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MIDI Controllers

RENDERWAVE talks to any class-compliant MIDI controller for input. A short list of controllers also gets full pad-LED feedback, so the physical pads light up and blink in sync with the screen.

Connecting a controller

Section titled “Connecting a controller”

Plug your controller in over USB (or connect it over your existing MIDI setup) before or after RENDERWAVE is running. The app scans CoreMIDI automatically.

Open Settings → MIDI to see what is connected. Each detected device shows up under Connected Controllers with a name and a status line. If you plug in a new controller while the app is open, hit Rescan MIDI Devices to pick it up without restarting.

MIDI channel

Section titled “MIDI channel”

The Settings MIDI Input section also has a Channel picker, set to channel 1 by default. If your controller is transmitting on a different channel, RENDERWAVE will not react to it until you either set the picker to match your controller’s channel or set it to All to listen on every channel. If nothing on your controller is triggering anything in RENDERWAVE, this is the first thing to check.

Controllers with pad-LED feedback

Section titled “Controllers with pad-LED feedback”

RENDERWAVE ships a dedicated LED driver for these controllers. When one is detected, its pads take on RENDERWAVE’s colors automatically: an idle glow for anything assigned to a pad, and a brighter active state when that pad is triggered.

  • Akai APC40 (original / mkI): the 8x5 clip-launch grid lights up in green, red, or yellow, with the active pad blinking.
  • Akai APC40 mkII: full RGB across the 8x5 grid, with a slow ambient color wave breathing on unassigned pads and a brighter blink on whatever pad is active.
  • Akai APC mini mk2: full RGB across its 8x8 pad grid, plus a chase animation on the track and scene buttons.
  • Novation Launchpad Mini MK3: full RGB across its 8x8 grid, with the same idle-wave and active-blink behavior as the APC drivers.

Detection is automatic and based on the controller’s MIDI device name, so you do not pick a profile by hand. In Settings → MIDI, a device with a driver shows a lit bulb icon and a line like “APC40 mkII driver, Mode 2, LEDs active.” A device without a matching driver shows a crossed-out bulb and “No LED driver, input only.”

Controllers without a dedicated driver

Section titled “Controllers without a dedicated driver”

Any other class-compliant MIDI controller (a generic pad controller, a MIDI keyboard, a fader box, whatever you have) works for input. You can map its notes and CCs the same way you map a supported controller. See MIDI mapping. You lose only the automatic pad lighting, since RENDERWAVE has no LED protocol on file for it.

The bookmark grid and hardware layout

Section titled “The bookmark grid and hardware layout”

RENDERWAVE’s onscreen bookmark grid (open it from Performance view) is an 8x5 grid of pads, laid out to match the Akai APC40 mkII clip-launch grid one-to-one. On an APC40 or APC40 mkII, each row and column on the hardware lines up with the same row and column onscreen.

In Settings → MIDI, the Bookmark Colors section shows this same 8x5 grid. For each bookmark you can set:

  • An idle color: how the pad looks when it is not active.
  • An active color: how the pad looks when triggered.

Tap either swatch to open a color picker. Each tile also has a small play button that flashes the pad for a moment, so you can confirm the color change reached the hardware.

Controllers with a wider grid than 8x5, like the APC mini mk2’s 8x8 layout, use the same idle and active color pair per mapped pad. They give you more physical pads to map.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”