I know I’m not the only one with this problem: You have this giant MIDI keyboard that doesn’t produce sound on its own, and most of the time, playing it doesn’t do anything. You have to launch logic, or mainstage, or ableton, or digital performer, open a new project, setup a new patch, and then start playing. In music classes, this can be a distraction, and compositionally, it can get in the way between you and your creativity.

I’d keep MainStage open all the time, but there are times when I don’t want a secondary keyboard sound when I’m using Finale or Logic. Ideally, anytime I’m not using Finale or Logic, I’d like MainStage to be running.

I’ve written a simple OS X application in applescript that checks every 30 seconds to see if Logic or Finale are running, and if they’re not, launches MainStage in the background. It takes up very little CPU and can run continuously. Here is the code:

If you’re on mac you can open that code in the script editor by clicking
here. (Thanks to Mac Developer tips for that trick.)

Download
I have created two downloadable versions, a regular version and a silent version that does not appear in the dock.

Note that the silent version is VERY silent, i.e. you do not see it in the dock, nor in the force quit window. A quick way to kill it is to run “killall applet” in the terminal, though this will kill other applescripts you have running as well.

A more precise way to kill it is to run this command in the terminal:
ps -ax | grep -i “keep mainstage”

Get the first process number listed (usually 5 digits) and then run:
kill XXXXX (where XXXXX is the process number)

You can point to either of these apps in your System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items to have them run automatically when you start your computer.

You should set MainStage’s startup action in preferences to “Open Most Recent Concert”. I have a simple concert with just a piano that I keep open.

Included in the download above are instructions on how to make the silent app run in the background again if you modify it.

Known Bugs with 1.0:
For some reason you have to force-quit the non-silent version, quitting alone does not work.

MainStage has an annoying behavior of grabbing focus once a concert has loaded. The script hides MainStage after it does this, but you will still see it briefly pop up when it launches.

The script will not launch Mainstage if you have Logic or Finale running but with no documents open.

The script may launch Mainstage at annoying times (such as shutdowns or software updates). I’d recommend just shutting down with mainstage running, and clicking “don’t save” if it asks.

There are two ways to do this:

1) Open up the piano roll for the selected region (‘P’)
2) Click on Functions > Transform
3) Click Presets: New Parameter set, Create
4) Choose Status = Control
5) Choose Data Byte 1 = 7
6) Underneath Data Byte 1 = 7, choose Fix and set it to 11.
7) Select and operate.
In this method, you can reuse this transformer you created.

The other way to do this is:
1) Open up the event view for the selected region (‘E’)
2) Click on all of the filter buttons except controller
3) Find an event with Num=7, Length/Info Volume
4) Click Edit > Select Similar Events
5) Click on one of the 7s in the Num column and change it to 11
All of the volume events should be changed to expression.

Then, when you’re back in your current project, or you’ve troubleshooted, or you’ve optimized, then you can click the “Enabled” checkbox and apply changes again.

Turns out it’s pretty easy:

Jiggle the knob or fader that you want to use. In the transport, make sure that Logic sees MIDI data flowing in. Note the control value that your knob is sending (the second number of the three).

Open up the environment window (command 8). Choose Click & Ports in the view dropdown. Click New > Transformer.

Leave the Mode as “Apply operation and let non-matching events pass through”.

In the conditions section, change the Status to “=” and in the second dropdown, “Control”. For Data Byte 1, choose “=” and set it to the value you noted the transport.

In the output section (the bottom half), choose “Fix” for the first dropdown and “Control” for the dropdown underneath it. For Data Byte 1, choose “Fix” and set it to 64 (for sustain), or 1 (for modulation).

Next, you just have to connect up your transformer object. Click on the connection between the input view and the sequencer input. Hit delete. It may prompt you that it’s in use. Hit OK. (Note: now your keyboard won’t work in the arrange view until you reconnect it.)

Click and drag from the Input View’s output to the transformer object to make a connection. Click and drag from the transformer’s output back to the sequencer input. Now your keyboard should be reconnected, and all 74 controls should be remapped to 64 live, and the knob now controls the sustain pedal. Cool!

In this screenshot, I’m using two monitors and two transformers, but your setup should be similar:

If only there were a universal way to save this environment for all projects; I can make a template from here on out for new projects, but I’ll have to go through the same steps for previous projects I’ve already worked on.

Today I figured out how to easily turn the rock band drum set for Wii into a MIDI drum controller:

I did this with Junxion, a program that allows you to transform USB and wireless game controller input into MIDI data. I’ve seen demos of other MIDI rock band instruments online, but with the Wii instruments already in USB form this has to be the easiest setup yet. This also seems to have the lowest latency. Junxion is not free but a demo can be downloaded here:

http://www.steim.org/steim/junxion_v3.html

I’ve also used Junxion to turn other game controllers such as DDR dance pads into instruments. I’m using the old PowerPC version 1.4, but version 3 should work fine. Junxion 3 also now works with Wii remotes.

I just used the Studio Tight Kit preset in Ultrabeat in Logic for the drum sounds. Junxion automatically makes an input port which Logic recognizes and listens to.

My setup for this demo was this:

The steps are basically this:

• Plug in the drum controller.
• Launch Junxion.
• Turn off the other devices (USB Optical Mouse, Apple Keyboard, and Apple IR default to enabled at startup)
• Start hitting the pads and watch which sensor status is triggered. Your MIDI app should be sounding or at least receiving input. If not, select Junxion Port 1 as a MIDI input.
• Drag the value of the sensor’s “Dat1″ up or down to change it to the note value you want; for example I set the bass drum to 36 (C2) which triggers the bass drum in Ultrabeat.
• I muted sensor 8 because it was always sounding on any hit.

That’s it! Details may have changed in the new versions. If you have the full version you can save your configuration.

The Rock Band guitar works with Junxion as well! Just plug the USB receiver into the computer, turn on the guitar and follow the same steps. Now I’m even happier that I bought Rock Band!

Here is a fairly tedious method of converting a Recycle Rex file into Ultrabeat in Logic so that you can play the loop mapped to your keyboard like you can with Dr. Rex in Reason:
-Create an audio track
-Drag the rex loop into your audio track from the finder (it creates a folder with each sample slice in it matched to your tempo)
-Open your bin (‘b’)
-Click the down arrow next to the rex loop converted .aif file
-Select all of the parts (0, 1, 2, etc)
-Choose Save Regions As…and save to your audio folder
-Create a new instrument track and load Ultrabeat
-Click on a key in Ultrabeat and click on the sample button in the synthesizer section
-Above the sample button, click on the current sound file and choose Load sample
-Navigate to your audio folder and choose the first file you saved (file 0, etc). Repeat this for each sample you want mapped to the keyboard

You can now save this preset in the top menu with ‘Save Setting As…’.

The alternative is to slave Reason via rewire to logic, but this way you can have it all in one project, which is less processor intensive.