Hello,

I currently use vArranger2 with an Edirol PCR800 MIDI Controller, a Novation Zero SL Mkii and a 17inch touch screen monitor. These work fine but the control surfaces don't have enough buttons, sliders, etc for vArranger.

I have been thinking about constructing a hardware control surface for use with vArranger and I have looked at various manufacturer's arranger layouts such as Yamaha's Tyros5, Korg's Pa4X and Roland's BK9 to get an idea of what should go where.

It appears that most have the arranger controls (start/stop/intro/variation/fills/endings) on the left lower section of the control surface.
The style select is generally to the left and above the arranger controls
Most have the voice group (piano, EP, Strings, brass etc) and part select/mute (upper 1,2,3 & lower) buttons on the right lower section of the control surface.
Most voice selection is via touch screen or buttons alongside the right side of the screen.
Some have the track faders in the front centre and some have them to the upper left.
Song players are generally to the upper left but on some they are front and centre.
The displays/screen are to the upper centre.



My questions are:

1. what are the most commonly accessed controls by you, and

2. if you had your choice, where on the control surface (left, centre or right / upper, middle or lower) would you put the following:

a. Arranger Controls
b. Style Group Select
c. Tempo controls
d. Voice Group Select
e. Part Voice Select (including part mute)
f. Track faders
g. Song Player controls
h. Transpose/Octave controls
i. Chord sequencer controls
j. Other controls

Here is the layout of the Yamaha, Korg and Roland boards.

This is interesting, as I also want to build my own controller

On any future arranger ... I would love to see 16 multi function (drum) pads on a selfbuild comtroll surface... 9 sliders 8 knobs... And all arranger based controlls of the pa4x

Soundselection and style selection could be done trough the touchscreen... As long as there are registry and ots buttons..

Here is my current plan for the layout of the control surface to operate vArranger.

I have tried to place the most frequently accessed controls in the most convenient locations on the surface - but I would appreciate advice from other arranger users on how, where & why the layout could be improved.



The PC screen would be a 12.1" non-touch 800x600 unit which is located in the upper centre of the control surface.

Arranger control/conductor buttons would be immediately available above the left hand side of the keyboard. Green for intros, blue for variation, yellow for fills, black for break and red for endings.

Transport controls (Style Start/Stop, synchro, Fade In/Out, Chord Hold, Left Voice Hold etc) would be above the conductor. Tempo would be controlled by a rotary knob.

Sound presets (My Sounds in vArranger) would be immediately available above the right hand side of the keyboard. (VArranger currently does not have external controllers to switch the Presets between Right, Left or Both - but this can be done on screen with a mouse).

Voice Group selection buttons would be to the right. Group buttons are coloured to easily identify group types (e.g. white = pianos/keys, yellow = strings, red = brass etc

Individual voices would be selected by vertical buttons down the right hand side of the screen. The screen labels change according to the selected Voice Group. Where there are more than 10 voices in a group, left & right buttons would enable the pages to be cycled through.

Part/Track select buttons allow each track to be selected so that the individual voice can be assigned. (At this stage vArranger only allows external controllers to directly select the Right1 or Left1 part - others are selected with a left/right scroll button - or on screen with a mouse).

Style Group selection buttons would be to the left.
Individual styles would be selected by vertical buttons down the left hand side of the screen. The screen labels change according to the selected style Group. Where there are more than 10 styles in a group, left & right buttons would enable the pages to be cycled through.

The mixer strip is split.

Right/Left played voice faders (Right 1,2,3,4, 2nd Voice, Left 1,2,3)are on the right hand upper side of the surface. Buttons enable each part/track to be soloed or muted.

The Style part/track faders (Drums, Perc, Bass, Accomp 1,2,3,4,5) are on the upper left of the surface. Buttons enable each part/track to be soloed or muted.

The Master Mixer (which allows balancing the combined accompaniment, combined left voices and combined right voices plus the Master Volume is to the right of the My Sounds presets.

Other functions such as the Chord Sequence Recorder, Audio Recorder, Song Load/Save, Octave shift, Transpose, Manual Bass, Full Keyboard mode, panic etc) are placed to be accessible.

Your thoughts?

Nice first try !
Do you have any electronic skills?
For my personnal playing :
I would go for a touch screen, or a simple pc tablet that can be the computer too
I don't use Track Solo while playing, so better to only let track on / off
Buttons seems very big
It is good for comfort at home, but for live, to carry, it is better small and compact

I can add the controllers missing when you will be more advanced in your thoughts

Just starting to receive and layout some components for the first prototype of my vArranger hardware control surface

Compared to the diagram in my previous post, I have:
* deleted the right & left Track Solo buttons,
* deleted the Accompaniment Track/Part select row of buttons
* located the row of Right/Left Track/Part Select buttons below the Voice Group select
* added a yellow button to the Right/Left Track/Part select row for selecting the Bass Track/Part
* chosen some different colours for the buttons.

