Kore’s hardware controller is great, but sometimes you want control from another device.

I’m working on a Kore performance and setup that allows the use of a Nintendo Wii Balance Board (as included in Wii Fit) for live performance. I’m having a great fun and can share the results in a few days. But I realized the basic procedure applies to other tasks, as well, and may not be obvious to beginners.

Last week, I covered the way different control pages can be used:

Demystifying Kore Control Pages for Automation and Performance, Pt. I: Different Page Types

MIDI Assignment

In this case, I want to create a user page that covers “macro”-style assignments for my whole performance, so I want a performance-level user page. I can map those eight parameters to whatever I like. (For the Balance Board, I’ll just use the top four, because the hardware has four sensors. If you had an X/Y pad like a Korg KAOSS Pad, you might use just two.)

Then I want to give these MIDI controller assignments, in addition to the usual Kore Control assignments.  From the user page, click “Control.” In the bottom right, you’ll see a “Controller #” assignment. You can type in a controller number directly. (Once it’s typed in, you can drag up or down to change it with the mouse or type a new number.)

Note that Assign > Learn is actually not how you assign controllers – that assigns parameters (knobs and buttons) on your user page to destinations elsewhere in the performance. You can think of these as “meta-controls” for your performance. That’s handy, too, because some of the things you might normally do with MIDI assignments, like invert values or choose custom ranges, can’t be selected in the MIDI assignment section here. You’ll do them by making those adjustments to the parameters on the user page. (That’s a topic for another article.)

Choosing MIDI Control Change Numbers

But back to the controller number question. If you’re using an existing MIDI map, like the defaults on a device, you’ll use whatever control message it sends. But very often, you have to choose controller numbers to use in a custom software patch or hardware setup. So what number do you use? Looking at the MIDI spec, a lot of the descriptions don’t make any sense.

Control Changes [MIDI Manufacturers Association]

Here are eight Control Change messages that could fit nicely – there’s eight of them, and they tend not to be used for other things. (Note: Kore uses only 7-bit, not 14-bit data, with MIDI. That means it reads control messages with values ranging 0-127. Only the Kore controller is capable of sending higher-resolution data, and it doesn’t use MIDI to do it; it uses audio signal sent over USB.)

16: General Purpose Controller 1

17: General Purpose Controller 2

18: General Purpose Controller 3

19: General Purpose Controller 4

80: General Purpose Controller 5

81: General Purpose Controller 6

82: General Purpose Controller 7

83: General Purpose Controller 8

You see the utility here – we have two sets of four, or one set of eight controller numbers that are unlikely to conflict with anything else. And, really, it’s not so important – the main thing is to be consistent in your own work. I regularly refer back to the Control Change table when doing programming.

Let us know if this is helpful to you, or if you have tips or questions of your own!