MIDI control of KPA?

  • Has anyone tried using a MIDI pedal controller with a KPA as an alternative to the full Kemper floor controller? Since I do a lot of theater pit gigs, I'm thinking of how to use the least floor space possible. I already must have a rack for power, tuner and mixer (acoustic instruments), so I'm thinking either rackmount KPA and a MIDI board or the Stage. The Stage looks nice, but it's a LOT bigger than a minimal MIDI controller, and space is always at a premium in pit gigs.


    For performance, my needs are generally limited to patch changes and wah/volume pedal. I don't tweak settings on the fly, and I haven't used discrete pedals in ages (FX are all rack-mount).


    Bottom like - can anyone speak to whether the KPA can be operated effectively with just a MIDI controller?

  • I did this for some time with the Boss FC50. A quite compact MIDI controller and one of the few I could think of which are even smaller than the Remote from Kemper. Basically I was able to do what I wanted, switch slots on my performances. Additional foot switches (meaning additonal space...) helped me to switch certain things in the Kemper and Bank up / Bank down on the Midi controller.


    To be honest: With the Remote being only 5cm deeper, same width, I was very happy when I swtichted to the Remote and had so much more options available. I use it a lot to switch the stomps, morphing etc. - I understand what you're after and if you can limit yourself to a handful of options than it will work fine.


    Finally: A lot of the Midi controllers out there are way bigger than the Remote, e.g. Behringers FCB1010 which brings also built in pedals.

  • I did this for some time with the Boss FC50. A quite compact MIDI controller and one of the few I could think of which are even smaller than the Remote from Kemper. Basically I was able to do what I wanted, switch slots on my performances. Additional foot switches (meaning additonal space...) helped me to switch certain things in the Kemper and Bank up / Bank down on the Midi controller.


    To be honest: With the Remote being only 5cm deeper, same width, I was very happy when I swtichted to the Remote and had so much more options available. I use it a lot to switch the stomps, morphing etc. - I understand what you're after and if you can limit yourself to a handful of options than it will work fine.


    Finally: A lot of the Midi controllers out there are way bigger than the Remote, e.g. Behringers FCB1010 which brings also built in pedals.

    I already have an old ADA (from the MP-1 days) that is a good bit smaller than the Remote, and a LOT smaller than the Stage.


    My thinking is that the Stage or Rack are basically the same price, so it's a choice of the Stage on the floor, or a much smaller MIDI board on the floor.

  • I use MIDI to fully control Kemper from Logic Pro X, so my patches changes are synchronized with backing tracks, This way I don't have to carry remote at all. Similar thing can be achieved with any MIDI controller as long as you can program it to send particular CC messages. Your strategy will depend on how many buttons you have at your disposal. In theory you could get away with just a single button (relative method from manual) as long as you set "Performance Load" option to "Slot 1" or "Keep Slot". In such case you'd have to organize your performances in order of their appearance and over time you'd just advance to next performance. If you have more buttons you can take advantage of more lots within a single performance, and you could even be able to move in both directions (one performance "up" and "down"). Wah / volume will work too, as long as they send CC#1 and CC#7 respectively.

  • I use MIDI to fully control Kemper from Logic Pro X, so my patches changes are synchronized with backing tracks, This way I don't have to carry remote at all.

    That really a cool concept. Very interesting. If it fits the music you play and the kind of performance you make. But I've seen MIDI based switching of several units / instruments etc. in performances of Tangerine Dream. All fully programmed upfront and still very lively. Like that. Nevertheless not applicable for my kind of rock music 8o


    piotrmaj what kind of music do you play in that way?

  • We don't have a drummer or bass player, so most of the time we play to a backing track (we have 2 guitars playing live - I have Kemper, my friend has Helix which is fully MIDI-automated as well from Logic). We play various music: rock, a bit of punk and metal. I find automation very handy for metal and all situations where I have to also adjust guitar settings at the same time. For example in one song we start with hard riffs but at some point I switch abruptly to acoustic guitar profile which I play with piezo pickups. So there is a lot of things going on and everything need to happen in a split of a second: playing guitar + changing patch + changing pickups on a guitar. This proved to be too much for my brain: so I automated patch changing and now I need to only remember about changing pickup (and I wish I had midi controllable guitar :-).


    In one song (also metal) we have a ramp setup via MIDI to gradually distort guitar signal to switch from nice melodic intro into metal verse. The beauty of this setup is that in Logic we can "paint" the ramp curve as we want it to be and it is consistent every single time.


    Of course this setup only makes sense when we play to a click track (which we typically do in case of metal), so there is no room for improvisation of any kind - but for us it useful and fun - we focus only on playing - the rest is automated.

  • Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro is an option for you?

    External Content youtu.be
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.


    Or the MeloAudio ?

    External Content youtu.be
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Be the force with you ;)

  • Hi! The band I work for uses PC and CC commads sent from the Cymatic player to Kemper. Tour we did this spring went perfectly and OS we used back then was 5 something. Now Kempers have been updated to 7.3 and somehow most of the CCs doesn´t work. We have tried different Kempers, Cymatics, USB sticks, midi cables, old/new files. I also tried OS 6 when all the performances except 1 was deleted(I had a backup). Has anyone experienced similar issues after updating to 7.3? Thanks.