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GORDIUS LG - GORDIUS Little Giant

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1. LG internal menu not available There is one last setting with regards to the way you can scroll through banks and songs In chapter 8 5 about banks we mentioned the possibility to define a default switch for each bank This causes the switch to be selected automatically when scrolling to that bank Of course auto selecting a certain switch will also cause the messages linked to that switch or preset to be sent While this is a very interesting feature in order to have your setup adapted to each new song in the setlist with a minimum of foot clicks it might also be undesired behavior when quickly scrolling through a large setlist Therefore an option is available to add a delay before autoselect With this option activated a 0 5 second delay is added before any messages are sent to auto activate a certain switch Result is that you can easily scroll through a large setlist without sending any intermediate patch messages for each song or bank you scroll through Only when you stop scrolling the messages for the default switch of the last selected bank will be transmitted after the 0 5 second delay Autoscrolling By the way it is good to know that the Little Giant has auto scrolling capabilities built in when you keep the up or down switch pressed for longer than 1 second you will automatically advance through the bank list or setlist until the switch is released Also don t forget that another very efficie
2. Ready to edit the first patch Clicking the Edit button will enter edit mode for the selected patch You can edit 3 properties for the patch its name its Messagestream 1 and its Messagestream 2 Use the rotary knob to scroll through all 3 properties With the Name property visible click the name PATCH 1 You are now ready to edit the patch name 4 6 2 Editing the patch name Clicking the knob toggles between character selection mode and character edit mode In character selection mode you can scroll through all 16 characters and select the character you want to change When going to character edit mode the current character display is inverted and you can scroll through all available characters in order to modify it A character can be deleted by selecting the back arrow character a new character can be inserted at any place by selecting the forward arrow character You will find the 2 special arrow characters at the end of the list of available characters aye O klo PATCH Editing a patch name be After playing with the text editing possibilities cancel all changes to the patch name by selecting the undo or return icon k If you would have clicked the accept icon the name changes would have been permanently stored Getting started with the Little Giant 40 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 6 3 Specifying MIDI messages After leaving patch name editing scroll to the n
3. J triogered by Cc 7 W triggered by Cc 13 triggered by CC 0 triggered by CC 0 LG internal menu not available As explained in chapter 7 2 it is possible to enable external triggering of LG presets and expression pedal setups Here you can assign any CC number to each of the 4 available expression pedals An incoming CC message with this number and using the MIDI channel specified in the global setup see chapter 17 2 4 will trigger an expression pedal message just as if one of the external pedals had been used Remark As mentioned before the value transmitted by any expression pedal can be displayed temporarily on the LG display Go to chapter 17 1 8 to read about enabling this feature Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 133 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 4 Patch setup LG Control Center Patch setup Patches Stomp boxes Momentary effects Lumos Boost XTC Standby Patch Stomp box Momentary effect details Advanced settings Name Grouped stompboxes Blue Boost FCB Relays Analog Delay Lumos Boost Delayed activation Big Solo 50 1 Cave Reverb Flang Trem Phas Patch content Chorus RC Booster Main D Detuned Detuned Solo Flanged Delay Delay cc Reverb cc First message stream Pitch 1 Chorus cc Whammy Solo Pi Leslie Leslie Solo Let s Dance XTE CFX y ctrichange al 113 a 127 XTC Standby opus Second message stream Vib
4. LG Control Center Global setup Miscellaneous LG switch 9 01 and 10 02 Use as preset switches Use as Bank Extension switches Use as Direct Bank switches Use switch 9 as D1 Use switch 10 as D2 LG internal menu MAIN MENU GLOBAL SETUP HARDWARE LAYOUT DIRECTIDIRECTE Global settings Hardware lagout Hr oof ExprPedals Dont use D1 D2 j e eea Setup a FOCB18148 control Ollse Di only ES onas ae Service Direc 1Pec Ollse Di and D2 al a Pas i ERE HA Ee DES olse D2 only a With these options you can specify what switch 9 D1 and switch 10 D2 of your Little Giant will be used for Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 119 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The most common scenario is to use them as regular preset switches However if you want to make use of 1 or 2 direct banks see chapter 8 5 and you don t have external switches to do the direct bank switching you can sacrifice switch 9 and or 10 for this task A third option for the switches 9 amp 10 apart from using them as preset switches or as Direct Bank switches is to use these switches to select one specific part of an extended bank See chapter 8 5 for info about the extended bank functionality This option is only available when no external slave controllers are connected to the Little Giant 17 1 17 Keypad mode LG Control Center Globalsetup Miscellaneous keypad mode keypad sw
5. and Mom effect presets After these 3 clicks your preset setup screen should look very similar to your patch setup screen Indeed a preset is created for each available patch the name of each preset is identical to the name of the patch it is linked to When selecting a preset in one of the lists its properties are displayed in the right side details panel completely similar to the Patch setup screen When you click any of the patch presets the Main patch dropdown box of the preset shows the patch it is linked to You will notice that after clicking the Sync buton each preset is linked to another patch Similarly each stomp box preset mentions the linked stomp box patch in its detail panel and the momentary effect preset mentions the linked mom effect patch At this point we will not cover all the different options you see in the preset details panel The only option we will use here is the stomp boxes list which will be set up in the next topic Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 28 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 9 2 Specifying the initial stomp box states As mentioned above we want to define the different initial states for the stomp boxes when selecting any of the patches To do so we start by selecting the PATCH 01 preset In the right side details pane we click the button next to the Stomp boxes listbox A popup lets you select one or more stomp boxes select both defined stomp
6. available message properties are depending on message type Appendix B Little Giant menu structure 177 180 GURDIUS Little Giant PRESET properties PRESET HAME 3 r i J ip GRESET 1 ACD PATCH PATCH PRESET 1 NOE JOBE Ro ca PRESET 1 di ae a EN Cho change El C disable J J Kl EH E properties available for PATCH PRESETS only not for STOMPBOX PRESETS or MOM_EFFECT PRESETS 1 setup tem for each connected expression pedal BANK and SPECIAL BANK properties 4 rico E CESREBGH f Mom effect PRESET 4 1 setup item for each available switch internal extemal or FCB switch name and default switch properties not available for special banks global direct directz Appendix B Little Giant menu structure 178 180 GURDIUS Little Giant SONG properties In my head El In my head AEEAULT ORESET iL Hew Year s Eve SETLIST WAME E ollo Ue eh deh ne arta flew Year s Eve 10 ens Eve E l UE Hew Years eve eYou would know AGOMTEMT ego with the of EYOU WO E P miMexicols oJ Et A m4 NEAD E REE E El ii Appendix B Little Giant menu structure 179 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Appendix C Little Giant technical specifications Size 340mm x 165mm x 70 100mm L x W x H 13 4 x 6 5 x 2 8 3 85 L x W x H Weight 2 25 kg 5 0 Lbs Power 9 V DC connector 2 1mm x 5 5mm positive center 1
7. A CHORUS S a 4 CHORUS a 9 DISTORTION w v Y DISTORTION x lo Stomp boxes OOO our demo setup so far Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 30 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 10 Bank setup At this point you are ready for a last important step in the initial setup assigning presets to foot switches of your Little Giant In order to do so click the Bank setup tab of ControlCenter Y All presets can be organized in a total of up to 250 different banks An important feature is that each type of preset can be freely assigned to any switch in each of the banks There are no predefined layouts for patches stomp boxes or momentary effects one bank can contain nothing but patch presets while another bank can contain nothing but stomp boxes or any mix of both Presets to be reused in all banks can be linked to a switch of the global bank This way they are available in all banks which do not have any other preset assigned to that same switch 3 10 1 Creating banks As you can see 3 special banks are always available We already mentioned the lt Global gt bank which can be used to assign globally available presets There are also 2 direct banks named lt Direct1 gt and lt Direct2 gt These banks are directly accessible by clicking the D1 or D2 switch of your Little Giant At least this is the case when you have enabled the Dire
8. 3 9 3 Specifying the expression pedal behavior for each preset In this first demo setup we will leave all expression pedal settings in the preset details panel to their default value no change Remember in a previous setup step you have defined the VOLUME expr pedal setup to be the default setup for your single external expresssion pedal The pedal will be used as volume adjustment for all patches By selecting another option instead of no change you could override this default behavior and give the expression pedal a specific function for certain presets We won t do this for now Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 29 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 9 4 What do we have up till now The presets we just created look exactly the same as the patches we created earlier Patch Presets Stomp box Presets Mom effect Presets PATCH 01 CHORUS SUSTAIN PATCH 02 DISTORTION PATCH 03 PATCH 04 and this are the detail panels for the different patch presets Preset details Preset details Name _Main patch 2 Name Main patch PATCH 01 PATCH 01 PATCH 02 PATCH 02 Sain boxes a Momentary effects Stomp boxes Momentary effects E CHORUS So E 5 V CHORUS Le a F DISTORTION xl E DISTORTION pme a E E Preset details Preset details Mame Main patch Mame Main patch PATCH 03 PATCH 03 z PATCH 04 PATCH 04 Stomp boxes Momentary effects Momentary effects
9. DELAY REVERB Send all extra patches PITCH 1 CHORUS PITCH CHORUS a sequentially simultaneously Use as trigger expression pedals 1 amp 2 expression pedals 3 amp 4 WHAM SOLO External expr pedal 1 External expr pedal 2 SOLO al SOLO GREEN No change No change Use default Use default Disable 5 Disable 0 Activate listed Activate listed p E LG internal menu MAIH MEHO MESSAGE SETUP Presets Banks PE p e PRESET SETUP PRESETS FPFECTE presets Patch presets a E El A El fl PRESET SETUP PRESETS iros e EN ER zon Tete Special banks i 3 E H Eo PRESET SETUP PRESETS Stompbox presets LPR EE PES EER PRESET 3 PRESET 4 3 E H Eo E Little Giant setup reference preset setup 143 180 GURDIUS Little Giant After creating patches it s time to create a preset for each patch As explained throughout the user manual a preset adds some extra info to a patch like which stomp boxes need to be activated together with the patch which expression pedal setups need to be used etc You will notice that the preset setup tab looks very similar to the patch setup tab Indeed you again get 3 separate lists one for each preset type These lists can contain up to 186 patch presets 32 stompbox presets and 32 momentary effect presets Whenever you select one item in any of the 3 lists the details for that item are displa
10. MODUL DETUNED WHAMMY CHORUS MODUL DETUN WHAMMY CHORUS MODUL DETUNED WHAMMY e J w LG internal menu not available Little Giant setup reference bank setup 153 180 GURDIUS Little Giant So called preset dependency rules are a powerful feature to make your setup completely dynamic Selecting any preset can cause your current bank layout to completely change through the use of these rules This is explained in chapter 9 1 In order to create a new rule just select the appropriate bank and click the button below the dependency rule table This will automatically create a rule for the first available preset of that bank For that reason you need to assign presets to some switches of the bank first before you can start adding preset rules for that bank After you have added a rule you can modify the triggering preset for that rule that is the preset which will cause the bank layout to change Modify the triggering preset by double clicking or right clicking the first column of the rule which shows the preset name 7th PITCH 7th SOLO Select rule triggering preset A dropdown box will be shown containing all possible trigger presets That are all the presets which are assigned to any of the current bank switches If a rule exists for each of the bank presets the dropdown box will be empty and no more rules can be added After defining the triggeri
11. slave controller for the Little Giant This functionality needs to be enabled globally by checking the checkbox accept MIDI Control At the same time you specify the MIDI channel which will be used by the slave controller If the FROM FCB TO FCB ports are configured to be used as regular MIDI ports see previous topic both FROM FCB and MIDI IN port can receive trigger messages Any PC message received on the specified MIDI channel can be used as trigger message to select an LG patch preset Similarly an incoming CC message can trigger an LG stompbox preset or momentary effect preset A CC value higher than or equal to 64 activates the stompbox or momentary effect while a value lower than 64 deactivates it You can freely assign any PC number to any patch preset and any CC number to any of the stompbox or momentary effect presets This is done in the preset setup ER See chapter 17 5 4 for setup of external triggers for presets Additionally external continuous controllers can be used to trigger the LG expression pedal setups this way taking advantage of all the advanced LG features like output range scaling virtual footswitches custom defined sweep curves engage value etc ER See chapter 17 3 12 for setup of external triggers for expression pedal setups Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 123 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 2 5 MIDI filtering LG Control Cen
12. special banks the global bank and the 2 direct banks The lower section offers room for all your custom made banks There are a few slight differences between both sections e The special banks cannot be renamed e You cannot define a default switch in the global bank e You cannot define any dependency rules for the global bank The global bank is not really a bank like the others you just use it to specify default preset assign ments to any of the switches Whenever a switch assignment is left open in a certain bank the preset defined in the global bank for that switch will be used Little Giant setup reference bank setup 150 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The 2 direct banks are banks which can be directly accessed with a single click on the dedicated D1 and D2 footswitches Therefore the Direct and Direct2 banks can be a very handy place holder for commonly used presets In order to use these banks you do need to activate the D1 and or D2 switches as explained in section 17 1 16 The number of columns in the bank display table also depends on the possible extensions connected to your device each of the 2 external switches will add an exta column when activated in the global setup When you specify that a slave controller is connected you immediately get an extra 10 columns in your table You can even add 2 or 3 chained FCBs resulting in a maximum of 32 switches per bank and 32 corresponding column
13. 127 sound 128 of bank 1 128 sound 128 of bank 1 128 sound 1 of bank 2 129 sound 1 of bank 2 255 sound 128 of bank 2 4 256 sound 128 of bank 2 998 sound 103 of bank 8 998 sound 102 of bank 8 999 switch off keypad mode 999 switch off keypad mode Remark BankSelect message A bank select message consists of 2 ControlChange messages ES 0 0 MA CC 32 mm where nn Is the MSB most significant byte of the bank number and mm is the LSB least significant byte of the bank number In our case we can access 8 different banks 998 sounds This means that the MSB value is always zero while the LSB can vary between 00 for bank 1 and 07 for bank 8 However some devices only support the use of 1 CC message for Bank Select Moreover there is no standard on which of both CC messages are used in that case some devices expect a CC 00 others expect a CC 32 Therefore the LG lets you choose between any of the 3 possibilities in order to cover all possible implementations Ef See chapter 17 1 18 for setup of the BankSelect options Using keypad mode 88 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 13 2 Direct Preset Select keypad mode As mentioned before you can use keypad mode to directly select any preset in your setup The keypad mode works very similar to the Direct ProgramChange mode described above Main difference is that in Direct Preset Select mode you will automatically leave keypad mode after
14. Presets pank Seppe pu MAIN MENO SONGS Global Ai You would know Fenn d A a Go with the flow HE als dl y MAIN MENO Global settings BOTSA Tribute Prezets amp banks i ds pir ES CS eae nee ose ee ees x i Hew Year s Ewe eee Ea Ed 8 E Ea Appendix B Little Giant menu structure EAN Patches 6d a H Ea PATCH SETUP STOMPEOXES a A E Patches E Bl El El PATCH SETUP MOM EFFECTS Expr pedals ROM DER _ m POM ETTECES a Patches Ea 6 bl H El PATCH SETUP Expr pedals Stomp boxes Hem JPET SCE ee E Pate i Fes Ea PRESET SETLIP PRESETS FFECE presets Patch presets Ea 6d Ay El El PRESET SETUP ERRE i PERRERA i ect presets i Patch Presets 6 la E Ea PRESET SETUP El z E KI By H E EAHES ra E IDI ECET Direct2 gt HORNS ro 2 E T OE EJMI E ENN E Eo 1 2 2 2 176 180 GURDIUS Little Giant EXPR PEDAL properties VOLUME ontrolt g Controlhanse del MEERN are a E e E VOLUME El ER TEAL HUMBER i i El VOLUME PE E h VOLUME PRALE ATHER nl ib VOLUME E VALME AIT TUE no al only for messagetype Control hange PATCH STOMPBOX MOM EFFECT properties MIDI MESSAGE MESSAGE TYPE EE El 2 p S E EE j ERTER TEn E Fe E si E E BE El PATCH 1 panaka PEAN Aii LA
15. The expression pedals can be regular resistive type pedals containing a potentiometer which is turned when rocking the pedal the wiper of the potmeter needs to be connected to the tip of the stereo jack The value of the potmeter is not critical an auto calibration circuit in the LG supports a wide range of possible resistance values Moreover the Little Giant contains the necessary digital processing logic to modify the sweep curve of the expression pedal Therefore it is not important if the used potmeter is a linear type or a log type the LG can convert it into any desired curve type 6 External switch inputs The high quality Neutrik mono jack connectors can be used to connect 2 extra external switches to the LG The switches need to be momentary normally open switches connected to a mono jack expression momentary pedal switch As an option the Little Giant can also be ordered with 4 expression pedal inputs instead of 2 pedal inputs 2 switch inputs That product version is called the LG 4 The Little Giant a quick overview 11 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 2 2 The Little Giant Top View GORDIUS Little Giant 1 PLED graphical display The graphical display allows a user friendly menu setup along with different runtime display modes with adjustable font sizes The PLED technology requires no backlight each pixel acts like a small LED on its own resulting in a very bright display with extremely hi
