Well, just another trip to the store. Guitar Center gave me a 10% off coupon, which my wife threw away. Fortinately for me I could print out another from the Guitar Center site.
A while back, someone was talking about the Korg Nano-series of controllers, which peaked my curiousity. That individual was using a nanoKey controller, a 25-note keyboard. He was mentioning that it only gave him an effective range of 50 notes, which makes sense. The controller has an octave shift, either an octave UP or DOWN. Not a TOTAL shift, but a mere octave up or down. Not bad.
Looking at this, this small, affordable controller, this seemed an ideal method of providing convenient triggering to MyDMX. But, what I didn't like is that it didn't actally have MIDI ports, which ruled out such a controller for another application that involved triggering samples.
Still, researching, I saw that Korg had 2 other controllers: a nanoPAD and a nanoKONTROL. The nanoPAD was a controller oriented for percussionists. The nanoKONTROL got my interest, as it is a surface with sliders and knobs. Hmm, interesting. This seemed to be an ideal cost effective option for adding some serious control to MyDMX.
Today, my trip was to go to Guitar Center and get the nanoKONTROL for use with MyDMX and for ProTools. ProTools will come later.
Install was relatively easy. My only complaint is that it required a download, but this saves cost to the client. Once the USB driver was installed(you install the installer, then run the installer), the device is recognized and then it becomes a MIDI device. It was immediatley available to MyDMX as a MIDI device. I quickly assigned a few faders and knobs to DMX channels in EDIT mode, and it worked perfectly. I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with how I've done things, but I can only do things a better way later.
I quickly assigned fader 1 to my X on my first Chauvest Q-Spot 150's X channel, and knob 1 to the Y channel. I then duplicated this for the X and Y fine channels to fader and knob 2. I then duplicated this for my second Q-spot 150. Again, no problems. Seems to be working just fine. I also duplicated my snap Blackout scene and assigned it the STOP button, and again, worked fantastic. Relize at this point, I have the dongle plugged in with a terminator, but NO lights. I'm testing using the 3D Visualizer. I'm only testing the fact that "it works when I tweak things on the controller", not overall accuracy.
Now, I can in turn assign MORE knobs and faders to more channels, but right now for me it's not necessary. For others, a total of 9 faders and 9 knobs may not be sufficient. And if it isn't for me, I can pull out my JL Cooper CS 102 controller, which I am also fairly confident it will work as well, but I will need a MIDI interface plugged in for that to work. Or is it possible to have multiple of these controllers, as in multiple nanoKONTROL units active at once?
But, let's look at the positives: As I've said, very affordable. Easy to use, especially based on how MyDMX works, so that's perhaps the easiest time I've had integrating something. The unit is very compact, should be almost flush with a 12" laptop. Other reviews have said these units are durable. They feel solid, I'll say that, despite being so light. So, the concept is obviously to toss one or more into your laptop bag and get to a gig.
Obviously, the concept behind the nanoKONTROL is integration with a DAW at a very affordable price. Considering what I paid for my JL Cooper CS102 for my old ProTools rig, I almost want to kick myself.
But, there's negative:
The faders and konobs are small. That in and of itself is not negative. The small size just makes it difficult to get "super fine control". Chances are you can get something sufficient though.
USB Bus powered. This means you're going to have to burn a USB port, but you know that going in. This becomes an issue to those short on ports or needing lots of ports.
Now, Jingles has had success with other MIDI controllers, namely some Behringer control surface, to control channels in MyDMX, but not for triggering.
But what if you need triggering? Well, there's aways the computer keyboard itself. But you can get a small affordable music/piano-type trigger: say, a Korg nanoKEY. But that burns another USB port.
Now it starts to get strange. What do you need at an event? Things now have to be managed.
This is a MyDMX thread, so you NEED the MyDMX dongle. In my case, let's say I need a hard drive, but I can cheat and put my M-Audio Firewire 410 and a hard drive off the firewire port, so I'm good there. But I need a MIDI interface? Built into the Firewire 410, so I'm good there, but I also have my MIDISPORT 2X2, I'll leave that in the bag for now. I need a mouse, another USB port gone. I've got one left: Looks like the nanoKONTROL gets it. Should I be able to live without a mouse, I suppose if I needed to, I could plug in something into that USB port.
Are the Korg nanoSERIES ideal for everyone? Maybe not. The positive side is that these are affordable, easy to use devices that can definately fit a niche. And of course, thre are thousands of other possible things that could be used as well. Certainly, a small compact controller that plugs right into the USB port is much more convenient than a 61-note keyboard, especially if space is at a premium.
What other devices are you experimenting wiht or having success with?
personally, I'd like to see a bankable fader controller that has 16 faders and it banks to go up to 512 cahnnels. Maybe even a compact 32 fader unit, again scalable to 512 channels via banks/pages. Add a "master section" with a few tricks, like a programmable button for fog, a joy-type controller for movers(assignable), blackout(you still have to program a blackout scene) and is designed around MyDMX and has a series of buttons that are simply triggers for pulling up scenes quickly.
Oh well, I can dream. I gotta go prepare for some events anyways.
Original Post