assigning foot pedal to tap tempo in Mainstage 2

Question

assigning foot pedal to tap tempo in Mainstage 2

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to assign my foot pedal (a Yamaha FC5 plugged into the expression pedal port of a Novation ReMOTE 37SL) to tap tempo in Mainstage 2, but no luck. I can get the pedal to send data, but it's not resulting in the behavior I want -- namely, tapping the pedal replicates tapping Ctrl+T on the keyboard.

What's the proper way to do this? (I also have an M-Audio SP-2 sustain pedal, which has a polarity switch, that I can use.)

Thanks!

15" MacBook Pro (Refurb'd) 2.2 GHz 4 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Mar 31, 2010 7:22 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 31, 2010 7:46 PM in response to lecturedoodle

This might help, just skip any parts that you might already know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5d33-Wi7zA

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Answer 2

gilapuki

Level 3

530 points

Apr 1, 2010 9:49 AM in response to lecturedoodle

I have a rotary/fader set to Actions>Tap Tempo. I set a suitable range for tempi, usually from 70-260bpm. Then, I dial in the appropriate new tempo for each song.

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Answer 3

Apr 7, 2010 7:48 AM in response to gilapuki

Hi Jas and gilapuki,

Thanks for your replies. I can assign a control (I've tried button, foot switch, and others), "learn" it to my pedal, and then assign the control (button, foot switch, etc.) to the tap tempo action.

However, when I actually tap the pedal, I get weird values. For example, under "Hardware Input," if type is "absolute," I keep getting a bpm of 5.0; if type is "single value," I tend to get bpms in the 500's and 900's. If type is "Press/Release" or "Note On/Off," I get no change to the tempo when I tap the pedal.

Maybe I need to plug the pedal into the sustain pedal port instead of the expression pedal port...

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Answer 4

dhjdhj

Level 2

174 points

Apr 7, 2010 3:17 PM in response to lecturedoodle

My experience is that MS does not do a good job recognizing tap tempo well.

To date, nothing does as good a job of detecting tap tempo as the Roland Space Echo pedal! It does it brilliantly!

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Answer 5

Apr 7, 2010 9:31 PM in response to lecturedoodle

I'm thinking that it could be because that FC5 is a true Sustain pedal and not a MIDI pedal that's the reason you're getting the weird values but I haven't used it so don't know for sure.

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Answer 6

gilapuki

Level 3

530 points

Apr 7, 2010 11:27 PM in response to lecturedoodle

I found that tapping the tempo, using a pedal or a button, never gave a reliable result in MainStage or Logic. The best way is to use a fader or a rotary to set the tempo, just like using a metronome. It does mean that you need a fair idea of the speed you want.
A useful guide for judging tempo is to use your pulse. That is 72-80 bpm for most people. With a bit of practice/experience, it is possible to get quite an accurate feel for speed. You can then dial in the tempo with a high degree of accuracy.

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Answer 7

gilapuki

Level 3

530 points

Apr 7, 2010 11:29 PM in response to JasTheMusicman

I use an FC5. It works well as a sustain pedal on my Roland GI-20, but gives very odd results when used to tap the tempo.

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Answer 8

Apr 9, 2010 4:36 AM in response to lecturedoodle

Concerning Tap Tempo, I confirm that in my opinion it's very badly implemented in MainStage : tempo is computed between every two successive taps, which make it very unstable (unless you are a robot), whereas in applications like Ableton Live, it's computed on an average of 4 taps, making it way more precise. The 2-tap is ok for setting an delay tempo, but not ok when you are dealing with rythmic loops that you want to syncronise with you real band playing.
I've already sent a message to the support team, don't really believe in it but one never knows!

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