Tips and Tricks

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

-- Victor Hugo

This section contains some ideas that will hopefully spur you to even more interesting and creative uses of KeyMaster.

Don't Panic!

Hitting Ctrl-A (Cmd-A on the Mac) immediately sends the standard all-notes-off controller message to every output instrument on all 16 MIDI channels. Hitting Ctrl-. (Cmd-. on the Mac) sends a "super panic": individual note off messages are sent to every note on all 16 channels to every output instrument (this may take a few seconds).

From One, Many

You can turn one note into multiple notes by setting up two different connections that connect the same input to the same output. For example, you could play octaves by passing through the original note and adding a note one octave up.

This One Goes to 11

Use named messages to set initial volumes for instruments, for example resetting all instrument's volumes to 127. Use that named message in any patch that calls for it, or assign it to a trigger.

Hands-Free

Use KeyMaster to play notes! A patch's start named message can be used to play one or more notes-on messages, and the stop named message can be used to play the corresponding note-off messages. Great for those really long drones.

Tuning

You might want to set up a song that helps you tune your analog instruments by sending the proper program changes and entering note on and note off commands that play the tuning note on different synths. (Yes, you actually had to tune most older synths, sometimes multiple times per night.) For example,

1. Patch One

   • Start named message: program changes and note-ons for reference synth A and another synth (B).
   • Stop named message: note-off for synth B.

2. Patch Two

   • Start named message: program change and note-on for synth C.
   • Stop named message: note-off for synth C.

3. Patch Three

   • Start named message: program change and note-on for synth D.
   • Stop named message: note-offs for synth D and reference synth A.

Matching Names

When you use "Find Song" or "Find Set List" in the "Go" menu, you need not type the whole name. Just use the shortest unique string within the name. Actually, you can type any regular expression. (Explaining what that means is out of scope for this manual.)

Also, you needn't worry about matching upper and lower case; all name comparisons are case-insensitive. (The regular expression is automatically configured to match case-insensitively).