16. entering the 3 preset digits This allows you to activate or deactivate effects by clicking their corresponding footswitches right after preset selection One restriction you can only enter a preset number between 001 and 128 even if more than 128 presets were defined in your setup 13 3 Direct Bank Select keypad mode Another option for keypad mode is to use it as direct bank select Just type any bank number between 001 and 128 and you will directly go to that bank After typing the number you automatically leave keypad mode and you can start using the presets stored in that bank If a default switch was defined for the bank this switch will be automatically engaged after bank selection Obviously starting from the selected bank you can use the up and down switches to move to the next or previous bank in your setup Or you can again click the keypad mode switch of your setup in order to enter another bank number You will understand that it is a good idea to have the keypad mode select preset defined in the global bank This way the switch is available no matter which bank you just selected 13 4 Direct Song Select keypad mode Direct song select works completely analog to direct bank select since a song is always linked to one specific bank It s this bank which will be directly selected after typing the song number If you have defined default presets for your songs these will be automatically activated after son
17. patches you want them to send 2 different messages one for activating the effect and one for deactivating the effect The MIDI message s sent for activating the effect need to be stored in the first message stream while the message s sent for switching the effect off that is sent when clicking the stomp box switch for a second time need to be stored in the second message stream In most cases a stomp box will use a ControlChange CC message to toggle its state Such a ControlChange message always has 2 accompanying data values a control number specified in the Data1 column of the message stream table a control value specified in the Data2 column of the message stream table Control values of 127 and 0 are commonly used for on off effects a value of 127 switches the effect on while O switches the effect off The control number to be used depends on the controlled device Info about which value to use for each of the controllable effects in a device can be found in the manual or MIDI implementation chart of that device Many devices also have a learn function which enables you to do the setup with arbitrary CC numbers and then let the device learn the used MIDI message for each effect by listening to the transmitted messages during a short test procedure In our demo setup select the CHORUS stomp box which you created previously add a CtrliChange message to its first message stream
18. the sweep is just part of the message stream which ends when the sweep is finished The slow sweep on the contrary is just launched by the containing preset after that you can continue using your footcontroller activating stomp boxes or selecting other presets The slow sweep just keeps running sending its periodic control messages together with any other preset related messages You can stop a slow sweep by using a preset which contains a similar slow sweep with delay value 0 This preset will act like a stop button for the sweep As mentioned already the fine and coarse sweeps behave differently a sweep in a stomp box will be interrupted as soon as you deactivate the stompbox a sweep in a momentary effect will be interrupted as soon as you release the effect switch and a sweep in a patch can be interrupted by selecting another patch 14 3 Message loops Message loops are another neat feature of the Little Giant Two GORDIUS specific messages are available to create loops they are called RepeatFrom and RepeatTill and are always used in pairs The result is easy to predict as soon as the RepeatTill message is encountered in a message stream the message generator jumps back to the RepeatFrom and again starts sending all the messages between the two markers A delay can be specified within the RepeatTill message it lets you insert a programmable delay between each repetition In the RepeatFrom message you can specify the number
19. 1 item in the list needs to be selected before the move remove add return toolbar appears So if for instance you want to add an item first select the preceding item and then click the add icon If you want to add an item at the top of the list just add it below the first item then move it 1 place up Whenever the initial list is still empty an add icon is always available for adding the first item to the list This is what the multiple item menu and this is what it looks like looks like before any item is selected before any item is added How to use the built in Little Giant menus 104 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 3 5 Toggling the state of listed items There are two cases in which you want to define the state of an item in a list a patch preset can contain a list of linked stomp boxes for each stomp box you can define if its state is on or off when selecting the patch preset a set list contains a list of songs For each song you can define if the song will be played or skipped In these two cases the toolbar contains an extra toggle icon activating songs in a set list or setting stomp boxes on in a patch preset are both done in exactly the same way select the item and then click the toggle icon to activate or deactivate the selected item The item is marked with a filled or hollow circle to denote its current state Example of the toggle option to change the stomp box initial statu
20. 59 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 7 2 Other external controllers Apart from the full fledged slave controllers mentioned in previous topic it is also possible to control the Little Giant from any external MIDI controller which can send simple MIDI PC ProgramChange or CC ControlChange messages You can simply connect this type of controller to the MIDI IN port of the LG or to the FROM FCB port if this one is configured as a regular MIDI IN port In fact there are many MIDI floorboards available on the market which do have the possibility to switch patches using a single PC message and activate or deactivate effects using a single CC message It is perfectly possible to use such a third party floorboard to trigger any of the more complex presets of the Little Giant This turns the floorboard into a slave controller for the LG Main difference with the slave controllers mentioned in previous topic is that the full fledged slave controllers use two way communication in order to keep their LEDs in sync with the Little Giant at all time The external controllers mentioned in this topic just send commands to the LG and don t receive any feedback In general this should not be a major problem since the patch switches sending PCs and stompbox switches sending CCs are completely in line with the concept of activated patches and stomp boxes within the LG so the LEDs in most cases will behave consistently Only problem is that t
21. FCB index 2 Pressing key 1 8 during startup gives the FCB index 3 After power up the FCB slave controller will show on its display AS soon as you power up the Little Giant it will establish connection with the slave controller the FCB LED on the LG will turn on and the FCB display will change from to displaying its current unit index which is 01 02 or 03 Right after upgrading the FCB with the LG slave controller firmware it is impossible to predict which unit index the FCB will use Therefore the one time procedure described above is necessary to specify the correct index The maximum supported number of switches in a Little Giant bank is 32 This can be accomplished by adding 2 chained FCB1010 slave controllers and 2 external switches to your 10 switch Little Giant When adding a third FCB1010 its switches will simply duplicate the functionality of the Little Giant internal switches It might be most logical to extend your LG with an FCB which you give index 1 resulting in 20 directly availabe presets per bank On the other hand you might want to use the slave controller simply as a duplicate floorboard on large stages for instance behaving exactly the same as the main LG floorboard In that case simply assign index 3 to the FCB and it will automatically duplicate the LG behavior without the need for any specific programming for the 10 FCB switches Extending the Little Giant
22. Firmware download is disabled in the LG Enable it and try again When you did follow the previous steps correctly your Little Giant will immediately react Its BUSY LED will start blinking and the display will show that the download is in progress Downloading Firmware Please w it After the firmware download which will probably take no more than a minute or so you need to reboot the Little Giant by turning off the power and turning it on again Please reboot nou At startup you will notice the updated firmware version number being displayed in the splash screen 18 4 After the download Control Center will take a few more seconds to reinitialize its communication with the controller If you would encounter any communication problems right after the controller reboot you can force reinitialization by clicking the refresh button in the Communication tab first and the connect to Little Giant button after that Remark the new firmware version displayed in the Little Giant Info field Doing firmware upgrades 169 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 19 Troubleshooting As you have read in this manual the feature set of the Little Giant is immense This makes it a pretty complex device despite its nature of being merely a MIDI foot controller In this chapter we give a few tips and tricks which might help you when you re stuck with an LG problem Switches LEDs and expression pedals The Little Giant cont
23. Getting started with the Little Giant 52 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 5 Overview of the Little Giant connections 5 1 USB The Little Giant implements a Class Compliant MIDI USB interface What does that mean When you connect the LG to a USB port of your PC it will automatically be recognized as a USB audio device whether your PC is a Windows machine a Linux based machine or an Apple Mac No need to install any device specific driver the LG only uses the MIDI protocol the way it is defined in the MIDI USB standard This makes it really plug and play just plug in the USB cable and wait till the PC has correctly recognized the device and activated the default MIDI driver to be used with it ee More details about this procedure in chapter 3 3 of the LGCC getting started guide Turning on the power Whenever your Little Giant is powered on and connected to the USB port of your PC you will be able to select it from the list of available MIDI IN and OUT ports in any application which makes use of those MIDI ports Beware as the used driver is a generic one the Little Giant MIDI ports will possibly be given a general name like USB audio device in your MIDI applications too Some operating systems will extract more info from the USB communication with the device and will show Little Giant as device name instead Now what is the exact functionality of the USB port on the Little Giant Actually it just funct
24. Or finally it is also possible to use them as 2 selection switches for the Direct1 and Direct2 banks The functionality of these direct banks is explained in detail in a later chapter As you can see on the screening of your Little Giant preset switches 9 and 10 can alternatively be used as D1 D2 switches If you want to use direct banks but you don t want to lose 2 preset switches for controlling them the use of 2 external switches can be the optimal solution fl See chapter 17 1 1 for setup of the external switch options Soa J Switc The external switches need to be momentary normally open switches connected to a mono jack 7 4 Expression pedals The Little Giant has 2 inputs for connecting external expression pedals These are high quality Neutrik stereo jack connectors Any resistive type expression pedal can be connected With this we mean passive pedals containing a potentiometer which is turned when rocking the pedal the wiper of the potmeter needs to be connected to the tip of the stereo jack The value of the potmeter is not critical an auto calibration circuit in the LG supports a wide range of possible resistance values A common problem with expression pedals is the lack of a standard interconnection schema Result is that some pedals connect the wiper to the tip of the stereo jack others connect the wiper to the ring of the stereo jack If your expression pedal doesn t seem to work or only gives a lim
25. actually using and you can give them a more descriptive name for instance just name the MIDI channels after the devices which are listening on each channel When doing so the dropdown items are limited to the relevant channels only and they are displaying more meaningful names Similarly the Data dropdown boxes which now just contain the possible data values of 0 127 can be extended to contain the names of data variables defined in global setup Definitely an advanced feature which we will cover in detail in a later chapter The Message type dropdown box contains a list of all possible tyoes of MIDI messages to choose from extended with 13 GORDIUS specific message types which are available for advanced features like customizable delays message sweeps message repeat loops metronome or tap tempo functionality Check out the appendices of this manual to see a complete list of all supported messages In this simple demo setup we will limit our example to the most common MIDI messages which are the PC ProgramChange and CC ControlChange messages Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 23 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Finally let us mention here that each MIDI message stream can also be visualized as a series of bytes You can do so by clicking the Raw data button This replaces the table containing a list of messages with a multi line text field The text field shows you the list of bytes which will be s
26. after the song it will be used for If you organize your setup this way creating all songs can be done as a last step with just one single click Indeed clicking the Sync button will create a new song for each bank which is not yet assigned to any song Each new song will have a different bank assigned to it and the song name will be identical to the bank name After that you can still modify all of the song properties This is pretty straightforward as there are only a few properties to set up 17 7 1 Song name LG Control Center Song details Mame Wishing Well LG internal menu In my head Ta m te tel oo E 2 A song name can be anything up to 16 characters long 17 7 2 Song bank LG Control Center Song details Bank BANK 27 LG internal menu In my head BAHE Ed Here you specify which bank needs to be selected when browsing to the song Little Giant setup reference song setup 156 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 7 3 Default preset for a song LG Control Center Song details Default preset none Patch preset Stompbox preset Effect preset LG internal menu In my head DEFAULT PRESET PEEBULT ERESET eo Nia otis AA Stomp Hom effect Optionally you can specify a default preset for each song This preset will be automatically selected when browsing to that song This functionality is very comparable to the defau
27. amp FPreset GISDIAV iii AE AA A A AA Aia id 78 RAS Frese name ASI Scio eehictit saciiicaiti ne cb ous act Sachi a gad ced Sect E cedtdesde asad 78 10 4 4 Setlist 8 Setlist XL ANSONAY oooccccocconnncnnnnncncnnononcnnnnnnonannncnnnnnononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnncnnnnnnns 79 Table of contents 4 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 4 5 Banklist amp Banklist XL ONSPIAY oooooononncnnninnnnncnnnconannconcnnnancnnnnnnnns 10 46 MIDEMONHOF IS DIV asii 10 4 7 Extra display OP IONS oooooonccnnccccnncnonoonnannnnnononanennnonanncnnnnonannnnnnnnnnns 11 The rotary button also a realtime MIDI control knob oocccccooccnccco 12 MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo occccoccncccccnccncnnononnnnncncnnnnncnnncnononenonos 12 1 The metronome Sync Master function oooccccnnccccccconnncnnnnncnnnnonancnnnns 12 2 Tap temer 12 39 DO SV a e e et ae il 13 Using keypad mode for random NAVIGATION occccconncncoconcnnccnnnnnconanonnnnnnoss 13 1 Direct ProgramChange keypad MOG ccccsseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesaeeeeeeeeeas 13 2 Direct Preset Select keypad mode cccccccccssseeeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeas 13 3 Direct Bank Select keypad MOd8 coooocccnccccconccccccnoccnncnononcnnncnnnancnnnnnnos 13 4 Direct Song Select keypad MOE ccccseeeececcseeseeeeeeaeeeeeeesaeeeeeeeeeas 14 Advanced features delays Sweeps and lOODS ooccccccccoccconccccnncccnnnnnanccnn
28. and therefore it can contain up to 32 presets in total As mentioned in a previous chapter the Little Giant has 10 preset switches by default but this number can be extended by connecting external footswitches or slave controllers The preset comes in 3 types patch preset stompbox preset mom effect preset You were introduced to this concept while running through the getting started guide at the beginning of this manual and it will be revisited in detail later on in this chapter Below the preset you find the lowest element in the hierarchy again in 3 flavors the patch the stompbox and the momentary effect As you will probably not be familiar with this distinction between presets and patches from other products it might look confusing at first sight The diagram should help in showing the meaning of both a preset actually is the combination of a patch and a number of expression pedal setups Remember it s a preset element which is linked to each of the controller switches Indeed clicking a switch will not only send the MIDI messages of the selected patch but it will also re initialize the expression pedals if needed Moreover the schema shows you that a patch preset is more powerful than a stompbox preset or mom effect preset in a patch preset you can also define which stomp boxes need to be activated or deactivated when selecting the preset and more A more detailed description is given in the next topics of this
29. as described above ControlCenter retrieves some general info about the unit like controller model firmware version etc This info is displayed in the Little Giant Info field Litte Giant info Type LG Serial number 0123 Hardware revision 1 0 Firmware version 1 6 0 Little Giant Info How to use LG Control Center 97 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 5 3 Setup Info field The setup info field gives you some interesting info about the size of the current setup The Little Giant setup uses a dynamic type of memory allocation This means that there is no fixed amount of memory reserved for each of the different setup elements like in most other MIDI controllers The big advantage of this approach is that you can choose to define a few patches which send large streams of MIDI messages while other patches send only a single message The setup will only take as much memory as it needs to store the total of these different messages The downside is that you don t have a clear view on how many data you can still add to your current setup The setup info field gives you that information it shows you the percentage of actually occupied memory for each of the setup element types Setup info Patch setup memory 22 py Preset setup memory 53 mu Bank setup memory 10 py song setup memory 55 loaded setup fle eshon Setup info When you create a new setup you will notice that a small part of the bank setup memory 1 is alr
30. bank Indeed you can choose your preferred way to automatically initialize your setup for a next song Or you can combine both possibilities In that case the default preset of the song is selected first and right after that the default switch of the activated bank together with its linked preset is selected Ef See chapter 17 7 for song setup The Little Giant setup structure 71 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 9 Making a setup dynamic Everything in the Little Giant design is targeted toward enabling a very flexible and extended setup while keeping the floor controller footprint as compact as possible Therefore several options are implemented which enable you to dynamically change the function of any controller switch This means that it is possible to give one switch a different meaning depending on the currently selected preset 9 1 Preset dependency rules Dependency rules give you the possibility to modify the whole current bank layout based on a selected preset In the bank setup you start with defining the initial layout of the bank by linking a preset to each of the switches After that you can start defining dependency rules for this bank First choose one of the presets within that bank as the rule triggering preset Then define an alternative bank layout which you want activated when the rule triggering preset is selected All you need to specify are the changes which you want to apply to the bank You can con
