Controller Target Switching

If you have a MIDI controller and want to change which plugins or widgets they target, you can use profile switching to accomplish your goal. You can also use this technique if you have have widgets within Loopy Pro and want to change their targets.

How To Set Up Target Switching

The basic technique:

• Create a a control profile for each target,
• Create a stepped dial or radio button group that switches between target profiles.

CREATE THE PROFILES

You can use any method that you like to create the control profiles. Either create them directly in the Control Settings panel or by turning on MIDI Learn and creating new profiles from the dropdown menu at the upper left of the screen. Create the profiles as Project Profiles. When you are done, you should have one profile per target you want to control plus whatever other profiles your project needs.

This project has a Default profile for bindings that are always active and one profile for each of the three synths in the project.

Tap on the circled area to have an option to duplicate the profile. This is a handy way to create the profiles for targets after the first one is set up.

TIME SAVER! Create one profile and set up its bindings and then duplicate the profile in Control Settings and customize the actions for the bindings. This method is generally faster than setting up each profile from scratch.

Test the profiles. Once you have created the profiles, manually enable and disable them in Control Settings and test the bindings.

CREATE THE PROFILE SWITCH

You can use either a stepped dial or radio button group for the target/profile switcher. To create the switch:

• Edit the dial or radio button group.
• Tap + to the right of Items Source
• Choose Select Controller Profile as the action
• Tap on Project so that our switcher acts on project profiles
• De-select any profiles that are not a part of the switch. For example, Default should not be selected.

When Select Controller Profile is the Items Source action, the action will switch between the profiles enabled in the setup panel. The unchecked profiles are ignored and their state unaffected by the switch.

In this example, the dial will switch between the Monolit, Synth One and Viking profiles. When one of those three profiles is selected, it becomes enabled and the others are disabled. The  Default profile is left alone. It will remain enabled if it started enabled.

The Select Controller Profile action set up to switch between the profiles of three different target synths. The Default profile is not selected to be a part of the switch.

Widget Target Switching

Let's say you have a fader and sometimes you want it to control the Delay Time of MyFavoriteDelay and sometimes you want it to control the room size of MyFavoriteReverb. As of Loopy Pro 2.0.6, it is not possible to directly change the target of a widget's actions. You can set up widgets that essentially send MIDI messages to Loopy Pro's MIDI Control system. When you do that, you can use target switching via Control Profiles as described earlier on this page.

To set this up, the main steps are:

• Set up a "middle man" or proxy that Loopy Pro's MIDI Control system sees as a MIDI Source for bindings. This can be a MIDI AUv3 plugin such as the free Streambyter or ShowMIDI that passes received MIDI through or an otherwise unused MIDI Color whose only purpose is passing MIDI through.
• Set up your widgets to send MIDI messages to the proxy/middle man mentioned in the previous step.
• Set up profiles and target switching as discussed earlier in this project.

Setting Up A Proxy

AUv3 Method

• Get a MIDI AUv3 such as Streambyter or ShowMIDI that passes any received MIDI through.
• In Loopy Pro's mixer, tap the + to add an element to the mixer. Choose Add MIDI and choose the AUv3 to use as the proxy.

The proxy will show up as a possible source for MIDI bindings. Any MIDI that you send to the proxy can be used for MIDI bindings in Project Profiles. These bindings can't be used in Global Profiles.

MIDI Color Method

Add a MIDI loop or one-shot to your project. You may want to put this on a page other than the main page. It won't be used for recording or playing MIDI. Its presence is required to make its colour a possible target for the Send MIDI Message action. Assign a colour to the MIDI clip that is not otherwise used in the project. I usually name this colour AUTOMATION to remind me what it is there for.

Once you have added this MIDI Loop, its colour will show up as a possible MIDI Source for MIDI bindings.

This video demonstrates how to set up such a clip.