welcome back to another video tutorial
for the pirate midi Bridge controllers
today we're going to be talking all
about how to use expression pedals with
your Bridge controller I know we've
already covered the flexi Port mode of
expression in but let's really dig into
it and see how you can use it on your
Setting the Flexiport Mode
rig
let's first set our flexi Port mode to
expression pedal in we highly recommend
that you set your flexi Port mode before
plugging anything into it
menu
global
flexi ports we're going to use flexi
Port 1 and we're going to change that to
expression
now I'll take my expression pedal and
plug it into Flex support one
Expression UI
now when I exit the menu you'll see we
have our expression bar graph on the
flexi Port one in the extended UI
see the graph goes up and down as I move
the pedal up and down now say this graph
Calibrating the Pedal
doesn't go all the way to the top like
so or all the way to the bottom
something like that you can calibrate
your expression pedal here's how you do
that go into the menu go to Global
expression pedals I'm going to the
expression pedal 1A because we're on
expression on flexi Port 1 and we'll go
to calibrate and hold expression pedal
at Max position
and then it does a countdown and it
tells me to hold it at the minimum
position and it does another countdown
and now it says calibrated 0.00 to 99.68
so I get pretty much the full range of
possibility out of this pedal
if your graph wasn't displaying properly
before it should be now minimum to
maximum on the screen like so now let's
Adding Expression Messages
add some messages so that we can
actually do something with this
expression pedal it's two different
things you can use you can use Bank
messages or you can use Global messages
Bank messages are a set of 16 messages
that you can set for every expression
pedal per bank so that's 16 messages
completely different completely
different order completely different
function every time you change the bank
then there's Global expression messages
they will be sent regardless of what
bank you're on so that's a set of 16
messages that will be sent by that
expression pedal anytime you move it
regardless of the bank you could have
one expression pedal set to use only
Bank messages and another expression
pedal set to only use Global messages or
you can mix and match depending on how
creative you want to be or how useful
that might be to you at the time here's
where you find your expression messages
we enter our menu we go to expression
pedals 1A and there's our bank messages
now let's add a message to this stack
we'll press switch 4 to add the message
now we're given a whole bunch of default
settings here by default you'll be on
control change but you can also change
that to other types as well but we'll
stick with control change for now we're
going to choose leave it on channel one
we'll choose
CC number seven which is generally
volume and then we can go across to the
Message Outputs
midi outputs and we only
say want to send this out to the din 5
midi output so we'll turn all the others
off and now it's only going to go to our
din 5 output whatever that's connected
to maybe to our midi interface and to a
software synthesizer which accepts CC
number 11 as an expression control we'll
go over to the next page and then you'll
Min/Max Limits
have a minimum and maximum limit so you
can set the maximum midi value that it
will send or the minimum midi value that
it will send so let's say we want to
bump that up to seven and we want to
bring the max down to 120 so that will
then for the full range only limit it to
those values and then the sweep shows
Expression Sweep/Curve
the the actual curve that the expression
pad will take the default is linear that
means that it's a straight line of the
midi value versus the position of the
pedal you can choose
logarithmic which has a slower
acceleration at the low end of the pedal
or reverse logarithmic which slows down
the acceleration as you reach the top
end of the pedal so that
so that's full and because you can set
this on each individual message you can
have one message that's linear being
sent at the exact same time as another
message which is being sent with a
different minimum maximum range with a
different sweep type you can have 16 of
those all going at once if you so desire
and then if you go over again it just
takes you back to the start of those
settings so let's save that and we will
now have
going out of our din five we will have
midi cc7 be sent with the logarithmic I
think we chose logarithmic
sweep and it will have a minimum value
of 7 and a maximum value of 120 at the
bottom and the top of the sweep
Smart Messages
now related to expression messages are
some of our smart messages which you
will control with switches so I'll just
show you those
if we go into our switches switch one
we'll add a message to the Press
event We'll add a message
go to smart messages
and then we have our increment
expression message
our decrement expression message and our
go-to expression message now what these
do is they control that bank message
stack of expression messages and Global
message stack of expression messages and
they will make it so instead of sending
all all of them at once you'll actually
only send one at a time so for example
this go to expression message
you can choose the expression pedal that
you want to Target and then you choose
the step or the message in that stack
that you want to go to so any of these
switches can be programmed to make the
expression pedal send out a particular
midi message at any given time and
that's pretty much what the increment
and decrement expression messages do as
well they'll start at the top and
they'll just go to the next message in
the stack because those smart messages
can Target both the bank messages and
the global messages for the expression
pedal that means that you can have
multiple interactions going on at once
and you can get some really creative
sound morphing going on top of the
Inverse Sweep Types
logarithmic and reverse logarithmic
sweeps you also have inverse linear
inverse logarithmic and inverse reverse
logarithmic sweeps and that means that
the value sent will actually be inverted
so we'll start from the maximum and go
to the minimum so you can have two cross
fading
effects if you set it up like that as
far as expression messages go that's all
there is so get your thinking caps on
figure out how you can creatively use
that in your situation and I'll see you
next time