31. banks of up to 128 sounds and sends the necessary BankSelect MIDI commands see below when a sound from a different sound bank is selected Next to the possibility to type any PC number to be transmitted you can also use the Up and Down keys to send an increasing or decreasing PC message starting from the current one This way you can very easily scroll through all available sounds of the controlled device In chapter 9 3 we explained a different way to obtain the same functionality while not in keypad mode through the use of data variables and the IncVariable DecVariable commands Keeping the up down switch pressed engages automatic scrolling doing a fastforward through all your sounds Remark ProgramChange range As mentioned in topic 17 1 5 you have the choice to use ProgramChange numbers in the range 0 127 or 1 128 in the different setup parts of your Little Giant This is just a matter of convention This choice also applies to keypad mode When using the range 1 128 you need to type 001 in order to select the first sound this will send command PC 0 When using range 0 127 typing 000 will select the first sound again by sending message PC 0 Below you can see how the full range is split into different banks depending on the chosen PC display range PC Display range 121 PC Display range 1 lt I2 O00 switch off keypad mode 000 sound 1 of bank I x 001 sound 1 of bank 1
32. boxes and click OK By adding the 2 stomp boxes we have specified that patch 1 will switch on both the CHORUS and DISTORTION effect Actually that s not what we want we want both effects to be off instead All we need to do is uncheck the 2 checkboxes which are shown next to the stomp box names Indeed this means switch off both listed effects whenever PATCH 01 is selected Preset details Mame Main patch PATCH 01 PATCH 01 Stomp boxes Momentary effects Eos Elf a E DISTORTION hd e ell Ji PATCH 01 contains 2 deactivated stomp boxes If we wouln t add any stomp box to this preset setup both stomp boxes would simply keep their latest state when PATCH 01 is selected an effect that is activated would stay activated an effect that is not active would stay deactivated So whenever you want to specify the initial state of a stomp box when selecting a preset no matter if you want it to be on or off you first need to add it to the stomp box list of that preset After that use the corresponding check boxes to define the on or off state for each effect Defining the stomp box state for the 3 remaining patch presets is easy just follow the same procedure but make sure the CHORUS checkbox is checked for preset PATCH 02 the DISTORTION checkbox is checked for preset PATCH 03 and both checkboxes are checked for preset PATCH 04
33. complete message content of each of the stomp boxes can be overwritten when selecting a new patch preset This kind of functionality is very powerful but equally heavy to set up It is practically impossible to manage a complex setup using patch variants with the built in menus of the Little Giant Therefore you need to explicitely enable the use of variants in your setup and once enabled you can no longer modify the different patch contents locally on your Little Giant you need to use the Control Center in order to set up or modify the MIDI stream contents Ef See chapter 17 4 8 for setup of patch variants ee See chapter 17 9 3 for enabling the use of patch variants 9 5 Random MIDI data Maybe just a fun gadget but actually our users report that this is more than just a gadget it gives some really interesting possibilities in sculpting your sound Using random MIDI data is not about how to make your setup behave differently depending on what s currently selected but it definitely adds some dynamics to your Little Giant behavior that s why we add a topic about it here Instead of specifying the data value used in a certain MIDI message ControlCenter allows you to select a constant named randon for that data value This will cause a new random value to be used in this MIDI message each time you send it This means that a certain switch will modify a different parameter or maybe set a different value for the same par
34. control each of the connected devices and them group those together into a single preset in order to control all devices with a single foot click This way you can reuse existing patches and store different combinations of them into different presets This reduces the total number of required patches When choosing the option to send patches sequentially none of the extra patch messages is sent when clicking the preset footswitch for the first time Only the main patch messages are transmitted When clicking the same footswitch a second time the main patch messages are not sent instead the messages of the first extra patch are transmitted A next foot click transmits the messages of the next extra patch When the end of the extra patch list is reached the main patch is selected again This sequential behavior is useful in a completely different scenario than the simultaneous behavior You can use it when you want to combine a sequence of different actions into a single footswitch It is very much comparable to some of the other options to make your setup dynamic like for instance the use of dependency rules explained in chapter 9 1 The choice between sequential and simultaneous extra patches is not available in the internal LG setup menus A preset created using the interal menus always uses the sequential behavior On the other hand a preset created in ControlCenter can be further edited using the built in m
35. create a setup for Depending on this setting other parts of the ControlCenter user interface will be adapted options will be disabled or enabled number of columns in the bank setup table are adapted etc Therefore it is important to select the correct product type right after creating a new setup You will not be able to download a setup to a different type of controller The 3 main controller types are LG M LG and LG X Each type also has a variant with non default number of expression pedal inputs Default layout is 2 expression pedal inputs plus 2 external switch inputs for the LG and LG M and 4 expression pedal inputs for the LG X Optionally an LG M or LG can be ordered with 4 pedal inputs or an LG X with 2 pedal inputs and 2 switch inputs Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 106 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Slave controller LG Control Center Global setup Board layout Slave controller M Using following slave controller Roland Fe 300 Roland Fe 200 Mo m fy fa 9 Behringer FCB1010 1 l unit ett E et tet E LG internal menu MAIN MEMO GLOBAL SETUP HARDWARE LAYOUT Wi obal Settings Har auSrS Taggut f af FaprEedala J ro ii Setup Slave con ep ongs Extras y Setlists Service al Fe As mentioned in chapter 7 1 you can connect up to 3 FCB1010 slave controllers to your Little Giant Each extra co
36. data variables 9 4 Patch content variants Patch content variants are the most extensive way of making a setup dynamic With this concept you can make the complete content of a patch that is the MIDI messages it sends dependent on the currently selected preset This goes one step further than the MIDI channel or data variables which modify just an element within the patch content This time for each patch you can define its main patch content consisting of the 2 MIDI message streams and next to that you can define completely independent variants again consisting of 2 new MIDI message streams For each such variant you specify which preset activates it Whenever that preset is selected the content of this particular patch is simply overwritten with its variant content and next time you activate the patch which can be a regular patch a stomp box or a momentary effect the variant content will be sent instead of the original content Patch content variants can be used when you want to take the scenario of previous topic one step further We mentioned dynamically changing the behavior of stomp boxes by modifying the ControlChange number of each stomp box through the use of a MIDI data variable However in some setups changing the stomp box behavior might require more than just a ControlNumber change MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 73 180 GURDIUS Little Giant This is where the patch variants come to the rescue the
37. done by switching off the unit connecting a standard MIDI cable between the MIDI OUT and FROM FCB ports and switching the unit back on A warning message will appear asking confirmation before doing the factory reset Of course such a reset is only necessary if the unit would refuse to behave correctly and therefore can no longer communicate with ControlCenter If communication is no problem you can clear the current setup simply by creating a new empty setup in ControlCenter and downloading it to your unit Setup related problems At all times use the MIDI monitor tab of ControlCenter to inspect the MIDI messages transmitted by your Little Giant If these look OK to you next step is to check if the same messages appear on the built in monitor screen of the LG If that s not the case your PC is not forwarding the messages correctly see previous topic about routing If the messages are OK at that stage but your connected gear does not react as you expect you might need to double check if the controlled device is listening to the correct MIDI channel If the transmitted messages appear to be different from what you expect take a closer look at the different possibilities to make transmitted messages preset dependent to see if this could be the Cause Did you specify anything under Global setup gt value changes for channel xxx which could cause an incorrect MIDI channel to be used Do you use data variables or ma
38. effect LED behavior combined with the full power of a patch preset Momentary effects are more limited As the name suggests they are really conceived to control a single effect which is active while the switch is being pressed This is a different use case than a trigger or control switch although in practice there will be many situations where both options can be used interchangeably Little Giant setup reference preset setup 148 180 GURDIUS Little Giant When you select the option Use as trigger there are two additional options to choose from the LED of the trigger will go out after releasing the switch but what happens with the LED of the previously selected patch preset In some cases you want that LED to turn on again because it indicates the currently active patch or sound In other scenario s clicking the trigger preset deactivates the previous selection and you want to indicate this by having no patch LEDs on Therefore an extra checkbox in ControlCenter labeled Don t change active preset offers you the choice between both options 17 5 9 Expression pedal behavior LG Control Center expression pedals 1 amp 2 expression pedals 3 amp 4 External expr pedal 1 External expr pedal 2 No change No change Use default Use default Disable Disable Activate listed Activate listed e pedal lExpr pedal LG internal menu PRESET
39. etc This kind of functionality in general just expects a few ControlChange messages to trigger the built in taptempo logic of the device itself Of course this is easy to accomplish with a simple preset containing a single CC message so this doesn t require any of the GORDIUS taptempo functionality described above MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 85 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 12 3 Sync slave The switch LEDs can not only be used to display a pre defined metronome beat or a tapped tempo You can also visualize an incoming MIDI Clock signal with the LEDs They will shortly flash on each beat which is once for each 24 incoming MIDI Clocks Also the actual BPM value of the incoming clock can be displayed on the LCD screen This realtime display smoothly follows any tempo changes of the incoming clock ER See chapter 17 10 3 for setup of the sync slave options HOTSA Tribute Tanoaled Up BANK He HM Funk 126 BFM displaying BPM of incoming clock MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 86 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 13 Using keypad mode for random navigation In many cases a setup can be organized in a way to sequentially step through a performance after creating a setlist a simple next click selects the next song Within the bank layout for that song you can line up the presets you want to activate during the song In other situations like a jam session for instance you prefer to have more random acces
40. feature later In ControlCenter the input range is modified by double clicking the corresponding cell in the expression pedal table This opens the range select dialog which is covered in detail in topic 17 3 5 It is important to notice that specifying a reduced input range does not result in a limited effect adjustment range An internal recalculation of the pedal position ensures that the reduced pedal sweep range is used to do a full parameter value sweep This means that you don t lose any parameter values at either side of the adjustment range unless you explicitely want to do so Indeed the range of outgoing values can be reduced through the output range adjustment covered in the next topic Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 127 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 3 6 Output range LG Control Center 000 127 LG internal menu VOLUME E PAAR AT HEE engl H VOLUME pYAE AT TIE Acc i With this setting you define which value range of the controlled effect needs to be spanned with a full sweep of the expression pedal By default this range is set to its maximum which is from value O to value 127 However you can choose to specify a smaller range Thanks to internal interpolation this will result in a more precise control over the effect within the limited range Another possibility is to choose a tip value which is lower than the heel value This results in a reverse a
41. first setlist is activated by default when powering up the Little Giant Changing the active setlist is done by moving the desired setlist to the top of the list in the setlist setup Each setlist can contain up to 50 songs out of a total of maximum 250 available songs If you need even longer setlists there is an option to link all setlists together As a result the Little Giant then behaves as if it has one giant setlist while you still can manage the different sublists separately and you can easily change the order of the sublists Each song within a setlist can be marked as played or skipped Skipped songs are simply not visible while scrolling through the setlist This is a very convenient way to make small one time changes to a setlist Ef See chapter 17 8 for setlist setup Ef See chapter 17 1 3 for chaining setlists The song setup is equally straightforward Apart from specifying the song name up to 16 characters long you simply define which bank needs to be activated when you select the song Optionally you can also specify a default preset for the song That preset is automatically selected when you reach this song in your setlist The default preset doesn t even need to be part of the activated bank it can be some kind of hidden preset which does whatever MIDI initialization needed for that song You will notice that this default preset functionality is very similar to the default switch property of a
42. global setup topic and all other display modes will be skipped When using the rotary knob as described above you will always scroll through all available display modes The global filter setting only refers to the display modes scrolled through using a footswitch ER See chapter 17 1 11 for setup of the desired display modes during footswitch scrolling MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 77 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 4 1 Details display The details display gives you an overview of the currently active setlist song bank and preset Additionally you can use the rotary knob to scroll through all switch assignments for the current bank Doing so does not select any of those presets it just shows the name of the preset linked to each switch QOTSA Tribute current set list Tanaled Up current song BARK 64 current bank AM Funk current preset shown switch preset for shown switch 4 Switch Ol PF kecti solo Details display mode 10 4 2 Bank amp Preset display In Bank amp preset display mode the current song name or optionally the current bank name is displayed on the top half of the screen spread over 2 lines The lower half of the screen shows the currently selected preset within that bank A big font size is used in order to have good readibility when standing in front of the floorboard There are also a few options to temporarily overlay the preset name with the currently active pa
43. is possible to specify more than 1 setup here This will cause the expression pedal to do a combined adjustment of different independent settings Little Giant setup reference preset setup 149 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 6 Bank setup LG Control Center Bank setup Banks Global gt GREEN BLUE lt Direct1 gt PITCH1 PITCH2 REVERB lt Direct2 gt a XTC FX XTE BO XTE BO General 01 FLANG 7th PITCH LESLIE General 02 Slapback SLAPBACK ANALO BIG SOLO LETS DA Looper CAVE MULTIPI SHIMMER LOOPER a LG internal menu MATH MEHO MESSAGE SETUP SE O o Presets A 5 i iBank s z ony E E Semen BAHE be Ea E El DI H E The bank setup in ControlCenter is done by filling in a bank setup table This approach has the advantage of giving a nice overview of your complete setup at all time The column size is optimized to have the assignments of all 10 switches displayed without horizontal scroll bar However if this view truncates too much of the preset names you can switch from compact view to wide view at the bottom of the screen Wide view ensures that all preset names are fully displayed a horizontal scrollbar lets you scroll through the complete setup Editing the cell content of the table can be done by right clicking the table cell or by double clicking it The bank setup table is divided in 2 sections The upper section contains the 3
44. just mark them as skipped and they will not appear in your setlist when scrolling through it However after that its just a single click to add these songs to the setlist again just mark them as played again Little Giant setup reference setlist setup 160 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 9 The use of variables 17 9 1 MIDI Channel variables LG Control Center Global setup i Variables MIDI Channels MIDI Channel names Value changes for Alesis SR 18 Looperlative LP 1 ChannelSelect OFF Ableton Live Channel04 SiGe ny LG internal menu not available The use of MIDI Channel variables is explained in detail in chapter 9 2 The Variables tab of Global setup is the place to do the setup of those variables Just check as many MIDI Channel items as you use different MIDI channels in your setup and leave all other entries unchecked Then specify a meaningful name for each of these items and specify the required value for the MIDI channel This will make the MIDI Channel selection during patch setup very straightforward A second optional step is to define rules which change the MIDI Channel value for any variable In order to define such rules just select the variable in the MIDI Channel names list and add entries in the rightside list labeled Value changes for You can add an entry by clicking the button which pops up following dia
45. last transmitted MIDI message which used this specific data variable Then it retransmits this same message with updated variable value As an example suppose you would like to use the rotary to browse through all sounds in a MIDI controlled sound module A way to achieve this would be to activate a preset which contains a message ProgramChange Variable 01 The global variable setup allows you to specify an initial value for the variable If you have assigned this same Variable 01 to the rotary button for realtime control you can actually browse through all sounds with the knob when turning the knob clockwise or counter clockwise the datavariable is incremented or decremented and the ProgramChange Variable 01 MIDI message is transmitted to the sound module Finally you can also assign the Tempo function to the rotary button This is very handy when using the built in metronome or taptempo function which is explained in the next chapter An initial MIDI Clock tempo can be programmed in any preset The tempo can be modified by tapping a taptempo switch But a very precise realtime adjustment of the tempo is possible through the use of the rotary knob if the tempo function is assigned to it By turning the knob the current BPM can be increased or decreased and its corrected value is shown on the display The rotary knob assignment can be done globally through the global setup in ControlCenter But it is als