The workflow for selecting a voice would be:
1. on the bottom right row - select the Track/Part to which the voice is to be assigned,
2. select the Voice Group (in the next rows of buttons above the Track/Part select)
3. select the individual voice (to the right of the screen)



The screen is 12.1 inches across the diagonal and has 800x600 resolution. It is non-touch.

The push buttons are momentary action and are not illuminated.

I'm still waiting for other parts to arrive.

Today, There is some cheap open frame lcd hdmi capcitive touch screen that can be found on the web. It will avoid the need of a mouse and keyboard to be connected

Also buttons + led is a lot better

What microcontroller will you use?

@ Dan

Thank you for your observations and comments.

I do have electronics skills. I have MIDIfied several large Organ consoles for use as virtual organs with Hauptwerk.

This version of the control surface is my cheap mock-up prototype. Once I am satsified with what I what to include and where I want to place it I will build a 'production' model

I agree that a touch screen or a 2 in 1 PC/Tablet that can drive the system would be a good approach. The cheap 12.1 inch display I have obtained is about the same width as a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 but it a little taller.

At this stage I think that a 4:3 screen aspect ratio is OK but 800x600 is not high enough resolution to show enough text on the vArranger on-screen buttons etc. I'll have a look around at the cheap open frame LCD touch screens but they tend to be only 800x600 pixels.

I also agree that illuminated buttons, synchronised to vArranger, would provide a much better view of the status of the software. I will use lit buttons on my final version but I just wanted to use the standard push buttons on the first propotype to get a feel for where each button should be and to work out the layout.

The buttons use a 16mm hole, so a spacing of one per 20 or so millimetres will probably be a suitable density.

If I reintroduce a Track Solo control then I think that I would only have one button for Soloing the Right1 voice.

I will be using a commercial MIDI encoder - not building/developing my own from an Arduino etc

Thank you for your offer to add missing controllers. Once I have settled on a final design I will let you know what I need. At this stage I'm quite sure that I will need:

* the Left 1,2,3; Right 1,2,3&4; 2nd voice and Bass Track Select controllers
- on the photo these are the nine buttons (1xyellow [Bass], 3xwhite [Left1,2,3], Red [Right1] 3xblue [Right2,3,4] and 1xgrey [2ndVoice]) on the bottom right of the picture above

* the ability to use buttons to select Right, Both or Left for the 'My Sounds' section
- on the photo these are the three vertical buttons (red, grey and white) to the right of the 20 Blue My Sounds buttons

Nice, I will follow you, as I also want to create my vArranger keyboard for my own use on live gigs

I have been thinking about this quite a lot...
But does an arranger require that many buttons to push with a touchscreen?
Seems Ketron SD7 can come around with a lot less buttons
And still opperate very decent, or even more inuitive then the big 3 featured above..

I suppose the issue with touch screens is their size (and their resolution).

A small screen can only have a few on screen buttons or else they become too small to read and too hard to find & press, whereas a large screen takes up a lot of space on the control surface. Of course, small screens can utilise layered menus, but this means that the controls that you may want to have readily accessible can be hidden in lower layers of the menu structure.

vArranger uses only one layer for its main display. This has the advantage that you see everything at a glance and you don't have to dig through multiple menu layers to find a function. However, it does make the display very busy.



I have 17inch touch screens on my system and I still find that the virtual buttons on the vArranger screen are too small to find when live playing. This is why I am making the hardware control surface. Each physical button on my control surface corresponds to a virtual button on the vArranger screen and they are all needed.

Another approach I have seen in soft arrangers is what One Man Band does. In the OMB Preferences you select the type of control surface to be used (i.e. touch screen, computer keyboard or MIDI keyboard) and with the touch screen option you can select the on-screen Grid size (e.g. 6 rows by 13 columns on the image below)



Then you can 'personalise' the Grid by assigning any Function to each of the buttons on the Live Control Window grid.



In the (top menu layer) arrangement shown above I have set up the top row to select Voices (green buttons), the left columns to select Sub-Menus (red buttons), the bottom two rows to select Arranger functions (black buttons) and the centre buttons to control Part Volumes and Tempo etc.

If you have a small touch screen then you can select a smaller grid but this means you will have be more selective about what resides on the top menu layer.

With the SD7, Ketron have gone for a layered menu approach. They are still using physical buttons to call up the Menu pages (e.g. for voices and styles) and the Arranger controls and Part volume sliders are still physical.

A few more parts have arrived.

I'm trying to settle on the final layout for the prototype before I start cutting and drilling some sheet metal.

Here is the current button layout, with faders and drawbars added.

In this arrangement I have stacked the arranger controls into two rows, with the Fill buttons (4 x yellow) directly above the corresponding Variation buttons (4 x blue). The Break, Sync Start, Sync Stop, Fade In/Out, Chord Hold and Left Hold buttons are also in this second row
I have moved the Ending buttons (3 x red) over to the left, next to the Intro buttons (3 x green)



Overall dimensions of the control surface to accommodate all of the components are 1100mm x 310mm - without keyboards.

