What features do people want in a MIDI controller?

[polyexpressive]

What do you want in a MIDI controller to have that existing controller don't?

I'm making a controller that's recently gone up on kickstarter (Poly Expressive) and we've had a few questions from Axe Fx users so I'm keen to make sure it's good for them. If you want any more info about the controller happy to answer but the picture explains the general idea. It's designed so you never have to take your hand of your instrument to turn a knob. It's position and pressure sensitive.

 

[coldstar]

It seems like you might be asking an awful lot of my balance and stamina for standing on one foot if I'm supposed to suspend the other one over that thing and make precise motions on it... You're competing with expression pedals for any kind of scrolling fuction.

That said, I think that in order get enough functions into the device and to display them large enough to be useful, you'd need some kind of "pages" scrolling function, like Liquid Foot has. (Don't copy their PC editor though - yikes.)

You're also going to have a feedback issue - with buttons, the user can feel with their foot whether they've pressed it or not. With a smooth pad, you can't tell. The buttons would at least need to flash or change color in order to indicate activation, and maybe also output a beep or something that could routed through IEMs...

You'll also need a sensitivity cutoff - can't have someone throwing an empty beer cup on stage and turning your flanger on!

 

[polyexpressive]

I've played it for 8 hours a day, 3 days in a row at Summer NAMM and I was a little sore afterwards! You don't have to suspend, you can put your full weight on it, easier than standing on other pedals / expression pedal, at least for me and a few other people have given the same feedback on the comfort.

How many functions do you usually want in your gigs?

Feedback is actually pretty clear as it triggers when you touch it, so you feel when you've touched it. No click but no one that's used it has had any difficulty with it. One thing I should mention is that if you slide from for slide from SFX to Shape on that example board, it won't do anything as it decides what control is active when you put your foot down. That means with the X Y / expression controllers you can get all the way to the edges and outside of the area and not have to worry.

There is a cut off for pressure at the moment. Need to test it with a range of beer cup weights though.

 

[unix-guy]

I've played it for 8 hours a day, 3 days in a row at Summer NAMM and I was a little sore afterwards! You don't have to suspend, you can put your full weight on it, easier than standing on other pedals / expression pedal, at least for me and a few other people have given the same feedback on the comfort.

How many functions do you usually want in your gigs?

Feedback is actually pretty clear as it triggers when you touch it, so you feel when you've touched it. No click but no one that's used it has had any difficulty with it. One thing I should mention is that if you slide from for slide from SFX to Shape on that example board, it won't do anything as it decides what control is active when you put your foot down. That means with the X Y / expression controllers you can get all the way to the edges and outside of the area and not have to worry.

There is a cut off for pressure at the moment. Need to test it with a range of beer cup weights though.

Is the intent of this device to replace expression pedals?

For the amount of floor space, I think my 4 pedals would take less space... And the MFC-101 (and most other midi controller pedals) supports a maximum of 4 pedals.

However, more is always better!

I don't think I'd want to try replacing my Wah controller with your device... But who knows?

For something that size, I think control of 4-6 functions would be nice... But having "pages" of functions could be truly awesome. But by the image you posted, I suspect that is not possible?

 

[Tahoebrian5]

I'm not sure I would want to replace expression pedals. It would be cool if your controller space could be divided up anyway the user wanted with any function. If it's not affordable it's a moot point though. The rjm mastermind controller seems to be great but I just can't see dropping that much money.

Some tactile feedback is also important. If there is no button to click maybe a vibration or knock would do

 

[polyexpressive]

Is the intent of this device to replace expression pedals?

For the amount of floor space, I think my 4 pedals would take less space... And the MFC-101 (and most other midi controller pedals) supports a maximum of 4 pedals.

However, more is always better!

I don't think I'd want to try replacing my Wah controller with your device... But who knows?

For something that size, I think control of 4-6 functions would be nice... But having "pages" of functions could be truly awesome. But by the image you posted, I suspect that is not possible?

Yeah, but it's sending MIDI not an expression pedal so you can control more than 4 things at once. However many things your gear exposes to MIDI, and you can control lots of different gear at once or just one thing if you want. It's 3 dimension per point to, X, Y and pressure so if you want 6 functions that's only 2 of the squares.

