ROLI Support

Studio One 5.3 and above now features native MPE support for both VST2 and VST3 plugins. Users with this version can skip this guide and simply load their MPE plugin as normal.

Users of previous versions may still achieve per-note modulation by following the steps below.

This guide will show you how to load a multi-timbral instrument like Equator into Studio One to use it with the Seaboard RISE and GRAND.

Short answer

Open ROLI Dashboard and select MIDI Mode: MPE and MPE Zone: Lower. Next select a channel range. With MPE on and MPE Zone set to lower, channel 1 is the global channel, and channels 2 onwards are note channels. The number of note channels you select will determine the expressive polyphony.

In Studio One:

• Add the Seaboard as a New Keyboard in the External Device preferences page, enable all channels and ‘Split Channels’. Deselect all filters.
• Load a multi-timbral plugin such as Equator into your song's mixer.
• Make several tracks to receive the global channel and note channels according to the range you have selected in ROLI Dashboard. These are your voice tracks.
• Set the input of the voice tracks to channels 1 and up from the Seaboard.
• Route the output of the voice tracks to channels 1 and up to the multi-timbral plugin.

Download Studio One templates for the Seaboard RISE and GRAND below.

Detailed answer

While the Seaboard uses multiple channels of MIDI to achieve polyphonic dimensions of touch, Studio One doesn’t support multiple channels of MIDI input to a single instrument track.

To fully unlock the Seaboard's expressive potential in Studio One, you will need multiple Instrument tracks in your song. Each track will receive a channel from the Seaboard and send the MIDI data to a multi-timbral synth.

Step 1: ROLI Dashboard Settings

Open ROLI Dashboard from your applications/programs folder. 

Take a look at the MIDI and Pitch sections in the bottom-right and select:

• MIDI Mode: MPE
• MPE Zone: Lower
• No. MIDI Channels: 15*
• Pitch Bend Range: 48

* Smaller channel ranges can be selected. Fewer channels will reduce the number of tracks required in Studio One, but will also reduce the expressive polyphony. More details on selecting the ideal range here. In this example we are using 15 channels (in addition to the MPE global channel, channel 1). This will provide 15-voice expressive polyphony, but you can just as easily use a smaller range which will require fewer tracks and provide fewer voices of expressive polyphony.

Step 2: Add the Seaboard to Studio One’s devices

In Studio One you need to add each of your external devices in the preferences  menu.

1. Go to Preferences ➝ External Devices
    
2. Click Add...
3. Select New Keyboard from the list on the left.
4. Under device name, type "Seaboard"
5. Highlight all MIDI channels
6. In Receive From select the Seaboard
7. Under Filter select none.
8. Select Split Channels
9. Press OK

Step 3: Add a multi-timbral instrument

Press your keyboard's F3 and F6 keys to show Studio One's Mixer, and Instruments List.

Add a multi-timbral instrument such as Equator to your song. You don’t want to create an instrument track yet so just drag the plug-in from the instruments pane on the right, to the mixer below to add it to your song without creating a track.

Step 4: Equator’s MIDI/MPE Settings

1. Open the Equator plugin from the host track in your your Studio One set.
2. Click on menu (☰) in the top right of Equator and open the  MIDI/MPE Settings menu.
3. In the MIDI/MPE Settings menu, ensure that Equator’s MIDI Settings match the ones we set in ROLI Dashboard in Step 1.
   • MPE: On
   • Channel Range: 2–16 (unless you previously chose to use a smaller range in ROLI Dashboard)
   • Pitch Bend Range: 48

Step 5: Create several voice tracks

Next we want to create a number of MIDI track, which together will receive each channel of MIDI from the Seaboard and send it to Equator.

The number of channels (and tracks) will determine the Seaboard's polyphony in your song. You can set the Channel Range in ROLI Dashboard.

Go to Track ➝  Add Tracks, and select

• Type: Instrument
• Count: In this example we are using a channel range of 2–16. Remembering to include the global channel on channel 1, we will create 16 new tracks in total. If you selected a smaller channel range, you won't need as many tracks. For example if you select a range of 2–5, you will create 5 tracks.
• Pack Folder selected – this is a useful way of keeping the multiple tracks organised.
• Input: Seaboard CH 1 – hover over the Seaboard input for a second to reveal the individual channels
• Ascending selected
• Output: Existing Instrument; Equator CH 1
• Ascending selected

By ticking the two Ascending options, Studio One will set the each new track to use the next channel up, so in this case we will have 16 tracks using channels 1 - 16 as inputs and outputs. Your song's tracks should now look something like this:

By choosing to have a Pack Folder we can now press the record arm button on the top track and it will apply to all 16. The same is also true for the Solo and Mute functions.

Step 5: Recording

With all 16 Instrument tracks record-enabled, simply record MIDI in the usual way. The notes will be spread out over all 16 tracks but will play through just one synth. Editing Pitch-Bend and Aftertouch is done on a channel by channel basis.

If you are creating your own patches in other synths, remember to check that you have set the synth to respond to each of the Seaboard’s dimensions of touch in order to unlock the Seaboard's full expressive potential.