> Step by step

3. Roll your own MIDI control surface with the MIDI Designer Pro 2 app

1 As with the Lemur app, our iPad needs to be connected to our desktop box. In this case, we need to go to the MIDI Setup window (Cmd-2) and click Network. We’ll add a Session in My Sessions. We should now see our iPad listed in the Directory. Now to the iPad…

2 We’ll start MIDI Designer Pro 2 on the iPad and choose Connect on the splash page. We can see our computer listed. Back on the desktop box, we’ll click Connect to lash our computer to the iPad. Now we’ll see that ‘No Connection’ has vanished from the upper-right corner of MIDI Designer.

3 Now, under the Actions tab, we’ll select New from the File Actions category to begin a new session, after which we’ll have a blank slate. In our DAW, we’ve created a couple of MIDI tracks, both routed to the target hardware. For one, we’ve assigned our USB controller as the input. For the other, Session 1 is the input.

4 Next, back on the iPad, we’ll tap More and choose Design from the dropdown. This unlocks the Design Mode, allowing us to add and edit stuff. We’ll tap in the upper-left corner to make some options appear. We can scroll to Knob and then tap Add 1. A knob appears onscreen. We can tap and drag to resize it.

5 Double-tapping the knob brings up its Properties. Now tap the MIDI button to assign the knob to the choose the MIDI CC we’d like to use. For the sake of simplicity, we’ve chosen 7 (Volume). We’ve set the Default value to 0 ( 0%). Next, we’ll tap properties and change the Label name to “Volume”.

6 Now tap Exit Design Mode. Once we’ve done so, our knob will be live. If we play and hold a note on our keyboard controller and then give the knob a spin, we’ll hear the volume of the synth change accordingly – assuming it responds to MIDI CC 7, that is! We can now continue adding knobs and sliders as we like.