Studio Pro: Using MIDI Controllers

We show you how to set up your MIDI controllers in Studio Pro.

Once upon a time, you could plug in a MIDI controller and control whatever you had selected. The keyboard would play the selected instrument without any trouble, and any knobs and controls would often adjust parameters on the synth. Some software instruments had MIDI Learn, allowing you to map a hardware control to a software knob with a couple of clicks. With others, or if you were routing out to a hardware MIDI synth, you’d have to dig out the MIDI implementation charts and see if you could set up your controller to output the right MIDI CC numbers.

On the whole, MIDI mapping of hardware to software controls is an amazing thing that often involves a lot of faff. Fender Studio Pro would like to help, and humbly offers its Control Link system as a simpler, more robust way to manage hardware control of software devices.

Control Link requires you to spend a little bit of time setting up your MIDI controllers, and while that’s exactly the sort of faff we’re trying to avoid, you only have to do it once and then it’s all gravy.

First Things First

Any USB MIDI controllers attached to your computer, be they keyboards, pad controllers, knobs, sliders, or a combination, will have their own entries in the OS. Whenever you use a piece of MIDI software, such as a DAW or a standalone virtual instrument, the connected MIDI devices will appear as MIDI input options. Studio Pro initially hides these away, and requires you to create an External Device that manages your connected controller. Go to the Studio Pro / Options menu and choose External Devices from the tabs along the top.

The External Devices window is where you specify which MIDI ports your hardware controllers are connected to.This is where you set up any MIDI ports in your system, whether they are USB ports connected to controllers, separate MIDI interfaces or ports on audio interfaces. The idea is that you create a device, connect the ports, and then tell Studio Pro what you want it to do.

There are three types of device: a keyboard, an instrument, or a control surface. Studio Pro comes with ready‑made templates for many well‑known existing controllers. I have never had one on that list, and I’ll proceed on the assumption that you don’t either.

Quick tip: If you don’t have a MIDI controller to hand, you can set up your QWERTY keyboard as a musical keyboard. You’ll find the option under ‘Fender’ in the template list.

New Keyboard

The Add Device window lists a number of presets designed to work with specific MIDI controllers. If yours isn’t on the list, don’t worry: configuring a controller manually is easy enough.Click on ‘Add...’ to bring up the Add Device window. New Keyboard is the most obvious, and you should select this if your MIDI controller has a keyboard. It may have lots of other knobs and controls too, which is fine. You can then add a manufacturer and device name, which will be how it is referred to in your session. You then have a few options. You can restrict it to specific MIDI channels, and most importantly, select the actual MIDI device you’re using from the Receive From drop‑down menu.

Next, you have some filtering options if you’d like to remove aftertouch, Program Changes, pitch‑bend or other controller data, so that none of those things are transmitted from your controller to the software instrument. You’d usually have a specific reason for doing this, so if you’re not sure, leave them unticked.

The Send To drop‑down menu is optional and lets you send MIDI back to your MIDI controller. This could be useful for things like...