It's currently on Kickstarter if you want to look more at it, just search for Poly Expressive. I'm to new to post links.

You can divide up the space any way you want and you can map as many controllers to each square. You can now as of today record what I'm calling macros which are loops of MIDI movements.

 

[Rex]

What do you want in a MIDI controller...?

First and foremost, I need a foot controller to be be easy, reliable, and consistent in its use. When I'm interacting with my foot controller, most of my concentration is on my playing, not on the controller. I need my controller to respond to me predictably and repeatably when I manipulate it with coarse control while I'm distracted by my playing.

When I kick in an effect or a scene, I need to be able to stomp in a general location on my board and know that what I want to happen will actually happen. When I work an expression device, I need to be able to predictably affect an outcome intuitively, with minimal concentration.

It's cool that you have three degrees of control on the Poly Expressive. I could see myself using that in certain situations—if I'm sitting down. But if I'm standing, and I need to control how much pressure I'm applying with my foot, that means I have to constantly readjust my balance while I'm playing. That's too much to do in a performance situation, where I'm already adjusting pressure and position with both hands.

The biggest limitation of expression pedals is the fact that they only work in one dimension. But that's also their biggest strength. I can express through the full range, and I can't screw it up by applying the wrong pressure or slipping sideways. I can just drop my foot on the pedal with whatever force comes out, and start rocking my foot back and forth.

The ability to assign multiple things to a single controller is really cool. But it's of limited use in the Fractal world, where we already have that capability built in.


That said, I'm not about to render judgement on a device that I've never experienced myself. I wish you much success.

 

[unix-guy]

Yeah, but it's sending MIDI not an expression pedal so you can control more than 4 things at once. However many things your gear exposes to MIDI, and you can control lots of different gear at once or just one thing if you want. It's 3 dimension per point to, X, Y and pressure so if you want 6 functions that's only 2 of the squares.

It's currently on Kickstarter if you want to look more at it, just search for Poly Expressive. I'm to new to post links.

You can divide up the space any way you want and you can map as many controllers to each square. You can now as of today record what I'm calling macros which are loops of MIDI movements.

Ok, I think I misunderstood what you were asking in regards to functions.

I honestly don't know if you're going to find many users here that would assign multiple functions to a single controller, especially when the Fractal devices already allow assigning multiple functions to a single controller internally.

But I'll check out the kickstarter because it sounds interesting...

 

[polyexpressive]

First and foremost, I need a foot controller to be be easy, reliable, and consistent in its use. When I'm interacting with my foot controller, most of my concentration is on my playing, not on the controller. I need my controller to respond to me predictably and repeatably when I manipulate it with coarse control while I'm distracted by my playing.

When I kick in an effect or a scene, I need to be able to stomp in a general location on my board and know that what I want to happen will actually happen. When I work an expression device, I need to be able to predictably affect an outcome intuitively, with minimal concentration.

It's cool that you have three degrees of control on the Poly Expressive. I could see myself using that in certain situations—if I'm sitting down. But if I'm standing, and I need to control how much pressure I'm applying with my foot, that means I have to constantly readjust my balance while I'm playing. That's too much to do in a performance situation, where I'm already adjusting pressure and position with both hands.

The biggest limitation of expression pedals is the fact that they only work in one dimension. But that's also their biggest strength. I can express through the full range, and I can't screw it up by applying the wrong pressure or slipping sideways. I can just drop my foot on the pedal with whatever force comes out, and start rocking my foot back and forth.

The ability to assign multiple things to a single controller is really cool. But it's of limited use in the Fractal world, where we already have that capability built in.


That said, I'm not about to render judgement on a device that I've never experienced myself. I wish you much success.

All good points. Reliability and ease of use are big goals for me. I think a major advantage of Poly Expressive is that you don't just have a few buttons with lots of different functions like most MIDI controllers but can have as many buttons as you need. If you only need 2 giant ones you can have that, or one button for each 20 songs that just switches to the sound for that song.

I mostly just use 2 of the three dimensions of control for most things but pressure is handy sometimes to have. I find a lot of things map nicely to 2 dimensions though especially for more synth style sounds. The frequency and resonance of a filter being an obvious one but I'm really enjoying mapping gain and reverb mix to an X Y.