46. message can be used to define an adaptable metronome with a certain initial BPM value This initial tempo can be adapted by tapping the preset switch When doing so the tempo will be adjusted and the new BPM value will be displayed on the LCD screen Of course transmitted clock messages will also adapt to the new tempo When using tap tempo it is possible but not necessary to define an initial tempo the way you do with a metronome When specifying an initial tempo of 0 the actual tempo is defined by measuring the time between the first 2 foot taps In this mode the click which selects the taptempo preset does not yet start the tempo measurement this first footclick selects the preset and arms the taptempo mechanism without starting it The 2 next foot taps will initialize and start the taptempo message stream If you have enabled the feature to send MIDI Clock messages with the taptempo preset you have some additional options you can choose on which button click you want to send an additional MIDI Start message This can be on the 3 4 or 5 click which gives you the possibility to launch a MIDI slave sequencer at the tapped speed starting on the 3 beat 1 2 3 4 beat 1 2 3 4 or on the 5 beat 1 2 3 4 Go Apart from that you can also choose to send a MIDI Start as soon as you select the taptempo preset A MIDI Stop is transmitted when switching to a different preset ER See chapter 17 10 for setu
47. metronome User interface MIDI Routing Variables Miscellaneous Controller type Slave controller External switches LGM Litte Giant Module Using following slave controller no external switches LG Little Giant 2 external preset switches LG X Big Little Giant 2 external up down switches LGM 4 Litte Giant Module w 4 expr i 2 external D1 D2 switches LG 4 Litte Giant w 4 expr pedals LG X 2 Big Litte Giant w 2 expr Expression pedals Number of expr pedals 1 LG Control Center screenshot The Little Giant Control Center is a Windows application which can be downloaded from the GORDIUS website at www gordius be It is a very powerful and user friendly tool which allows you to manage every single aspect of your Little Giant It lets you create and backup patchdumps upgrade LG firmware monitor MIDI traffic of your unit etc You might be surprised to see this tool mentioned in this early overview chapter as if it were a major part of your unit Actually it is Although it is perfectly possible to program your Little Giant from scratch using the built in menus we still prefer to consider this PC application as an integral part of your rig during initial setup The tool really helps in giving a good overview on your current patch setup and more important it opens up highly advanced features which are too complex to manage through the local setup menus Of course once your setup has been finalized you no longer depend on the PC
48. more natural to proceed to the next song by using the Down switch instead For this reason the global setup gives you the option to choose the preferred behavior separately for banks and for songs Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 111 180 GURDIUS Little Giant LG Control Center Globalsetup 7 Userinterface When reaching the last song When reaching the last bank 0 stick to the last song stick to the last bank go back to the first song go back to the first bank proceed to the next setlist LG internal menu not available Another option which can be customized here is the preferred behavior when you reach the end of the list banklist or setlist You can choose to stick to the last item in the list or to jump back to the first item in the list as in an endless loop Specifically for setlists there is one more option When reaching the last song of the current setlist the LG can also jump to the first song of the next setlist This means that you have the possibility to link all setlists together and make the LG behave as if it has one giant setlist instead While a single setlist has a size restriction of 50 songs this option gives you the possibility to link a maximum of 10 different setlists together and scroll through all 250 songs sequentially LG Control Center User interface Up Down switches autoselect Add a delay before autoselect Global setup
49. of repeats If you specify 0 the messages are continuously repeated until you interrupt the loop Breaking the repeat loop is done in a similar way as interrupting fine or coarse sweeps by releasing a momentary switch by deactivating a stomp box or by selecting another patch Advanced features delays sweeps and loops 91 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 14 4 Temporary blocking of MIDI transmission One more feature which might be handy in very specific situations It is possible to prepare a certain combination of MIDI messages but keep them ready to be transmitted on your sign For instance you could build up a certain complex sound by combining the dry sound with a number of effects But instead of having all effects activated as you click the different stompboxes you might prefer to prepare the sound first and then hit an apply button which activates all effects at the same time This can be done through the use of a GORDIUS specific BlockTransmit message which can be added at any place in a preset message stream In our example you would prepend the sound selection message with a BlockTransmission ON message This allows you to select the sound and then click the different stompbox switches without any actual sound change The Apply preset can simply contain a BlockTranmission OFF message Hitting this button will cause all MIDI messages prepared by selecting the different stomp boxes to be
50. or off by checking or unchecking the according check box in that list Any stomp box which is not added to the list will not change state when the preset is selected There is only one exception to this rule in chapter 17 4 5 you have read about the possibility to define stompbox groups Suppose you add a stompbox which is part of such a group to the stompbox list of a preset with its checkbox checked In that case the stompbox will be turned on when selecting the preset but also any other currently active stompbox within the stompbox group will be turned off automatically So in this specific case it is sufficient to add the one stompbox which needs to be turned on to the stompbox list In all other cases add all the stompboxes which need to be set in a certain state whether it is on or off When using the internal menus of the Little Giant you can toggle the required stompbox state by clicking the radio button shaped toggle icon This one has the same meaning as the checkboxes in the stompbox list of ControlCenter Remember there is a special case where you might not want to send any stompbox activation messages when selecting a patch preset This exception is covered in topic 17 1 13 Little Giant setup reference preset setup 146 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 5 6 Momentary effects LG Control Center Momentary effects _ LG internal menu PRESET 1 ets MOM BEEEGI Acne This feature is
51. or the Note Value and Velocity Channel and data values are not relevant when using MIDIClock messages Optionally an emphasis can be given on the first beat of each measure In that case the number of beats per measure needs to be specified The switch LEDs will flash a little brighter on each first beat and also different CC or Note values can be used for high and low beats This is why the low beat dropdown boxes are enabled as soon as the emphasis checkbox is checked 17 10 2 Global Tap Tempo settings LG Control Center Global setup LEDs and metronome send following msg on each beat Channel Message type MIDIClock High beat D1 D2 Low beat D1 D2 Send MIDI Start amp Stop message never when switching presets ontap 3 apTempo set BFI ta i TapT t BPM to 0 LG internal menu not available Unlike the global metronome discussed in previous topic there is no such thing as a global TapTempo function All taptempo functionality is activated through the GORDIUS specific TapTempo message in the patch setup However a number of global settings also apply to this preset specific taptempo The MIDI messages which can be sent on each metronome beat are also transmitted when TapTempo is activated When MIDIClock messages are used as message type some additional options can be set which apply both for preset dependent metronomes and for taptempo presets
52. preset and tip preset by double clicking or right clicking the corresponding cell in the expression pedal setup table A context menu lets you select any of the presets available in your setup This can be a patch preset stompbox preset or momentary effect preset the behavior of the virtual switch will be exactly the same as when clicking a footswitch linked to this preset Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 129 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Clear Select patch preset Select stomp box preset select mom effect preset Goto previously active preset Tip heel preset context menu An interesting extra option is to specify a virtual switch to select the previously active preset This gives you the possibility to select a certain effect preset like a wah preset for instance with the tip preset option moving the pedal fully tip down while moving the pedal fully heel down again deactivates this wah effect and selects the previous preset again This option is only necessary when activating the effect actually requires selecting a new patch preset In many cases the needed effect can be activated using a stompbox which doesn t deactivate the currently active patch preset In this case no need to use the previously active preset functionality since the preset is still active
53. sti att 56 64 MIBEMessage Mein acia A AN atiedoenavedd 57 7 Extending the Little Giantess a e a a aaa aa aiaa aaan Ea 58 EN E e neier a E ae a 58 Tie Otherexternal COMUOUCTS ii e a eee etme eee 60 Pd EXP Ss WINS ii 61 PA EXPreSSIOn pedals ii ta 61 8 The Little Giant Setup structures ia 63 A A 63 8 2 Patches stomp boxes and momentary effectS oocccoconcccccconcncoconcnnononnnnnonanonononcnnonenennnonos 65 8 9 Expression DCO ANSCUUIDS occasion trineo tte lostaja 66 94 Presolana count nee aaa valet ncasedee ann ao ane oes Mauna eens 68 Oa pl A A A 70 30 ASS SN ass eee second eel aboae Mos aede dee er Wein eo econ he eae leedd 71 9 Makingra Setup GAY NANG usamos ao 72 90 Preserdependencymles cional a 72 9 2 MIA channel VartaDles cintia dada 72 99 MID Cala Va Ai aa ecos do de e a e dd OL 73 OA Bailen content VAR ANS A 73 95 Randon WIND IG Airam olla 74 D6 A RAN 74 10 The LEDs and the graphical display oooccocccoccnncnncccconcnnncnononcnonononncnnnnonnnncnnnnnnnnncnnnonnnanennnnss 75 TOI SWCKEEDdiIMNMINO Modes annee a ese eee ieee ere laler 75 10 2 Extra functionality for the switch LEDS ooocccconnnncccccncoconnnnononcnncnnanonconancnnnonnnnonnnnnnnonancnnnnanens 75 TOS INGICATOR LEDS aia AE AAA a r D ed 76 10 4 The graphical LCD display cooonncnncccconncnncnononnonncncnnnnonnonononnnnnonononcnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnncnnnnnnnanennnoss 77 AT Detalls A ae ee eee e E 78 1042 BANK
54. the PC while you are in setup mode First leave all internal menus and only after that launch ControlCenter and click the Connect button Help I m lost If none of the above suggestions is of any use for solving the issue you encounter just contact us at info gordius be we will be glad to help you with any setup related questions you have Troubleshooting 172 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Appendix A supported MIDI and GORDIUS messages MI DI Command Data byte 1 Data byte 2 MIDI channel LG Syntax Program Change Program Number 116 PC nn Pitch Bend Fine Pitch Coarse Pitch PCH a er eee Channel Pressure Pressure Value 16 w MIDI Start Yo e o MED START MIDI Continue S MDT CONTINUE MIDI Stop eT STOP UO MIDI Clock MEDI CLOCK U MIDI Tick MDT TICK MTC Quarter Frame Timecode Value MTCOF vvv Song Select Song Number OE SNGSE vw Song Position Pointer SPP Fine Value SPP Coarse Value SPPTR fff ccc Tune Request eC CS TUNE REQUEST fate Sense Eee Po SYSTEM RESET Sysex TH SYSEX Sysex messages are multi byte messages Setup of these messages can be done through the Raw Data patch content view of Contro Center only Appendix A supported MIDI and GORDIUS messages 173 186 GURDIUS Little Giant GORDI US Delay Delay value gt gt DELAY SyncedDelay Delay value AY Finesweep Sweep step value o
55. the preset list Finally do the same for the 2 stomp boxes and the momentary effect but this time assign those effects to the global bank the first row in the Banks table Assign CHORUS to switch 5 DISTORTION to switch 6 and SUSTAIN to switch 7 Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 31 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Bank 02 can be left empty our small demo setup doesn t contain enough presets for 2 banks we ll just use this bank to allow at least a minimum of bank scrolling during our test and to demonstrate the usage of the global bank The resulting Bank setup should look like this lt Global gt CHORUS DISTORT SUSTAIN lt Directl gt lt Direct2 gt BANK 01 PATCHO1 PATCHO2 PATEHOS PATCH 04 BANK 02 Our demo bank setup As we will not define any songs or setlists in this first small demo setup this concludes our setup Ready to download and test 3 11 Downloading the setup to the Little Giant Select the Communication tab of Control Center The top of the screen shows a selection box for both the MIDI IN and MIDI OUT devices When your Little Giant was correctly detected by your PC after first startup see chapter 3 3 it will be mentioned in both drop down boxes possibly amongst other MIDI interfaces available on your machine Remember the Little Giant uses a generic USB driver this means that on some operating systems like Windows XP it will have a very general n
56. the trackbar markers toward the desired value A checkbox can be used to invert the output range resulting in a descending sweep curve The engage value is also entered using a trackbar While adjusting both the input and output engage values are shown The input value denotes the relative position of the expression pedal within its full range while the output value denotes the actual parameter value at the engage moment Select ranges Ranges for expression pedal setup Wah Input range Invert output range Engage value Start sending messages after reaching input value 028 output value 025 5 Cancel OK Input output range and engage value definition 17 3 8 Tip and Heel presets LG Control Center prev active Wah activate LG internal menu not available For each expression pedal setup you can define a virtual footswitch at the tip position at the heel position or both When doing so moving the expression pedal fully tip down will engage the virtual tip switch while moving the pedal back to its normal adjustment range will cause the virtual switch to be released The behavior is really as if you would have a physical switch mounted underneath the pedal tip like some expression pedals have Same thing applies for the heel switch As mentioned in a previous topic you can define the pedal zone used for engaging each of both virtual switches You can specify the heel
57. to link any preset to each of the 2 external switches Alternatively they can be used as an extra pair of up down switches or as Direct1 Direct2 switches see chapter 8 5 for info about direct banks By doing so you can access the optional direct banks without sacrificing switch 9 and 10 of your Little Giant for this see topic 17 1 16 about Switch 9 D1 and 10 D2 behavior Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 108 180 GURDIUS Little Giant External expression pedals LG Control Center Globalsetup Boardlayout Expression pedals Number of expr pedals 1 LG internal menu MATH MENU GLOBAL SETUP HARDWARE LAYOUT Rao EGF Errar a FCE ie sees eel Extern switches Setlists Service Directl Direct al k Up to 2 external expression pedals can be connected to the Little Giant or 4 if you chose for the LG 4 option With this global setting you specify how many external expression pedals you will actually be using This setting enables or disables some other parts of the setup like the default expression pedal assignments in the pedal setup tab or part of the preset setup dedicated to the expression pedal behavior Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 109 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 2 General LED settings LG Control Center Global setup LEDs and metronome LED settings never dim LEDs always dim LEDs dim LEDs if a
58. transmitted simultaneously resulting in an overall sound change Advanced features delays sweeps and loops 92 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 How to use LG Control Center A very effective way to learn to use the LG Control Center editor application is by following the Getting started guide at the beginning of this manual Over there you can find installation instructions and a step by step guide for using the application When you start up the editor you can distinguish following elements a menu bar containing the application menus File Tools and Help two quick access buttons located in the same menu bar QuickConnect and QuickDump 6 tabs containing all the elements for doing a Little Giant setup Global setup Pedal setup Patch setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup a Communication tab a MIDI monitor tab In this chapter we will not cover the actual setup topics which you find in the various application tabs All these are covered in full detail in a later chapter Here we will discuss all menus and options not directly related to the different setup elements Tr Little Giant Control Center File Tools Help QuickConnect W QuickDump E Global setup Pedal setup Patch setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup Communication MIDI monitor Board layout LEDs and metronome User interface MIDI Routing Variables Miscellaneous Controller type Slave controller External switches LGM Litte
59. types is the behavior of the LED accompanying the patch switch the currently selected patch is indicated at all time with an illuminated LED Only one patch at a time can be active so when selecting a new patch the LED of the previous patch will turn off A stomp box represents a certain effect chorus delay It can have 2 states ON or OFF Its LED reflects this state it is ON when the stomp box is activated and OFF when it is not active Each click on a stomp box switch will toggle its state between active and not active While only one patch can be active at the same time many stomp boxes can be activated simultaneously Selecting a stomp box will not deselect the currently active patch A momentary effect is only active as long as its switch is being pressed A good example is the sustain pedal for a synth As the LED indicates the effect activation it will only be ON as long as the switch is being pressed Just like stomp boxes selecting a momentary effect does not deselect the currently active patch As an example we will now create 4 regular patches 2 stomp boxes and 1 momentary effect Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 20 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 8 1 Creating patches Go to the Patch setup tab and click the button below the different currently empty patch lists click the Add button 4 times on the patch list 2 times on the stomp box list and 1 time on the momentary effect
60. values instead of the commonly used 7 bit values ControlCenter also allows you to select none as message type This can be used in the special case where you would want to use the expression pedal as a dual footswitch instead of a continuous controller In that case the tip and heel preset functionality see topic 17 3 8 can be used while the expression pedal doesn t send any continuous MIDI stream Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 126 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 3 4 Control Number LG Control Center LG internal menu VOLUME Obviously this setting is only relevant when ControlChange is chosen as message type In that case it specifies the ControlNumber to be sent 17 3 5 Input range LG Control Center 000 127 LG internal menu not available The expression pedal input range defines which part of the expression pedal movement range is actually used to do a full sweep You would think that you will always want to use the full pedal movement for continuous control adjustment However as you will see in topic 17 3 8 the Little Giant offers some possibilities to trigger a preset when reaching the tip or the heel position of the pedal By defining an input range smaller than the maximum 0 127 you can create a dead zone at either side of the sweep This dead zone can then be used as trigger zone for virtual footswitches You will read more about this
