Most of you know Morningstar MIDI controllers are great controllers for your pedals and various hardware devices. However, they are also very powerful foot controllers for your Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) and music software.
DAWs and plugins play a big part in our music lives. They help bring the music in our minds to life, and out into the world through a recording. They’ve also become great live performance tools, allowing us to take complex sounds created in our studios to the stage.
Morningstar MIDI controllers give you handsfree simultaneous control of both your software and hardware. With the power control both your software and hardware using a single controller, you get to combine the best of both worlds in a hybrid setup.
Morningstar controllers are the perfect controller for your computer because they can send both MIDI messages and keystroke commands. MIDI allows you to MIDI map any controls you want to your Morningstar controller. And keystrokes allow your Morningstar controller to send keyboard commands and shortcuts to Ableton with your feet.
Morningstar controllers are USB class compliant and work with any music software with no drivers required. They work well with any software including as Logic Pro, FL Studio, Cubase, Mainstage, Bitwig as well as your iOS apps. As long as an application supports MIDI mapping or accepts keystroke commands, a Morningstar controller will be able to control it.
In the above video, we explain how to set up your Morningstar controller to control your DAW and music software. We used Ableton Live in the video as it is quite indisputably the most popular DAW that handles both studio recordings and live performances.
Using a Morningstar MIDI controller with software mainly involves MIDI mapping. This allows you to map any function/parameter you want to control to your MC3, MC6 or MC8 switches. By just clicking on the function/parameter you want to control and then pressing your MIDI controller switch, your software will learn that a particular switch controls a particular function/parameter.
The other useful way to control your computer with your Morningstar controller is by using keystroke commands. With firmware version 3.8 and onwards, your Morningstar controllers can send keystroke commands to your computer. This allows you perform useful functions such as sending directional keystrokes (up, down, left, right) and key combinations (eg. control + z, cmd + z) with your feet.
Software plays a big part in our musical journeys, and having a controller that controls both your hardware and software is definitely invaluable. Check out the video above! We truly believe that it will benefit you immensely and empower you to take your music creation further. Keep rocking and we'll see you again in the next post! Peace.