Keyboard Maestro newbie question

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JZilla
Posts: 122
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2004 10:01 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
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Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by JZilla »

Hey folks, I've just picked up a copy of Keyboard Maestro, it looks like the combination of it with Metagrid might be really cool. I'm still figuring my way around it, but so far so good.

One area I'm really interested in using it for is getting deeper into the MIDI edit windows, Quantize, Transpose, Change Velocity, etc. It'd be great in the Quantize menu, for example, to have a button assigned to 1/4, one to 1/8, 1/16, etc.

I'm sure this can be done, my first though is to save each iteration as a preset, then use KM to bring up the Quantize menu, move that window to a set location so it'll track correctly, then record the mouse movement in KM to select the correct preset from the dropdown menu. Does that sound like I'm heading in the right direction, or is there a better way of doing things?

Thanks!
2019 MacPro, 10.15.5, 16 core 3.2 GHz, 384 GB RAM
DP 10.11
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Babz
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Re: Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by Babz »

Googling “Keyboard Maestro” ...
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

It's a very capable app but be sure you are setting these up as DP specific triggers. I've yet to find anything KM can't do but it can be very confusing at times. The vendor is helpful but can be very defensive if you express frustration with the less that ergonomic GUI.

That said, it sounds like you'll be setting up several click locations and menu selections.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

OSX 10.14.6; DP 10; Track 16; Finale 26, iPad Pro, et al

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JZilla
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Re: Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by JZilla »

Yeah, that's what I thought. I might be getting a little ambitious with it, but if I can make it all work it'd be pretty awesome.

Of course, if MOTU wanted to add some more stuff into the Commands window so we could trigger different quantize settings, transpose settings, etc., that wouldn't be so bad either!
2019 MacPro, 10.15.5, 16 core 3.2 GHz, 384 GB RAM
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Kontakt 6.2.2, Spectrasonics, u-he, Arturia, NI Komplete 11, VE Pro
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labman
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Re: Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by labman »

As a former lonnnnnnng time Quickeys user, I absolutely LOVE KMaestro. Would have to echo everything MLC said. Sometimes the task is easy, sometimes it hurts my brain.
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

It (KM) is not unlike DP in that the GUI needs to be well digested before any serious work begins. Both are very deep, which makes combining the two to a point of cooperation ...challenging. In the end, it should be well worth it. Interestingly, in both cases I had the apps and kept them current until I had no choice but to dig in and learn them. Similarly, I tried to do the same thing with Finale and Sibelius, but in that case I stayed with Finale. I'll spare you the sordid details. Lol.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

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JZilla
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Re: Keyboard Maestro newbie question

Post by JZilla »

Hey, thanks for the replies. I've been spending a bunch of time in KM over the last few days, and I've gotten it figured out, so I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else wants to give it a shot in their system. I tried the method of saving presets for each iteration, but it seemed to be a pretty clunky way to do it, and even after putting a number value before each preset name in an attempt to have them show up sequentially I found they were all out of order in the dropdown menu. So on to Plan B...

This example is for Quantizing to straight 8th notes, but it works for different values with minor modifications. I'm using Metagrid to trigger all of the different macros via MIDI CCs, using unused MIDI channels, CCs and values to trigger. For straight whole notes, I'm sending MIDI CC#3 with a value of 0 on MIDI channel 16 from Metasystem - MIDI - In, for straight half notes it's MIDI CC#3 with a value of 1 on channel 16, etc.

And here's the steps :

In Metagrid, I made a Quantize submenu that has three 2x3 blocks, one for straight, one shuffle, one triplet, with note values from 32nd to whole notes.

In my case I've got another Metagrid button on my main writing screen that gets me into my Quantize submenu, it sends the cmd-0 message to open the Quantize menu in DP.
- Activate Digital Performer
- Move & click at (137,175) from the Top Left Corner relative to the front window's corner. This selects the 8th note value, this changes for each consecutive note value command
- Type the Tab Keystroke to get to the Tuplet field
- Type the 2 Keystroke 2 in the time of 2 is equal to a straight note, but I guess some selecting/deselecting the Tuplet button would also probably work.

- Type the Tab Keystroke
- Type the Tab Keystroke
- Type the Tab Keystroke
- Type the Tab Keystroke (four times in total to get to the Swing box)
- Type the 0 Keystroke This would change for Swing 8ths
- Type the Tab Keystroke
- Type the Tab Keystroke to get to the Strength field

...And that's the end of the Macro command. It gives you straight 8ths and drops you off in the Strength box where you can put in your value and hit Return, or if you're good with what's there you just hit return and you're good to go.

I did this for each note value, straight, swing and triplet, so I made pretty heavy use of the Duplicate feature, then edited the values that were different. Once I got the original chain of events figured out it actually went much quicker than I thought it would.

...And then I got greedy. What about the "What to Quantize" dropdown, and a Strength preset? Same basic idea. For quantizing Notes & Soundbites, here's the workflow:

MIDI CC#3, changes to 25, on Channel 16 from Metasystem - MIDI - In
- Activate Digital Performer
- Move & Click at (232,78) from the Top Left Corner relative to the front window to highlight the dropdown menu.
- Insert Text "Notes and Soundbites" by Typing I probably should've known this years ago, but it turns out that if the dropdown menu is highlighted you can type to get to the selection you want. This can be changed to any of the other selections. Badass.

- Type the Return Keystroke to finish selecting your chosen thing

...which leaves you free to use all the note value CCs to quantize things willy nilly.

For the Strength input I decided to do a series of buttons 50/60/70/80/90/100%. These are pretty simple, I just set them up in Metagrid to send text values of each and hit Return, so if you hit a Strength button after your Note value one listed above, it'll write the text of your percentage and hit Return, completing the quantize and I have it return me to my main Writing view.

It's a bit of a head scratcher to figure out initially, but it seems to work really well in practice. I'm taking the same basic idea and doing the same sort of thing for Transpose, Change Velocity, Change Duration, etc. I've been wishing for years that DP would have more things like this in the Commands menu, especially since turning into a Metagrid convert, but in the meantime this is going to speed things up enormously.

Hope this is useful to others who'd be interested in this type of thing!
2019 MacPro, 10.15.5, 16 core 3.2 GHz, 384 GB RAM
DP 10.11
Kontakt 6.2.2, Spectrasonics, u-he, Arturia, NI Komplete 11, VE Pro
UAD, Waves, Soundtoys, Slate, FabFilter
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