Yellow Tools Key Switch - MIDI Freeware

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
Was announced today on another site. Thought I'd share it here.
http://www.yellowtools.com

Cheers,
Mark

[gabriel_p]

Hi Mark...ummm I checked it out and I'm still not clear what it does with gigasampler and pro tools, could you help me understand what it can do for us digi001 heads.

Thanx.

[Mark_Knecht]

gabriel_p,
Hi. Well, I was hoping you and I could get one fo the real MIDI genius type here to take a look at this. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Actually, what 'Key Switching' has come to mean in the GigaSampler community (I'm not sure if it's true with Yellow Tools) is the abilitiy to change samples on the fly by hitting a key outside of your play region. I'll try to explain.

In GigaSampler world, it's really very standard to use keyboard zones to talk to different samples in GigaSampler. I'm sure folks using regular synths do the same thing. Bottom 2 octaves to a synth doing bass, upper 5 octaves to a synth doing strings. Zones.

Key Switching has started up as a way to change the zones quickly. Basically, you reserve part of your keyboard for switching and not notes. If you hit one of these keys, then the zones can change, and where you're routign to can change, so you get different sounds. I suppose you can also do Program Changes, but GigaSampler doesn't like program changes, so I don't know.

I think this freeware tool is a way for you to set this sort of stuff up in your MIDI routing, and be able to control it independent of what sample libraries you might have loaded in GigaSampler, or even when you're not using GigaSampler at all.

Like you, I'm looking for someone else to talk a bit about this. I'm not using it much yet, and not using this specific tool at all. Just wanted folks here to know so that if they want to...

Cheers,
Mark

Copied form the Yellow Tools site:

Key switch is a MIDI filter and routing application. It was conceived and optimized for the use with gigasampler, but as key switch accepts MIDI data from any source and can also send these information back to any other source, it works with any optional combination of MIDI hard- and software in general (e.g. EXS24, HALion, AKAI, Roland, Kurzweil, Cubase, Logic, ProTools etc.).
Key switch is a front end to gigasampler (or any other MIDI hard- and software) like the graph below shows.


midi keyboard --> midi interface --> key switch --> gigasampler
or any other MIDI
hard- and software --> audio out

what does key switch do...

With key switch you can create your own, sampling library, instrument and MIDI hard- and software independent key dimensions. Additional features are simultaneous playing, fading and mixing of several instruments.

You can open as much key switch applications you need for your work. If you want to combine different hardware and software samplers for example, just open one key switch application for each sampler you use and adjust the settings accordingly.

Key switch is currently available for Windows PCs only.

[gabriel_p]

Thanks Mark, if that's the case I have no use for it.
Cheers,