it before the VB to use it with DP and Mach5II.

I use it in Patch mode and in CC mode with the CPU
Patch mode to switch patch (doh!) and to trig sample. In patch mode , I assign a Note On/Off to both Ctrl.
I needed this mostly to trig intros or in between song. My drummers Octopad was trigging all the other stuff.

And I switch to CC mode to control volumes/parameters/ etc...