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Re: softstep report #1



Thank you for the explanation Keith. 

Could Golden Week in China have anything to do with week long marathons of Golden Girls reruns? Globalization!

Thanks for the update, Zoe. That's really exciting. Now you really can fit your rig in your backpack. With the red and green lights I'll have to set up a happy holiday's bank.

Todd Matthews

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:31 PM, Zoe Keating <info@zoekeating.com> wrote:
think I'll report as I go, since otherwise I'll never get around to it!


I downloaded the software, plugged in the pedal (comes with a nice long USB cable in case you need to be far away from your computer), launched the software and the pedal lit up with its friendly blue leds. (reminds me of the dashboard of a mini cooper)It goes without saying that the pedal is small, lightweight and cute. Its not TOO small though. The numbered buttons are the same size as the one on the FCB1010. The navigation arrows are small and I have to look at my toes, but I think I'll get the hang of it.

I'm a bit impatient with manuals, so I decided to poke around the software interface first. I didn't get very far, and had to go and read the manual ;-)
I was stumped at first by all the modes, figuring out what was clickable, trying to read the tiny fonts, and understanding the naming terminology. However, after almost 2 hours of blundering around I managed to grasp the rudiments of the interface and modify some of the presets. Now I'm mapping these to run to the basics of my set. (I'm told documentation of the presets is coming, so this will be a quicker process).

As I started to realize the depth of what the SoftStep does, all the interface modes begin to make sense. Every single thing is customizable, from what kind of footwork the buttons respond to, to how the lights behave (do you want a green light when you press?), to how you want to page through your banks. I'm not even scratching the surface of this pedal yet. So I'd rather have a complex, nested interface where I can control any and everything, to an out-of-the-box pedal that is not customizable at all.

So far I've got one "scene" (or what I would call a bank) that sends Program Changes on Channel3 to MIDIPipe and one that sends notes to Ableton on Channel1. Each scene is accessed by going left or right with the navigation arrows. When I'm in my program change scene, the navigation up and down arrows increase or decrease in increments of 10, just like you'd expect.  Now I have to make another scene of notes for Ableton, and two scenes for SooperLooper and do some more experiments with how I want the pedals to respond to my edwardian boots and how the red and green lights should behave.

That's it for now.

Happy times!!

Zoe