61. very similar to the previous one although it might not be used as frequently multiple momentary effects can be specified to be activated whenever the current preset is activated Just add them to the momentary effects list of the preset The MIDI messages for activating those effects are sent immediately after the main patch messages and linked stompbox messages are sent The effect release messages are sent when you release the current preset switch The setup is slightly simpler both in ControlCenter and when using the internal menus for momentary effects you don t need to specify a required initial state on or off when adding them to the list 17 5 7 Extra patches LG Control Center Extra patches Send all extra patches Little Giant setup reference preset setup sequentially simultaneously ACE PATCH PATCH 147 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Next to stomp boxes and momentary effects regular patches are the third type of patch which can be added to the preset apart from its main patch of course In this case you have 2 options you can specify whether the extra patches are to be sent sequentially or simultaneously When selecting the option to send the patches simultaneously the messages of all extra patches are sent immediately after the main patch messages You will typically use this type of extra patches for organizational reasons it might be handy to have separate patches to
62. with a second stream of MIDI messages coming from another device In order to do so just connect the MIDI OUT of that other device to the MIDI IN port of the Little Giant All messages of the external device will be merged together with the messages sent by the LG This merging is done in an intelligent way in order to avoid any chance of a clash which could corrupt the original messages Overview of the Little Giant connections 53 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 5 3 FROM FCB TO FCB The Little Giant contains 2 extra 5 pin connectors labeled FCB IN FCB OUT These are used to connect an external slave controller to the Little Giant A slave controller can be one or more Behringer FCB1010 floorboards a Roland FC 200 or FC 300 floorboard a GORDIUS slave controller GORDIUS slave controller hardware planned but not yet available Ef More info about using a slave controller can be found in chapter 7 1 Apart from the aforementioned controllers which provide full 2 way communication with the LG it is also possible to use any other brand of footcontroller as slave Ef More info about this feature is given in chapter 7 2 If you don t plan to use an extra slave controller the FROM FCB and TO FCB connectors can optionally be used as an extra set of regular MIDI connectors You can connect any external MIDI output to the LG input labeled FROM FCB and the MIDI messages will be nicely merged
63. 1 EXPR PEDAL 1 Cho change Bars ieee a disable no change fetes een en Deca El E For each of the connected expression pedals you can specify its behavior when the current preset is selected Default behavior is No change which means that the expression pedal keeps doing what it did before preset selection This is the easiest type of setup which will be sufficient in many cases for instance when an expression pedal is used for overall volume control of all presets In this case define the expression pedal behavior globally see chapter 17 3 11 and no further preset specific setup needs to be done If you want the pedal behavior to be depending on the currently selected preset you can define this in 1 of the 4 dedicated panels in the preset detail pane You have 2 toggle buttons labeled expression pedals 1 amp 2 and expression pedals 3 amp 4 Each of these buttons reveals a set of 2 setup panels for the corresponding expression pedals When an FCB1010 is connected the 3 amp 4 panels will be labeled FCB expr pedal 1 and FCB expr pedal 2 instead The option Use default needs to be set when you want to return to the default behavior The option Disable obviously disables the expression pedal The option Activate listed lets you choose the expression pedal setup s to be used for the current preset Indeed although this will not be needed in most of the cases it
64. 10 slave controller Then you specify the switch number The default switch of a bank is automatically selected when you scroll to that bank The result is the same as if you would have selected the bank first and clicked that particular switch right after that lt might be interesting to know that similar behavior can be obtained by defining a default preset for a song This is explained in chapter 17 7 3 In case you define both a default song preset and a default bank switch the default song preset is selected first and the default switch is activated right after that 17 6 3 Preset assignments LG Control Center PULSE chorus Clear SLAPBAC Select patch preset CAVE Select stomp box preset Select mom effect preset Goto Set as default switch LG internal menu BAHE 1 o PET E Eia a PRESET Z PRESET 4 This obviously is the main part of the bank setup You can assign a preset to each switch in each of the up to 250 banks This can be any of the three types of presets A separate menu option in the same context menu lets you clear any previous assignment again Little Giant setup reference bank setup 152 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 6 4 next previous previously active switches LG Control Center PULSE CHORUS Clear DETUNED SLAPBACK Select patch preset BIG SOLO CAVE Select stomp box preset SHIMMER Select mom effect preset Go
65. 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 4 5 Banklist 8 Banklist XL display When you don t wish to use the functionality of songs and setlists you can use the banklist display modes to scroll through all available banks of your setup Just like with setlists you can use the rotary knob or the up down footswitches to browse the list and you have a few options in the global setup of your controller in order to finetune the list browsing behavior you have the choice to use the up or down switch to go to the next bank and you can choose to stop scrolling at the end of the list or to jump to the start of the list again BANK Hib 5 T E mun BANK 6d BAHE 42 Banklist display mode Banklist XL display mode 10 4 6 MIDI monitor display This is a more advanced view which shows a list of all the MIDI traffic going through the Little Giant MIDI IN and OUT ports A pretty detailed knowledge of the MIDI standard and its messages is needed in order to analyze the content of the diagnostic display but it can also be used to merely check if any messages are entering or leaving the Little Giant Check out appendix A to see more details about the syntax used in this diagnostic mode to display the different MIDI messages Always keep in mind that the messages shown in this monitor view are the messages which are actually passing through one of the MIDI ports An arrow at the left side of the message line indicates an incoming message an arrow at the righ
66. 191 094 127 240 127 016 022 002 247 Raw MIDI data DEC format The data typed in the raw MIDI view is immediately checked for validity As soon as an invalid value is entered or as long as a multi byte MIDI message is incomplete a red warning icon notifies that a correction needs to be made BF 71 TF a F5 00 01 BE SE TF FO 7F 10 16 02 Icon in right lower corner notifies an error sysex message without closing F7 Little Giant setup reference patch setup 139 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The Delay Calculator tool in Control Center Delay Calculator Main First message stream CtriChange Delay CtriChange 1 Delay length A delay setting of 10 coresponds to 0 160 seconds delay 2 SyncedDelay length A delay setting of 10 coresponds to 0 160 seconds delay when using a MIDI Clock of 60 BPM 3 Sweep length A fine sweep with a step delay of 10 dle running from value 0 tillvalue 127 results in a total sweep time of 2 540 seconds When clicking the small calculator icon a helper dialog is opened which assists you in finding the correct data value for Delay SyncedDelay or Sweep messages in order to obtain a certain delay or sweep time The patch setup also contains a few more advanced optional settings 17 4 5 Grouped stompboxes setup LG Control Center Advanced settings Grouped stompboxes Stompbox groups Stomp box Green is always grouped
67. 20VAC 60Hz 7W or 230VAC 50Hz 7W AC DC converter included Footswitches 10 preset switches 1 Up switch 1 Down switch Switch 9 can alternatively be used for switching DirectBankl Switch 10 can alternatively be used for switching DirectBank2 Connections USB 1 x USB B type connector standard USB cable 180cm included MIDI 2 x 5 pin DIN connector for standard MIDI IN MIDI OUT Floorboard 2 x 5 pin DIN connector for connecting a slave controller Ext switches 2 jack inputs for configurable external switches Switches should make break contact between tip and sleeve Expr pedals 2 stereo jack inputs for external resistive type expression pedals Resistance value of the pedal may vary wiper needs to be connected to the tip of the stereo jack the LG 4 has 4 inputs for expr pedals and no inputs for external footswitches Appendix C LG technical specifications 180 180
68. Control Center setup tabs will be covered How to use LG Control Center 99 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 How to use the built in Little Giant menus If you followed the Little Giant Getting started guide in the beginning of this manual you will already be accustomed to the working and structure of the built in menus Appendix B of the manual gives you a full overview of the complete menu structure This chapter gives you a detailed overview of each of the menu types which you can encounter during the setup and how to use them 16 1 Navigating the menus Navigation is very straightforward While in runtime mode the mode in which the Little Giant starts up press the rotary knob for more than 1 second to enter setup mode The main menu is displayed Turn the rotary knob clockwise to scroll down the menu list turn counter clockwise to scroll back up Press the rotary knob to select a menu item When scrolling past the last menu item you reach the toolbar at the bottom of the menu which in many cases contains nothing but a back icon Select this icon to go one step up in the menu structure When selecting the back icon in the main menu you leave setup mode and return to runtime mode All changes are automatically saved It is also possible to leave the setup and return to runtime mode from any place in the menu structure hierarchy by keeping the rotary knob pressed for more than one second Also in this case all setup changes are automaticall
69. DI IN MIDI OUT FROM FCB TO FCB except for the USB cable Start up Control Center and click the Connect button in the Communication tab Double check that normal communication between Control Center and Little Giant is established Now you need to put the Little Giant in a special firmware upgrade mode This is another precaution introduced to avoid accidental firmware downloads Enter setup mode on the Little Giant by keeping the rotary button pressed for more than 1 second Then select the following item and click the accept icon MATH MEHO GLOBAL SETUP SERVICE FIRMWARE UPGRADE e ae SEN E Hardware layout Click tw to ExprPedal setup f 3 fi start firmware download process zala x J SS ES The Little Giant is now ready to receive the firmware upgrade as is displayed on its screen Ready to receive firmware Uporade Doing firmware upgrades 168 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 18 3 Downloading the new firmware from PC to LittleGiant Now you can load the firmware file into ControlCenter This is done through the menu option File gt Load firmware Select the lgf file containing the firmware upgrade After doing so the button labeled download new firmware in the Communication tab will be enabled Click the download button In case you didn t put the Little Giant in firmware upgrade mode as described above an error message will be displayed in Control Center and download doesn t start
70. Giant 10 The LEDs and the graphical display This chapter is not about what the Little Giant does but about what is shows The switch LEDs of the unit have some more functionality than what you logically expect from a floorboard And the graphical display is definitely of a higher standard than what you are used to in similar products 10 1 Switch LED dimming modes The main functionality of the switch LEDs is obviously to show which preset is currently active and which stomp boxes are activated But the Little Giant LEDs have the neat feature that they can be dimmed too This means that the LEDs actually have 3 possible states on off or dimmed which gives them the possibility to show more information than simple on off LEDs A first possibility is to never turn the LEDs completely off they are either on or dimmed They work in the classical 2 state mode showing if a preset is active or not The advantage is that you will have a clear view on your floorboard at any time even on a completely dark stage You will never again have problems finding the correct button when all stage lights are off A second possibility is to use a dim LED to indicate that a preset is linked to that switch Some banks in your setup might use only some of the switches With this setting you immediately see which switch doesn t have any preset or effect linked to it it s useless to click any of those switches with LED off because they will send no MIDI mes
71. Giant Module _ Using following slave controller no external switches a LG Little Giant 2 external preset switches LG X Big Little Giant 2 external up down switches LG M 4 Litte Giant Module w 4 expr it 2 external D1 D2 switches LG 4 Litte Giant w 4 expr pedals LG X 2 Big Little Giant w 2 expr Expression pedals Number ofexpr pedals 1 the LG Control Center main screen How to use LG Control Center 93 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 1 The File menu New setup Starts a new setup from scratch You can also use this option to clear the current setup in your Little Giant Select the option new setup and without adding anything download it to your controller downloading a setup is explained later on in this chapter Load setup Loads a previously stored setup from file into Control Center An LG patchdump file has the extension gp Save setup Save setup as Saves a setup to file Use this to make backups of your setup or to store a setup template which you can use later as a starting point for creating different setup variants The resulting file with extension lgp uses a proprietary binary format for storing the setup info Import setup from text Export setup to text A full setup can be exported and saved as a plain text file which can again be imported into Control Center The text file needs to follow a very rigid structure it doesn t allow any typing errors Therefore it is not feasible to
72. I messages 13 GORDIUS specific message types are also available for advanced features like customizable delays message sweeps message repeat loops metronome or tap tempo functionality This is all outside the scope of this Getting Started Guide we will limit our example to the most common MIDI messages which are the PC ProgramChange and CC ControlChange messages Cer Tcnange Hote Or Hote ff A few of the supported MIDI message types Specify CtriChange as type for the first message The next property to change is the MIDI channel After clicking the current value of 01 the value can be changed to any value between 01 and 16 by turning the rotary knob After selecting a value you still have the choice to cancel the change return icon or accept the new value accept icon Let s keep the original default value of 01 Getting started with the Little Giant 41 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The next 2 parameters of the ControlChange message are its Control Number and Control Value which can be any value between 0 and 127 Both parameters can keep their default value of O for this first message 14 A few remarks about MIDI value ranges 1 All MIDI values are 7 bit values resulting in a possible range of 0 127 However in case of a ProgramChange message which is used for selecting a specific sound or patch in a sound bank some devices display values between 1 and 128 instead Using the LittleGia
73. IDI Channel LG Control Center Channel02 y LG internal menu Through the built in menus you can enter any value between 1 and 16 In Control Center a dropdown box gives you the choice between any of the previously defined MIDI channels of your setup Indeed as mentioned in chapter 9 2 you can give a meaningful name to each of the MIDI Channels you are using Setup of MIDI channel names is covered in chapter 17 9 1 17 3 3 Message type LG Control Center ContralChange LG internal menu VOLUME MESSAGE TYPE Pases g Control ihana o El Mem AE E E 1ItChBer Cor cane El ChannelPressure Fe 3 different types of MIDI messages can be transmitted by the expression pedals ControlChange PitchBend and ChannelPressure These are the 3 MIDI message types which are specifically aimed towards continuous control although ControlChange is the most commonly used message type for pedal based adjustments PitchBend messages are typically sent by a dedicated PitchBend controller mostly available on keyboards while ChannelPressure messages are sent by pressure sensitive keyboards when the applied pressure on the keys is being changed Being able to send those different MIDI message types through an expression pedal may open new possibilities to your current device setup Also the PitchBend message type has the specific advantage of offering higher adjustment resolution the MIDI standard provides 14 bit data
74. LG Control Center Globalsetup MIDIRoutng Generated messages send to MIDI OUT only send to USB only send to USB or MIDI OUT LG internal menu MAI MEM GLOBAL SETUF EXTRAS MIDI ROUTING Global settinas 7 Hardware layout WIG Pouking 7 E PATO OOT O Presets Bar T E aie TERR PESTE MIDI FORTARE as pare ne LED behavior Setlists Metronome ia Fe _ 2 MIBPI OUT ROUTING oTo MIDI mi only oTo USE o USE or MTD OUT 7 The MIDI messages generated by clicking an LG foot switch or rocking a connected expression pedal can be routed to USB to the MIDI OUT connector or both Please refer to chapter 6 1 to find out all details about the 3 different routing options which can be selected in this menu 17 2 2 MIDI IN message routing LG Control Center Globalsetup MIDIRouting MIDI IN port s don t forward send to MIDI OUT only send to USB only send to USB or MIDI OUT Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 121 180 GURDIUS Little Giant LG internal menu MAIN MEHO GLOBAL SETUP Ex TRAS MICI ROUTING eramos Hardware lavout ARA cc f presta Ad e SHTEEH TSERE dd F HIB breet Nna Extras H L LED behavior Setlists Metrornome 2 a MIDI FUC ROUTING Don t forward oTo MIDI OUT only oTo USB onl USE or MIDI OUT Similar to the previous topic for generated messages also the MIDI messages coming in on the MIDI I
75. Little Giant setup reference metronome tap tempo and MIDI clock 165 186 GURDIUS Little Giant A MIDI start message can be sent when selecting a metronome or taptempo enabled preset A MIDI Stop message is sent whenever another preset is selected Incase of a real taptempo preset that is a taptempo with no initial tempo specification 000 BPM which is started by doing a few taps a MIDI start can be sent after the initial tempo defining taps You can choose to send the MIDI Start after 3 4 or 5 taps Also in this case a MIDI Stop is sent when deselecting the taptempo preset The third option is to never send a MIDI Start or MIDI Stop message 17 10 3 Settings for incoming MIDI Clock LG Control Center Tasso Ti andmetronome Incoming MIDI Clock show incoming MIDI beat on switch LEDs display BPM value of incoming MIDI Clock send a msg on each incoming MIDI beat LG internal menu not available While the previous settings were related to using the Little Giant as MIDI Master sending MIDI Clock messages the LG can also act as MIDI Slave receiving MIDI Clock messages This functionality is covered in chapter 12 3 Following options can be enabled in the global setup The incoming MIDI Clock tempo can be shown as flashing switch LEDs The BPM value of the clock can be displayed on the LCD screen A MIDI message can be sent on each incoming MIDI beat that is once fo
76. MEHU MESSAGE SETUF FATCH SETUP Slobal set 105 ees p Patches F fExXer ERE F ae amp j l d SRE Snes So DARKS y Banks il Setlists Special banks Patches Ea E El BE E Up to 16 different expression pedal setups can be created These setups can be linked to one of the 2 or 4 in case of the LG 4 expression pedals through the preset setup see chapter 17 5 9 or through the default expression pedal assignment see chapter 17 3 11 lt is even possible to link multiple expression pedal setups to the same pedal resulting in a simultaneous adjustment of multiple effects or volumes Each expression pedal setup is shown as an entry in the pedal setup table New entries are created by clicking the button underneath the table existing entries are deleted with the button For your own convenience the arrow buttons can be used to sort the setup list the way you prefer The leftmost button is a copy button lt allows you to create a new expression pedal setup which is an exact copy of an existing one An expression pedal setup has following properties to be filled in 17 3 1 Expr pedal setup name LG Control Center La LG internal menu The name can be any string with a maximum of 16 characters In ControlCenter just doubleclick the corresponding table cell in the first column in order to edit the setup name Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 125 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 3 2 M