I'll need four panels:
1 - for the arranger controls, presets and drawbar base (bottom)
2 - for the screen and individual style and voice selection buttons (centre - tilted on an angle)
3 - for the style group buttons and style faders etc (left side, raised up and slightly tilted)
4 - for the part select, voice group, voice/part faders and master faders (right side, raised up and sightly tilted - to allow the drawbar arms to move underneath)

Love your project...

Interested to see how this ends up, just keep the information comming...

What kind of metal plate will you use, and how do you cut / drill it?
I also try to create a prototype for my own use

I already have a fatar keyboard and will use a windows 10 tablet with a second hdmi touch screen (2 screens )

Just wondering, what interface boards will you use to controll lights and sense buttons and sliders?

@ Dan

I plan to use general purpose aluminium alloy (5005) flat sheet - with the standard mill finish. My local supplier will cut to size.

I will centre punch the button locations and use a standard 16mmm metal drillbit in a bench drill to cut the holes for the buttons.

I will use a finer drillbit to drill a row of holes along the fader slots and finish with a jigsaw and file.


@ Bachus

There are several vendors of MIDI encoders and decoders.

I have used some HWCE2x encoders from Midi Gadgets Boutique. These worked well.
http://midiboutique.com/index.php?route=common/home

This time I might use some MIDI encoder + extension boards from Midi-Hardware, e.g. their MBBS plus a couple of BBS-1Ks for the extra buttons and a couple of daisy chained POT12s for the faders.
http://www.midi-hardware.com/index.html

I'm not using lit buttons and MIDI decoders on this first 'experimental' version of the Control Surface because that would more than double the cost of the prototype

Nice, thank you, the midi hardware encoders allow for keyboards larger then 64 keys...

Definately interested now, i feel a project comming up..

vArranger Without control Surface

VArranger2 is such an open system that one with the knowledge and skills of Momboc can work out an elaborate custom control setup for it or someone like me without such talants can still make a 50 plus functions control surface out of just an ordinary PC keyboard as in the video. Among my controllers for vArranger2 are a $10 mini Bluetooth keyboard with close to 50 functions, $10 Bluetooth gamepad (12 functions), MIDI Expression Quattro for 4 foot switches(The Hosa FSC-385 dual latching foot switch takes up only plug in of the Quattro and yet gives two functions), Korg Nanokontrol2 with all the slides, knobs, and buttons I need, and etc, etc. I have the mini wireless PC keyboard and gamepad attached to my midi accordion. I can stroll around and yet control many functions and call up twenty different sounds - all wirelessly.

MOMBOC, I have added the TRACK SELECT 1 to 16 in the vArranger controller's possibility, so you will be able to use it for your project

@Dan

Thank you for making the requested change. This will make the selection of Track/Part voices so much easier with the control surface.

I assume this will be available in the next release of the vArranger software?

I am doing some renovations/painting in my studio, so I have paused the production of the control surface prototype until that work is finished.

I have received the cut to size pieces aluminium. In the first version I'm thinking that I'll use strips of aluminium to mount the rows of buttons. This will allow me to easily adjust the position of the buttons until I am happy with their location. I will then use the cut to size panels for the second version. I have also obtained some lit buttons for use with the second version.

How is your controll surface comming along?


I recently dived a little deeper into the Arduino


Its actually a very refreshing idea programming it yourself, with some programming experience it isnt that hard...

I have almost finished the fitout of my workshop/studio. All of the new shelving is up, but I'm having a new workbench built at the moment, so when that is done I will be in a position to do the drilling and assembly of the control surface.

I laid it out again on the full sized aluminium baseplate the other day, with a MIDI keyboard and a Microsoft Surface 4 in place. I think I'll have to stagger the Style and Voice select buttons in order to get them to fit. I will also need to get the prototype's plate cut into two in order to accommodate the drawbars on the bottom right of the plate.



I will need to ask Dan to add some additional controllers to vArranger so that the (My Sounds) Presets can be switched between Right, Right/Left and Left using buttons rather than mouse clicks.

Only 8 sliders to the right and left top? i would have added a 9th?

The top left faders are for controlling the arranger accompaniment levels (drums, perc, bass, etc) and the top right faders are for controlling the left, right and second voices. The other 4 are for the Master Volume and part Mixers.

It will have a set of 20 drawbars (9 + 9 + 2) for controlling a virtual Hammond VSTi - but I didn't lay them out for the image above because they interfere with positioning the buttons on the bottom right of the panel.

They are shown in post #423431

Thats explains my question, those 20 drawbars...

All said, the manufacturers will place the controls where they
think they should be. Lloyd

Thats the problem, everyone has different needs.... only building your own controller will fit your needs perfectly... untill your needs change...