Control setup for multiple boutiques question

[tigrhawk]

I did a brief search and didn't find much related to my question which is about controlling multiple boutiques connected via midi with a single controller ~ I have an Arturia keystep controller that I would like to use to control multiple boutiques and assume I would need a Midi Thru box and then just change the channel on the kb?

Thanks in advance,
~ tigrhawk

[papasan]

The OUT port is doing soft-THRU so nothing special to do, just daisy chain them together and assign units MIDI ports.

[tigrhawk]

cool, i’ll give that a whirl ~ thanks!

[Myrk-]

Control all 3 simultaneously, or using the keystep as the input device for each module to program its sequencer? The latter is very simple, just assign a different midi channel to each module and jump channel on the keystep. The former, errrr, you can control 2 devices at once with a keystep, which is cool - can have the sequencer or arp triggering 1 boutique, then flick channel and control another boutique live. The keystep cannot split the keybed to control 2 simultaneous, and another awkward limit in 2 control mode is that the pitch bend and vibrato will only effect the channel which is doing the arp/sequence, which is not what anyone wants.
If you want to control 3 boutiques on 1 keyboard at the same time then you are looking at something like the Kurweil PC3LE series keyboards, as almost no keyboard out there will split a keybed more than twice, AND allow pitch shifting per device rather than shifting the whole unit... I use a Kurzweil PC3LE7 to control about 4 boutiques at once, each with a different arp and riff programmed into the kurz, all with different pitch shifting as well. This route may seem overkill, but it give me more options than having 4 K-25M's or 4 Keysteps into 4 modules.

[tigrhawk]

cool, thanks for the info!