77. Mii A ds 136 17 4 4 Adding MIDI MessagQ8sS ooooooccccnnccccconnnncconnncnnnonannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrrnnnrnnnnnnnrrrnnnrnnnnnnnrrnnnnnnnnnnns 136 17 4 5 Grouped StompboxesS SCLUP cccceccccceccccnesesssceeeeeeeneaasceeeeessaaauseeeeeeeessaaaaseeeeeeessaaaaaaees 140 AAG CIO SONS l 141 IL AER Delayed activalo M a A Ae A ae Noe RRS 141 TRAS RECON VAHAINS SUD sina a a aE 142 Zo Presel SoD ere a iaoi 143 LD AWMANAOING preset ISIS ii ciel 144 ADE PRESO NANO idad 145 799 Main DA Ca lis 145 17 5 4 External trigger assignment occoconnncnnncnconncnnonnnnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnonnononnno nono ran nro nana rar nnnnnnanncnnnnnas 145 1799 SOLO ONES ii lo a lalo lanza 146 179 6 MOMONIAIV eels ii A A a 147 175 7 SEXTA PUNOS iii tad ida di ic 147 O USO DICSCT AS MOI asa 148 172029 EXPIeSSION pedal DENAVION sict tncccrsinesasamenitint cee seni tacemaxauids asiareconud E S 149 126 Bank Se pana io 150 ADT Bank NA Ci 151 TEO DOUE le iaa 151 17 69 PESAS IONES A AAA A A A AA osteo ieeas 152 17 6 4 next previous previously active SWITCHES oooooooncccnnnccnnccnnnncnnncconnnnnnnnnnncnn nana 153 17 6 5 Preset dependency rules for banks ocooocccconoconnccnnncconnnnanncnnnnonononnnnnnnnnnnonnnannrnnnnnnnnnnnnos 153 LEAR SOMOS CU peros atado ista asa aS 155 PAS S0 AN 156 7 180 GURDIUS Little Giant TTT SOO AAA a Naetantasestaaln agate 156 TAL Default preset lor a SONG cesianc Stretton vi 157 17 8 Sels SOI ent a a a a ec e
78. N port have different routing options Please refer to chapter 6 2 for all details You might have noticed that the title of this topic in ControlCenter mentions MIDI IN port s while your Little Giant only has one connector labeled MIDI IN Indeed as you will see in the next topic you can also configure the 2 additional control ports FROM FCB TO FCB as regular midi ports In that case the MIDI IN routing options apply both to the MIDI IN port and the FROM FCB port 17 2 3 FCB Control port configuration LG Control Center Global setup MIDI Routing FROM FCB TO FCB Ports use for external floorboard use as MIDI IN OUT ports LG internal menu not available As explained in chapter 6 3 this option lets you configure the functionality for the 2 control ports labeled FROM FCB and TO FCB By default these ports are used for communication with an external slave controller However if you don t intend to use this functionality the ports can also be configured as a regular set of MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 122 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 2 4 External MIDI control messages LG Control Center MIDE Routing External MIDI Control Messages J accept MIDI Control on channel 16 LG internal menu not available As explained in chapter 7 2 it is possible to use any third party controller as a
79. Patch PATCH 03 Stomp box ON Stomp box OFF Momentary effect Cancel Ok Data variable value change dialog Little Giant setup reference the use of variables 162 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 9 3 Patch content variants LG Control Center Global setup Variables Dynamic patches Enable the use of dynamic patches LG internal menu not available Patch content variants or dynamic patches are explained in chapter 9 4 We already mentioned there that the implementation of this functionality is so complex that you can t do any patch setup modifications locally in your Little Giant once you start using patch variants In this case all setup changes need to be done through ControlCenter Therefore the global setup contains a checkbox which needs to be checked explicitely when you intend to use patch variants This will disable local editing on your Little Giant and will enable the creation of the patch variants in the patch setup tab see chapter 17 4 8 Little Giant setup reference the use of variables 163 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 10 Metronome TapTempo and MIDI Clock Please read chapter 12 to find out all details about the metronome and TapTempo functionality of the Little Giant The current chapter describes how to do the global setup of those metronome related settings 17 10 1 Global metronome LG Control Center Global setup LEDs and metronome Sync Mas
80. SWEEP Coarse sweep Sweep step value _ CO SWEEP Slow sweep Sweep step value SWEEP Metronome BPM vale o o o METRO U_ O TapTempo BPMvalueorO0 o TEMPO RepeatFrom Repeat count ROM RepeatTill Delay value RandomFrom Random value ROM RandomTill Random value Inc Variable Variableindex_ ee Dec Variable Variableindex gt ma Show Variable Variableindex_ _ o o o ee MIDI chan or off OOO l O IC Pipoyo _ mode metodes fs sn mado lil O O tempo nothing These commands are not MIDI commands It are GORDIUS specific commands used for advanced LG features For internal storage of these commands the Little Giant uses status byte OxF5 an undefined value in the MIDI standard followed by 2 data bytes Appendix A supported MIDI and GORDIUS messages 174 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Appendix B Little Giant Menu Structure MAIH MENU Cerea GLOBAL SETUP Espe nas Setup ongs Extras Setlists Service El GLOBAL SETUP ERRE ui aaa y Extras Service Fa GLOBAL SETUP Hardware layout GLOBAL SETUP Hardware layout ExprPedal setup Appendix B Little Giant menu structure Hardware Tagout 3 papi edal satun e s Extras i HARDWARE LAYOUT SIS COntrPoTIEr Extern switches Directi Direct HARDWARE LAYOUT p itt kapr E AALS ave con L E Directi Direct Ea HARDWARE LAYOUT He of ExprFedals pes ept
81. Switch 9 DT and 10 D2 DEN AVION sust 119 TRAP ONDA MOOG pr UDS 120 17 116 BAnkKSeleCl MESSAGES ii ada 120 TEZ MIDE TOULMG ANG Mendes dada 121 17 2 1 Generated MESSAGE OUTING airean aa aaa a a e a 121 172 2 MIDTIN Message TOUS e aa a E 121 1723 FOB Control p rt configurati N ain seat ech an i a a E a a 122 17 2 4 External MIDI control MEeSSages cccoconcnccconnnncononnnnnnnnnonnonanonnonannnnnnnnnnnonannnronanrnnnnnnrnnnnnas 123 172 0 MOIEN grrr ect riada tacos 124 118 Expression pedal SED dar DAS AA AA 125 17 3 1 Expr pedal Setup NaMB ococoooonccnncccnonncnncnononnnnnnnnnannnnnnnnannnnnnnnnnrnnnnnnrnnnnnnnnnnnnrnnnnnennennnnnnas 125 Moe VII PG ARI o usaste ii iia 126 Table of contents 6 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Table of contents TAS MESSsado DO iaa lc 126 1734 ADORO e eo tds 127 TD RS aes Mec ately ese ha Pace ete loa A a E 127 CA OULOUL TANG AAA o a 128 IZo ENJAgO Va US iria idas 128 LAG AID AAO teel DRESS ii a adas 129 17 3 9 ISCO SWCD CUVE nda 130 17 3 10 Expression pedal sweep Curve setup ccocccccooononnccnnnccnnnnnannncnnnnnononnnnncnnnnnonnnannrnnnnnnnnnnnans 131 17 3 11 Default expression pedal ASSIQNIMENN oooccccccccccnncnnccononnnnnononancnnnnnnnancnnnonnnncnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns 132 11 39 12 External trigger ASSIGNING Esti AAA A A AAA A AAA 133 174 Bale Sl a 134 Ar Managing Da lc TS IS esoo 135 aAa e LEI AAA ae cbameave awroan vaca vost a i veneer adaeeavadas 135 17 4 3 First Second message SIC
82. User Manual GURDIUS LG Little Giant MIDI foot controller GURDIUS Little Giant Table of Contents 4 2 3 io A A 9 del Apersonal IHanKS veria ibi codi mita ica 9 2 ABOUTIAIS Manda e eo o 9 The Little Giant a QUICK OVOIVIE Wisconsin 10 20 Th Lhtie Giant Ream Paneis aa N a 10 22 Ehe kitte Giant TOD VIEW siisii a a ed 12 20 The Lite Glant COnNtrokCente tes 13 Getting started using Little Giant Control Center ooccccnnccccnoccnnnccnnccconnonncnnnnncnononannccnnnnononannncnnnnnnnss 14 3 1 Before reading this chapler tices vvinswradateaivaveboey crac er bcn 14 32 Making the Connect dia 14 3 3 T rning ON the DOWEL ccccccccescecceeseeeceseecceasececeaseeecseuseeessageeecsaeeeeseaseessageeessenseessesseeseess 15 3 4 Installing and launching Little Giant Control Center occccccccccoccnnncnnccccncnonnccnnnnnonononccononcnnnnnnnos 16 3 5 Showing the Help buttons cc ceesccccccessseceecceeneeceeseeeeeeeeeeeeceeeeseaeeeeesseageeeeessaseeeessegeeeess 17 230 Global SEUNG na A Pease ares Re saeco eae 18 3 7 Expression pedal SCtUP cccccccssseccccceeeseceeeceesseceeeceeaeceeesseueeeeseuaeeeeesseaecesessaaeeeeeesaaaeeeess 18 JO Pale sel Dutra ladilla a 20 20r O A A eee eee ees 21 3 8 2 Specifying MIDI messages for each patch ccccccsseecccceeccececeensceeeeeeeeesaaueeeeeeeessaanseeeeeeees 22 3 8 3 Specifying MIDI messages for stomp boxes and Momentary effects ooconcc
83. able to enter setup mode change display modes change banks Remember there are a few locking modes available check if these were not enabled unintentionally See chapter 17 1 4 Programmable delays can block your unit When you insert long Delay messages in your setup be aware that these lock up any further floor board activity while the delays are running lt may take some time before the full message stream including delays is transmitted and a next preset can be selected Especially important to remember is the fact that a SyncedDelay needs a MIDI Clock external or internal as it counts clock cycles before proceeding Using a SyncedDelay without MIDI clock will lock up preset message trans mission until the clock is applied or until another preset is selected One extra attention point when using an external MIDI clock the MIDI standard specifies that a MIDI clock should be ignored until a MIDI Start command is received Any MIDI clock generating device will send such a Start message but remember that the LG must be powered and ready to receive this message before starting the clock if not the clock messages are ignored There is no USB connection or MIDI communication during setup As soon as you bring your LittleGiant into setup mode showing one of the internal setup menus the USB connection is deactivated and all MIDI communication is suspended Therefore don t try to launch ControlCenter and connect your LG with
84. after switching the stompbox on or off Some possible scenario s for using a tip heel stompbox or momentary effect are e Link the same stompbox both to tip and heel position Moving the expression pedal to either extreme will toggle the required effect on or off e Create 2 momentary effects one to activate the effect and one to deactivate the effect Link the activation effect to the tip position and the deactivation effect to the heel position e Create a reverse momentary effect with effect deactivation message in its first message stream sent when depressing the effect switch and effect activation message in its second message stream sent when releasing the effect switch Use this momentary effect as heel preset Now the effect will deactivated by moving the pedal fully heel down and activated by moving the pedal from heel down position to its active adjustment range 17 3 9 Used sweep curve LG Control Center LG internal menu not available As will be explained in next topic ControlCenter gives you the possibility to define 4 different sweep curves for your expression pedals These curves allow you to digitally compensate for the non linear behavior of your pedal or on the contrary introduce non linear behavior where desired for instance for volume adjustment For each expression pedal setup you can choose which of the 4 available sweep curves will be used Little Giant setup reference expre
85. again resulting in these effects being activated when clicking the patch preset switch Finally there is the possibility to add extra patches to the patch preset There are two possible ways to use extra patches First possibility is to treat these extra patches exactly the same as the stomp boxes or momentary effects added to a patch preset whenever you click the preset and activate its main patch you can additionally send all messages of the extra patches defined for this preset Just like with linked stomp boxes and momentary effects all extra patch messages are sent simultaneously Second possibility is to treat these extra patches sequentially The first click on the preset switch will select its main patch The second click selects the first extra patch the next click selects the next extra patch and so on After the last extra patch has been selected a next footswitch click will again select the main patch In other words you can scroll through several patches using a single preset and therefore a single foot switch Another way to have a very extended setup while minimizing the number of needed foot switches Very interesting is to combine this feature with delayed patch activation chapter 17 4 7 and patchname display chapter 17 1 7 This gives you the possibility to scroll through patches with one switch without actually activating them You just see the patch names scroll by The Little Giant setu
86. ains a hidden diagnostic screen which helps you locating a possible defect or bad contact in LEDs or switches You can launch this diagnostic screen by keeping the up and down switches pressed during startup Keep them pressed until the splash screen with moving ball disappears o First you will see a LED looping test which lights up each of the LEDs one by one This way you can inspect if any LED is defective Leave this test by clicking the rotary knob o A second screen lets you test each of the switches When pressing any switch the according LED should go on the up and down switches cause one of the MIDI indicator LEDs to light up Again leave this test by clicking the rotary knob o A next test shows an arrow pointed to the left or to the right when turning the rotary knob counter clockwise or clockwise o The last test screen allows you to test the jacks for external switches and expression pedals Connect an expression pedal to each of the EXPR inputs Moving the pedal should result in a modifying hexadecimal value displayed on the LCD screen it smoothly changes between 00 and 7F Connect a normally open momentary switch to the SWITCH inputs The display should show 7F when the switch is open and 00 when the contact is closed switch depressed A typical problem causing an expression pedal to work incorrectly is incorrect wiring of the tip and ring of its stereo jack See chapter 2 for correct wirin
87. ame something like USB audio device A more recent operating system like Windows Vista will extract more info from the USB communication with the device and will show Little Giant as device name in the drop down boxes If your unit was not connected to a USB input or if it was not powered when you started up Control Center it will not appear in the 2 selection boxes In that case click the refresh button in order to update the selection box contents With the Little Giant or USB audio device selected both as MIDI IN and MIDI OUT device click the connect button The QuickConnect button in the menu bar of Control Center will change color from red to green and the Little Giant Info box in the middle of the screen will be updated to show some general info which is sent by the unit during the connection procedure The setup info box shows you how small the current setup actually is occupying only a few percentages of the available setup memory Now you are ready to send your first test setup to the Little Giant All you need to do is click the send patch dump button The QuickDump button in the menu bar top right corner of the Control Center has exactly the same functionality as the send patch dump button lt was added on that location in order to facilitate quick patch dumps while modifying the current setup since the button is accessible from within any of the setup tabs Gettin
88. ameter each time you hit it You can specify in which range these random values should lie This is done by inserting 2 GORDIUS specific control messages at any place in the MIDI message stream of a patch RandomFrom and Randomfill specifying the lower and upper limit for any subsequent random values When using this feature to play random MIDI Notes for instance you will probably want to send the corresponding NoteOff messages too You can use the prev randon constant for this This constant represents the most recently sent random value so it can be used to send the correct NoteOff number after sending a random NoteOn message 9 6 Wrap up As you have learned in this chapter the Little Giant offers you several alternative ways to make your setup dynamic adapting itself to the currently selected preset through the use of data variables which can change the CC number sent by each stompbox through the use of patch variants which can change the complete MIDI stream content of each stompbox through the use of dependency rules which replace the current stompbox preset on any switch with a different preset You will recognize the 3 different levels of the setup hierarchy on which you can apply a preset dependency MIDI message level patch level preset level The choice is yours to decide which method fits best in your setup scenario MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 74 180 GURDIUS Little
89. and another one to its second message stream Specify Control Number that is Data1 to be 10 for both messages Then specify Control Value Data2 to be 127 in the first message stream and leave it on O in the second message stream As explained this will cause the stompbox activation message to be sent when switching the stompbox on and the deactivation message will be sent when switching it off The Control Number of 10 is just an arbitrary number we chose for our demo setup The result should look like the screenshot on the next page Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 25 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Patch Stomp box Momentary effect details Advanced settings Name Grouped stompboxes Delayed activation Patch content Main mh First message stream Second message stream Channel Message type Data l Channelo1 ctrichange 10 y lo Sons Activation and deactivation message for a stomp box Completely similar to the CHORUS messages now specify 2 ControlChange messages in the DISTORTION message streams also having value 127 in the first stream and value O in the second stream This time however use ControlNumber 11 again an arbitrary value The messages for our SUSTAIN momentary effect are almost identical to the stomp box messages one ControlChange with value 127 in the first stream another one with value O in the second stream and again a differen
90. ant 47 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Click the STOMP BOXES value to see the empty stomp boxes list and then click the Add button to add the CHORUS stompbox to the list By default when you add an effect to the stompbox list of a preset this effect will be turned on when selecting the preset This is marked by a filled circle displayed at the left of the effect name However we want to specify that the effect needs to be off initially To do so click the CHORUS effect which you just added to the list and you will notice a new kind of icon in the command row at the bottom of the screen un i o T 4 a x m Wi olio e e E A With the radiobutton icon you can toggle the initial status of a stomp box By clicking the radiobutton icon which is selected by default you toggle the initial state of the stomp box You will notice that the circle to the left of the CHORUS name now changed into a hollow circle indicating a non activated stomp box When you click the same CHORUS item again you can now add a second stomp box to the list click then select DISTORTION from the list of available stomp boxes and again edit this entry to change its initial state from activated to non activated As a result PRESET 1 has our 2 stomp boxes linked to it and their initial status is set to off for both effects STOMP BOXES o CHORUS 5 a DISTORTION The linked stomp boxes list of Preset 1 containing 2 deac
91. art of the name Or you can as well simply replace those characters with spaces Then add a MIDI message to MessageStream 1 of this stomp box modify its type to CtrIChange specify Control Number to be 10 and Control Value to be 127 Getting started with the Little Giant 43 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Remark the control number of 10 is chosen arbitrarily the actual value will of course depend on the device being controlled The info on which value is used for each of the controllable effects can be found in the manual or MIDI implementation chart of that device Many devices also have a learn function which enables you to do the setup with arbitrary CC numbers and then let the device learn the used MIDI message for each effect The Control Values of 0 and 127 are commonly used for on off effects a value of 127 switches the effect on while O switches the effect off While changing the Control Value to 127 it can be interesting to notice that the entered values just wrap around their limits at both sides of the supported range This means that starting from the default value of 0 you can turn the rotary knob counter clockwise in order to reach the desired value of 127 much faster than when turning clockwise increasing from 0 till 127 After adding the CC 10 127 message to the first message stream of the CHORUS stomp box also add a CC 10 0 message to the second message stream of the same
92. at this command will switch keypad mode off In a Big Little Giant which has 13 preset switches you can easily define a stompbox for enabling and disabling keypad mode and link it to switch 11 12 or 13 However this is not possible with the LittleGiant unless you have an external switch connected to one of the jack inputs As the Little Giant has only 10 internal preset switches all of them are used as keypad once keypad mode is activated Therefore a second way to leave keypad mode is by typing the number 999 A global config setting lets you choose one of the mentioned keypad modes Another setting lets you specify if you want to use the internal switches or the switches of a connected slave controller as keypad If for instance you have an FCB1010 connected to the control port of the Little Giant you can use this board as a direct select keypad while the internal Little Giant switches are still available for regular preset selection This is a user friendly alternative to toggling between keypad mode and regular mode Using keypad mode 87 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 13 1 Direct ProgramChange keypad mode The MIDI standard provides a range of 1 128 or 0 127 for ProgramChange numbers Many devices offer more than 128 different sounds these are then divided into several sound banks The Little Giant offers the possibility to type any number between 0 and 998 it automatically divides this range into 8
93. aten acetates iaa 158 OT A A A 159 PASAS ES AA A 159 MS heluses0l Vanables suicidas ate gee herent Stace illa Secta toda call ceo telas cot ase bellas 161 LIN MIDEN AV ADIOS xii a aa aaa 161 1792 MIDI Data VanaDleS ti A A Ea iS 162 IZ Palen CONTENER ond diesdeavnedicautogoass 163 17 10 Metronome TapTempo and MIDI Clock oocccccccccnonnnnccnnnnccnononancccnnnnononnnanccnnnnnnnnnanennnos 164 1103 GlODA MOTONOINIC mann A A edo N 164 TA 10 2 Global Tap Tempo settings ni tae teeta ae eee 165 17 10 3 Settings for INCOMING MIDI Clock ooocococonocococococooononanannonnnnnnnnnnnnnononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnonnnnnss 166 18 gt D m firmware Upgrades 6 sas scacsct ssa ekosk cave duce a ERa a ae aE a TE SRE 167 18 1 Checking your current firmware version occcccccconcnncccconcnnncnnnnncnnnnononnnonnnonnnncnnnnnnannnncnnnanennnns 167 18 2 Preparing for a firmware upgrade ococcccooonccnncccnnoccnncnononccnncnnnnncnnnnnnnncnnnnnnnncrnnrnnnnnrrnnrnnnaneinnns 168 18 3 Downloading the new firmware from PC to LittleGiant oocoooonnnnccnnncccnnononnccnncnnnonannnnnnos 169 184 Alter me COW MIC letal old ld edad 169 19 TOUS MOO LING a l tata 170 Appendix A supported MIDI and GORDIUS Messages ccoooooooconcccconccccocononononannnnnncncnnnnnnncnnnnnnnnnnnanos 173 Appendix B Little Giant Menu StrUCture erena aaa a A a 175 Appendix C Little Giant technical specificatiONS ooooooococcnonnnnncnnnnnnnnnnnnnononononnnnnncnnn
94. available in your current setup as you didn t define any songs or set lists yet Banklist and Banklist XL mode These display modes show you a full list of all defined banks As you notice 2 different character sizes are being used MIDI monitor view which displays all MIDI messages coming in on the MIDI IN port and going out on the MIDI OUT port Before diving into the MIDI monitoring just select one of the bank list display modes You do this by turning the rotary knob until the full bank list is displayed then clicking the rotary knob in order to leave display mode selection the 4 arrows in the screen corners will disappear Of course your bank list is very limited for now but you can already verify that in this mode as in setlist mode which you might be using later on turning the rotary knob will scroll through all available banks just as if you would use the Up or Down foot switches By the way keeping the up or down switch depressed for a longer time will engage auto scrolling which is very handy when you want to scroll through a large list So using the up down switches or the rotary knob are two equivalent ways for browsing through the bank list or a setlist After this short test with the bank list display change display mode again this time selecting MIDI MONITOR This screen will show us all MIDI activity of the Little Giant It is good to know that you can clear the monitor screen at any ti
95. ccoconon 25 304 What do We have Up WINDOW a ee 27 HI POSOL Sol Din edad accio odas bio 28 SOT Creado preseas dio 28 3 9 2 Specifying the initial stomp box S at8sS ooocccccccccnnconnoconanonnnnnnnnnnnnnonannnnnnnnnancnnnnnnnanennnns 29 3 93 Specifying the expression pedal behavior for each preSelt ooonccccccnnnocioccncnnocenononecanonns 29 3 94 What do we have Up till MOW oo ooooonncnnccccnnnnnncconancnnnonnnanennnnnnnnnnnnnonannnnnonnnanrnnnnnnnancnnnnss 30 eI RRA 31 S10 Crean pank A GE a ok N 31 910 2 Denning Ine DANK COMO usd a a eden 31 3 11 Downloading the setup to the Little Giant occccccccccononnncnnnnncnnnnoonnccnnnnnnnononancnnnnnnnnnnnos 32 Table of contents 2 180 GURDIUS Little Giant dla PESUMG TMC sell ias lata 33 3 12 1 Checking LED and display DehaviOr ocooocccncccnnnncoconcnnoconnnnnononnnnonnnnnononnnnnonanennnnanennnnnos 33 32122 CHANGING display MODO uscar iaa 34 3 123 Monitoring NS MIDIANCSSAGECS 2 A eee keds 35 4 Getting started with the Little Giant dc 37 AT Beloreteading IMS chapte amd 37 AD Making TINE COMME CHONS srce a id 37 43 T ming ON Ne POWER cdas 38 o iad sana cemsed sanseseoueenasemasetsacadaceasecenceniaeieesasssueende 38 AS Elba sein encallado da dida 39 46 ralen Selena ci llo 39 AG Creating your NIST Dal Ii e leia 40 4 6 2 Editing the patch name oocooonncnccconnonconononnonancnnnnnncnnnnnnnnnnnnrnnnnnnrnnnnnnnrnrnrnnrnnnnnn
96. ch twice LG internal menu not available One of the important aspects in a Little Giant setup is the split preset patch approach This gives you the opportunity for instance to create several presets which all share the same main patch but activate a different combination of stomp boxes or effects for that patch When switching from 1 such preset to another you might want to avoid that the same main patch is activated again In some sound processors selecting the patch again may result in a short drop out of the sound To avoid this artefact a global option is added to disable resending the patch message s a second time when selecting the same patch again Same thing applies when you have been switching stompboxes on or off and you want to reselect the currently active preset in order to bring all stomp boxes to their predefined state again Also in this situation you might want to send the stompbox messages only and not the patch select message 17 1 13 Disable sending stompbox initialization messages LG Control Center Miscellaneous Global setup Stompbox message send _ Don t send stompbox messages when selecting a patch preset LG internal menu not available An important feature in the preset setup is the possibility to activate or deactivate stompboxes when selecting a certain preset However in some cases you might prefer to duplicate this part of the setup in the effects processor too
97. chapter The patch being the lowest element in the hierarchy this is where you define all the MIDI messages to be sent when activating the patch Similarly an expression pedal setup contains the info about which MIDI message type needs to be sent on which MIDI channel when moving the pedal what is the desired sweep range etc In the next topics we will go into more detail about each of the setup elements The Little Giant setup structure 64 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 6 2 Patches stomp boxes and momentary effects A patch a stomp box and a momentary effect are 3 different types of what we generally call a patch in our setup The difference between the 3 types can be noticed in their behavior on 2 levels the way the LED of the patch behaves and the moment on which the 2 MIDI message streams of the patch are sent We are talking about message streams here because indeed each patch can send an arbitrary number of MIDI messages which appended to each other can be considered as one long stream You can define 2 such streams for each patch A regular patch represents a certain global state of your rig it can for instance select a certain sound in a sound module a certain cab emulation in a guitar preamp etc Only one patch can be active at the same time The selected patch is indicated with an illuminated LED When selecting a new patch the LED of the previously selected patch will turn off and the LED of the new patc
98. create such a file from scratch it needs to be created through the export option of ControlCenter However it can be very handy to modify a setup as a plain text in a text editor which offers standard copy and paste features This way you can easily duplicate bigger parts of a setup quickly modify switch assignments or do other changes which might require a lot of work when doing it through the graphical user interface of LG Control Center If editing the text file introduces any errors an error message popup specifying the exact location of the error will be shown during import Import Export setlists In many cases the setup of setlists will change regularly depending on the type of gigs planned for the coming days Therefore it is possible to import setlists from a text file into the current LG setup or the other way around export your setlists to a text file for later reference This separates setlist setup from the setup of all other parameters of your Little Giant It also enables you to quickly edit setlists in a regular text editor in that case just make sure to keep the file format and different paragraphs unchanged Load firmware The last item in the File menu is an important one Use this item to load a firmware update file with extension lgf into Control Center How to proceed with the upgrade is described in chapter 18 How to use LG Control Center 94 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 2 The Tools menu The Tools m
99. ct Bank functionality This can be done in the Miscellaneous tab of the global setup In our demo setup we just left all global settings to their default value so switch 9 and 10 of your Little Giant are used as regular preset switches and no Direct Banks are used Click the button below the Bank table two times This adds 2 banks to our setup named BANK 01 and BANK 02 You could easily change the bank name by double clicking the name field and editing the field content 3 10 2 Defining the bank content Now you can edit each of the cells in the bank table in order to assign presets to each switch You edit a table cell either by doubleclicking it or by using a right mouse click Both actions have the same result a context menu pops up which gives you the choice to assign a patch preset stomp box preset or momentary effect preset to the selected switch and bank You also have the possibility to clear a previous assignment or to specify a switch as the default switch for the given bank A default switch is selected automatically whenever you scroll to the bank As a result also the MIDI messages defined in the preset of that switch are automatically sent We won t use this functionality in our first demo setup Now assign the 4 previously defined patch presets to switch 1 2 3 and 4 of BANK 01 by double clicking each of the 4 cells choosing Select patch preset and selecting each of the presets from
100. d setup each patch preset also has 3 additional properties extra patches stomp boxes and mom effects Indeed we already mentioned that each preset can pre define the state of one or more linked stomp boxes Similarly momentary effects or other patches can be automatically activated when selecting a preset but in this first setup we will limit ourselves to linking stomp boxes to the patch presets If you didn t do this already return to PRESET SETUP and select Patch presets to enter patch preset setup Start with creating 4 presets by clicking the Add icon then selecting the newly created preset and clicking Add again this 4 times in a row Result is a set of 4 patch presets called PRESET 1 up till PRESET 4 Let s make live easier on ourselves and keep those default names Now click PRESET 1 and the Edit icon to enter edit mode for this preset Leave the name as it is go to MAIN PATCH and select our first patch named PATCH 1 After that scroll further down through the preset properties skip EXTRA PATCHES but select STOMP BOXES which has default value none As mentioned at the beginning of this topic we want both stomp boxes chorus and distortion to be switched off when selecting PRESET 1 Here is the place where you can specify this PRESET 1 oa es 3 Al mundo nun A Ready to modify the stomp boxes list of our first preset Getting started with the Little Gi
101. der to return the display to its normal display mode again The CC number to be used for tuner activation is configurable within the guitar processor unit TONTAS Eel FF t 444 Displaying tuner info MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 82 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 11 The rotary button also a realtime MIDI control knob The main function of the rotary knob is to guide you through the menu structure during setup Secondly it can be used to select one of the many display modes as described in previous chapter A third very interesting function for the knob is its use as an external continuous MIDI controller In chapter 8 3 you have already learned about the expression pedals which can do continuous control of any MIDI parameter like volume wah pitch bend or any MIDI CC based adjustment Optionally you can also use the rotary knob to do one of those adjustments You could for instance use the rotary knob as a master volume knob or for adjusting any other sound parameter You do this by assigning one of the 16 expression pedal setups to the knob through the global setup Alternatively you can also use the rotary knob to adjust any of the data variable values which you can use throughout your setup see chapter 9 3 When you choose to adjust a data variable with the rotary not only the actual value is modified but also the MIDI message is resent which uses this variable More specifically the LittleGiant remembers the
102. djustment range Add to that the possibility to link multiple expression pedal setups to one pedal and you will understand that this feature allows you to create a fade pedal which fades between 2 sound modules by combining an increasing and a decreasing volume adjustment on 2 different MIDI channels In ControlCenter the output range is modified by double clicking the corresponding cell in the expression pedal table This opens the range select dialog which is covered in detail in next topic 17 3 7 Engage value LG Control Center 000 127 040 LG internal menu not available By defining an engage value you can avoid that a preset change introduces a sudden volume boost due to the current position of the expression pedal No matter what the pedal position is after selecting a new preset you need to move the pedal towards the predefined engage value in order to activate the transmission of expression pedal messages As long as you don t reach that value no messages are being sent By defining an engage value of O for instance you are forced to move the expression pedal fully heel down this way ensuring that the effect is always activated at its lowest level Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 128 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The same dialog used for defining both the input and output ranges is also used for entering the optional engage value The ranges can be adjusted by dragging any side of
103. dvances to the next character The string editor menu has the possibility to undo the latest changes In order to do so the toolbar contains both a confirm and a cancel icon When selecting the Cancel icon all recent changes in the current string will be undone While in character select mode you can scroll through all available characters listed below At the end of the character list two special characters are added ka deletes the current character and moves all succeeding characters 1 position to the left El inserts a space at the current position and moves all succeeding characters 1 position to the right ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPORSTUVWXYZ a bcde fghii jklmno pqrstu vwxyz 0123456789 _ 2 5 amp lt gt List of all available characters Ly cancel gt confirm Example of a string editor menu How to use the built in Little Giant menus 102 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 3 2 Editing numeric properties Editing numeric properties is straightforward select the numeric value and scroll up or down to modify it The menu automatically sets the upper and lower limits applicable to the current context The numeric editor has the same undo functionality as the string editor both a confirm and a cancel icon are available So keep in mind that the curled arrow icon in this kind of edit menus stands for cancel while in navigation menus it is a return button Example of a numeric edit
104. e Received MIDI messages panel where all transmitted MIDI messages are displayed A checkbox gives you the possibility to suspend the display refresh temporarily for instance while rocking an expression pedal which causes high message traffic a Clear button clears the panel content More important is the checkbox labeled Forward messages to MIDI OUT port If you don t activate this option all messages transmitted by the LittleGiant will be displayed on the ControlCenter monitor screen but they will not be forwarded to the MIDI OUT port of the LittleGiant controller If the message forwarding is activated all messages displayed in the ControlCenter monitor screen will also appear on the built in monitor screen of the Little Giant when that screen is activated see chapter 10 4 6 for details about using the LG monitor screen c hn Little Giant Control Center testbin File Help QuickConnect QuickDump Global setup Pedal setup Patch setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup Communication MIDI monitor Received MIDI messages 02 ControlChange 066 000 SongPosPtr 004 000 01 ProgramChange 006 02 ControlChange 007 127 Sysex FO 20 33 1A 2F F7 Forward messages to MIDI OUT port Suspend display refresh Setup data loaded MIDI monitor tab 15 7 The 6 setup tabs Chapter 17 describes in full detail all options available in the Little Giant MIDI controller So this is the place where all the different
105. e 3 different Sweep messages FineSweep CoarseSweep SlowSweep You can use any one of these depending on the required total amount of sweep time In all 3 cases the Sweep message needs to be followed directly by 2 ControlChange messages with the same CC number In the first CC message you specify the start value of the sweep in the second CC message you specify the end value The Sweep message has a Data1 parameter which specifies the step delay that is the delay between each of the CC messages in the sweep In most cases you will know what the total required sweep delay is for your application ControlCenter gives you a handy tool to find out which Sweep Advanced features delays sweeps and loops 90 180 GURDIUS Little Giant type and which amount of step delay you need in order to get the required total sweep time You can open this tool by clicking the small calculator icon below the Message Stream setup of a patch After correctly configuring the MIDI stream a continuous stream or sweep of control messages will be transmitted when selecting the preset starting with the specified ControlChange start value ending with the specified end value and sending all intermediate values between both With this feature you can for instance slowly fade a parameter between 2 values The sweep functionality also has some built in intelligence If you define a rising sweep to be sent when activating an effect and a fall
106. e MIDI messages for patches or momentary effects first message stream when clicking the footswitch second message stream when releasing the footswitch The LEDs on the floorboard will still show the current state of the stomp box on or off But again you will understand that it is very important to have all stomp boxes defined to be initially off in your rack If not the LED status and the stompbox status will not be in sync since there is only the toggle message to change state and no possibility to force the state to on or off Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 118 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 15 FCB Relay behavior LG Control Center Global setup Miscellaneous FCB Relay behavior _ invert action for relay 1 _ invert action for relay 2 LG internal menu not available When using an FCB1010 or FC 300 as slave controller its relays can be controlled from within the Little Giant The switch outputs can be configured as toggle switches when linked to a stomp box or as momen tary switches when linked to a momentary effect The standard behavior of a momentary switch is normally open but with this global FCB Relay behavior setting you can turn any of the FCB switch outputs into normally closed outputs Also in case of a toggle switch the default state of the relay when the stompbox is off can be customized with this setting 17 1 16 Switch 9 D1 and 10 D2 behavior
107. e the expression pedal back and forward and you will see a continuous stream of CC 007 messages appear on the monitor screen This concludes the Getting Started Guide of this chapter which should give you an overview on how to use Control Center for creating a setup and for downloading it to your Little Giant In the next chapter we will go over this same user scenario again but this time without use of the PC editor The built in menus of the Little Giant will be used instead for creating the same demo setup Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 36 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 Getting started with the Little Giant 4 1 Before reading this chapter The getting started guide of this chapter repeats exactly the same scenario of previous chapter creating an easy first setup for your Little Giant Only now we don t use the PC editor application Instead we do the whole setup using the built in menus of the Little Giant If you did follow the quick start guide of previous chapter already a big part of the contents of this chapter will be repeating what you already know Still it is interesting to learn about the use of the built in menu structure so that you can modify a setup at any time without the need to have the PC editor at hand If you created the demo setup before with the help of Control Center you can choose to keep this setup stored in the Little Giant and just check the different elements using the local setup me
108. eady occupied Indeed the 3 special banks Global bank Direct Bank 1 amp 2 are automatically created for you 15 5 4 Patch dump You can click the send patch dump button at any moment provided that the communication with the Little Giant was initialized correctly This will send the currently loaded setup to your controller The QuickDump button mentioned before has exactly the same function The receive patch dump button obviously does the opposite it uploads the current setup of your Little Giant into ControlCenter which enables you to store a backup of the setup on your computer including possible changes which you did to the setup locally using the built in setup menus of your unit Patch Dump Firmware upgrade send patch dump gt download new firmware EY gt receive patch dump Patch dump buttons Firmware upgrade button 15 5 5 Firmware upgrade The firmware upgrade procedure is explained in detail in chapter 18 How to use LG Control Center 98 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 6 The MIDI monitor tab With the MIDI monitor tab it is possible to inspect all MIDI messages being sent by the Little Giant controller Unless you have explicitely specified a non standard routing see chapter 6 1 all MIDI messages generated by the Little Giant will be sent over the USB port to Control Center So in order to test if your setup was done correctly you can push any foot switch on the controller and check th
109. elected lt can be switched off again through the same global setup Alternatively preset specific metronomes can be defined you can specify the BPM required for one preset as part of its patch content adding a GORDIUS specific message to the MIDI message stream Selecting another preset stops the metronome or optionally modifies the BPM to another value Adding a metronome message with BPM 000 to a preset is another way to stop the global metronome selecting this preset will cause the metronome to change to tempo 0 which is actually the same as interrupting the metronome The BPM value can be defined in a range from 20 BPM to 312 BPM Apart from the LEDs flashing on each metronome beat the Little Giant can optionally also send MIDI messages This will typically be MIDI Clock messages 24 clock messages per beat as defined in the MIDI specification But you can also send a ControlChange message per beat or even a NoteOn NoteOff message pair This last option turns your unit into a real metronome box when you have a MIDI sound module connected One more metronome feature is the possibility to specify how many beats per measure you have This way an emphasis can be given on the first beat with a slightly brighter LED flash and optionally sending a Note message with different pitch The MIDI Clock messages sent by this metronome can be used to sync any connected MIDI slave device therefore in this scenario you can
110. ell Song details Hands Open Mo One Knows So Lonely Wishing Well Come As You Are Bank BANK af bl One Vision White Wedding Default preset Enemy Within S Original Sin eS ees Original Sin 2 Patch preset Basket Case Stompbox preset Come Together 0 Effect preset Money Mew Sensation You Really Got Enter Sandman Whole Lotta R Alright Now Teenage Kicks Run To You In The Flesh Black Night Union City Blue Rockin World sme e bw l LG internal menu MAIN MEHU SONGS Global settings You would know l PERRE E PRR Go with the flow SONGS ZE TT porn The use of songs and setlists is an optional but powerful feature of the Little Giant While you can directly work with banks the definition of songs and setlists can be a great help during live gigs The LG graphical display can be a replacement of the old paper setlists floating around on the stage floor Up to 250 songs can be defined and organized into up to 10 different setlists Little Giant setup reference song setup 155 180 GURDIUS Little Giant You can add new songs to your setup by using the button below the song list in Control Center Here again similar to the preset list discussed before you notice a Sync button below the song list In case you want to define a different bank layout for each song you can do the full bank setup prior to defining songs and setlists You can name each bank
111. en select this new patch and click the move icon in order to move the new patch up or down the list And finally use the delete icon to have this new patch removed again after confirming the delete 4 6 5 Creating stomp boxes Now you return to the PATCH SETUP menu where you can select the topic Stomp boxes which brings you to the currently empty list of available stomp boxes We want to add 2 stomp boxes to our demo setup which we will call CHORUS and DISTORTION Actually the procedure to create these 2 stomp boxes is identical to the procedure described above to create regular patches The main difference is that stomp boxes typically send 2 different messages one for activating the effect and one for deactivating the effect The MIDI message s sent for activating the effect need to be stored in MESSAGESTREAM 1 The message s sent for switching the effect off that is sent when clicking the stomp box switch for a second time need to be stored in MESSAGESTREAM 2 After clicking the icon at the bottom of the empty stompboxes list a first stomp box is created called STOMPBOX 1 You can now go ahead and edit the stompbox as described earlier Take some practice in local string editing by changing the name STOMPBOX 1 into CHORUS Remember to scroll to the end of the available characters in order to find the backward arrow character which lets you delete the last p
112. ent in hexadecimal or decimal format For those of you who are really familiar with the technical details of the MIDI data format you could as well use this raw data view to enter the MIDI data of a stream directly Actually this is the only way to specify SYSEX data as part of the MIDI stream A built in validator analyzes the entered data as you type a little symbol in the right lower corner shows at any time if the data is valid or invalid First message stream BO 00 00 BO 20 00 co 00 Raw data view of a message stream Now back to our demo setup We have specified the 3 MIDI messages which we want to send when selecting PATCH 01 We will now add messages for the other patches Let s keep it simple Add a single ProgramChange message to the first message stream of PATCHOZ2 and give it ProgramNumber 01 choose 1 in the Data 1 column in short we call this a PCO1 message Patch Stomp box Momentary effect details Advanced settings Name Grouped stompboxes Delayed activation Patch content 2 Main D First message stream Channel ProgChange 1 PATCH 02 sends PC01 Similar for the other patches add a PCO2 message to PATCHO3 and a PCO3 message to PATCHO4 Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 24 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 8 3 Specifying MIDI messages for stomp boxes and momentary effects The stomp boxes need to behave differently compared to the regular
113. enter New patches can be added by clicking the button existing patches can be deleted by clicking the button the lists can be sorted arbitrarily by using the up or down buttons Order of patches in the list is of no importance except your own convenience of easily finding back a patch when the patch list grows The leftside button is a copy button By selecting an existing patch and clicking the copy button you create a new patch which is a clone of the existing one with the same MIDI messages and other properties The new patch is named copy of original patch name LG internal menu le k 8 El ES See chapter 16 2 for general info about managing item lists This section will cover all the properties you can specify for a patch 17 4 2 Patch name LG Control Center Mame Blue Boost LG internal menu A patch name can be anything up to 16 characters long Only restriction it should be unique within its patch type In theory a patch and a stomp box can have the same name but in order to avoid con fusion it is better to keep all patch names unique Little Giant setup reference patch setup 135 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 4 3 First Second message stream LG Control Center First message stream Second message stream LG internal menu PATCH 1 E kd BI HE El PATCH 1 El OREA cd Ai a This is where the actual MIDI message content of each pa
114. enu has one single option Send SysEx You can use this option to send an arbitrary sysex file to the MIDI OUT port of your Little Giant Indeed this sysex is not processed or used by the LG controller in any way it is simply forwarded to its MIDI OUT port Therefore this option is intended to send non GORDIUS patchdumps or firmware updates to devices connected to the LG MIDI port As one example a device like the Fractal Axe FX uses extremely large sysex messages to perform firmware updates or full patchdumps The LGCC code has implemented the sysex communication in a way that ensures correct transmission of even these very large sysex files which in many cases cause problems with standard sysex tools With normal size sysex files you will probably never have the chance to see below popup as it will disappear immediately The large files mentioned before can take several minutes to be transmitted so in that case the popup gives you an estimate of the remaining transmission time Sending sysex message to MIDI output Estimated remaining time 000 seconds This window will close automatically after completion Clicking the Cancel button will abort message transmission Cancel Popup while sending sysex messages 15 3 The Help menu Show help buttons This is a toggle option which shows or hides a large number of Help buttons on different locations in the user interface A context sensitive help text will be displayed when clicki
115. enus it will retain the behavior selected in ControlCenter 17 5 8 Use preset as trigger LG Control Center Use as trigger W Don t change active preset LG internal menu not available We have used the term trigger before in section 17 5 4 so let s start with saying that both settings are not related to each other Defining a preset as trigger preset here has merely influence on how the footswitch LED of this preset behaves As you know the default behavior of a preset LED is that it goes on as soon as the preset is selected and it stays on until a different preset is selected There are situations where you might prefer the preset LED to behave in a different way Think about the wide spread use of the floorboard for controlling MIDI sequencers looping devices etc In these cases each footswitch sends a command or a trigger Play Record Overdub FastForward rather than selecting a certain patch or sound The footswitch acts like a remote control for a local switch on the device which in many cases doesn t have any LED indicator Therefore you might prefer to define such a preset as being a trigger preset The LED of the preset switch goes on when depressing the switch but it immediately turns off again when releasing the trigger switch Indeed this is exactly the same behavior as a momentary effect preset Still we wanted to give you the possibility to have the momentary
116. er 33 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 12 2 Changing display mode Now let s check the actual MIDI messages being transmitted In order to do so you need to activate the built in MIDI monitor By clicking the rotary knob you can switch between 3 different modes from standard mode you can go into rotary adjust mode which is denoted by a small circle in the upper right corner of the display In this mode you can use the rotary knob for several types of adjustment Another click on the rotary knob engages display mode selection 4 small arrows appear in the 4 display corners Turning the rotary knob will change the current display mode and clicking again activates the newly selected display mode This setting is persisted in non volatile memory so the next time you power up your Little Giant it will start up with your preferred display mode The different display modes which you can scroll through are Details view that s the view we started from Bank Preset view also called Preset XL mode because it shows the currently selected bank and preset in extra large characters Preset XXL view which only shows the preset name in very large characters This mode might not be widely used but you never know It just takes full advantage of the fact that the Little Giant contains a graphical LCD which allows for variable character sizes Setlist and Setlist XL mode These display modes are not
117. er Installation Complete Laisa Contd Canter n beraj nota Lialia Conta Cente has been moseri installed Click Clone ho ail Little Giant Control Center installation Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 16 180 GURDIUS Little Giant After install you can launch the editor by selecting O or MUScl 3 Start gt All Programs gt GORDIUS gt Little Giant Control Center 3 5 Showing the Help buttons As you can see in the Help menu the option Show help buttons is activated by default This option activates a large number of help buttons on different locations in the user interface A context sensitive help text will be displayed when clicking any of those help buttons When after some time you feel comfortable with each part of the setup you might prefer to hide the help buttons again in order to have a less cluttered user interface i Little Giant Control Pens 1E K a Help Ne Show help buttons b ot About Help menu a context sensitive helo buttons on the different application screens The editor application consists of one main screen which contains several tabs Each tab takes care of one particular part of the setup the Global setup tab controls a large number of global settings so it again contains a number of sub tabs for the different topics within global setup In general the best approach is to build up your setup by running through the different tab screens from left t
118. es sent by the 2 stomp boxes The Chorus effect is switched off with ControlChange 10 value 0 and the Distortion effect is switched off with ControlChange 11 value 0 Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 35 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Now click preset 2 which results in the following monitor display Received MIDI messages Ol qa 01 ProgramChange 01 ControlChange 01 ControlChange 011 000 MIDI messages for preset 2 MIDI messages for preset 2 shown in Control Center shown on the Little Giant On the Little Giant screen the old messages are scrolling up and 3 new messages are added you can view the full message list by turning the rotary knob The PC 001 is the patch selection for preset 2 the CC 010 127 message switches the Chorus effect on and the CC 011 000 message switches the Distortion effect off Verify that the 2 remaining presets also send the MIDI messages which you expect Finally just toggle the 2 stomp box switches and click the Sustain effect switch in order to see the corresponding activation and deactivation messages being sent As a last step those of you who have an expression pedal available might want to test it out right now Just connect the expression pedal to the EXPR1 stereo jack This will probably cause some spurious MIDI messages being sent during connection this is normal and harmless just clear the monitor display to start from a blank screen Now mov
119. es shown during message setup with the built in menus all use the range 1 128 for ProgramChange messages if this global option is activated A last important context where this setting is relevant is when using the LG in keypad mode see chapter 13 17 1 6 Bank Preset display mode options LG Control Center Global setup User interface In Bank Preset display mode show song preset show bank preset LG internal menu not available In Bank Preset display mode you can choose if you want to see the current bank name or the current song name if Songs are used in the upper half of the screen 17 1 7 Patchname display LG Control Center Global setup User interface Patchname display 4 Show selected patch name _ but not for patch presets LG internal menu not available Specifies whether you want to see the name of the selected patch displayed on the LCD screen for a few seconds after selecting the patch The patch can be a stompbox momentary effect or regular patch When a preset contains several extra patches selected sequentially the patchname display allows you to clearly notify which of the patches is currently activated You can choose to activate this patchname display for stompboxes momentary effects only not for patch presets Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 114 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 8 Expression
120. es being received shortly after each other control messages which load a certain sound activate a certain effect etc When the device needs some time in order to initialize a sound it is possible that some subsequent control messages get lost and some effects are not correctly initialized Inserting a short delay between each control message can solve this kind of issues Another closely related message type is the SyncedDelay lts functionalitly is identical insert a delay at any place in the MIDI stream Only important difference is that the SyncedDelay length is expressed in terms of a MIDI Clock you can define a delay ranging from 1 to 127 16 notes a 16 note being 6 MIDI clocks This means that the delay is synchronized with a MIDI clock signal This clock can be fed into the LG through its MIDI IN port s or it can be generated by the LG itself using its metronome or taptempo functionality Actually when using the internal MIDI clock it is not necessary to really activate transmission of MIDI clock messages see chapter 17 10 1 Activating the metronome or taptempo function itself is sufficient 14 2 ControlChange sweeps Instead of specifying each single MIDI message which a patch needs to send you can also use message sweeps in order to specify a range of ControlChange messages to be transmitted You do this by adding a Sweep message to the patch message stream As is explained in the next topic there ar
121. es for advanced features Appendix A gives a complete listing of the supported message types the dropdown box in the Message type column offers you the choice to select any of the 19 listed MIDI messages or 19 GORDIUS specific messages More info about the functionality covered by the GORDIUS specific messages can be found in following chapters chapter 12 1 Metronome chapter 12 2 TapTempo chapter 14 1 Delay SyncedDelay chapter 14 2 FineSweep CoarseSweep SlowSweep chapter 14 3 RepeatFrom RepeatTill chapter 9 5 RandomFrom RandomTill chapter 9 3 Incvariable DecVariable ShowVariable chapter 13 KeypadMode chapter 10 4 DisplayMode chapter 10 4 7 TunerDisplay chapter11 RotaryAssign chapter 14 4 BlockTransmit Data1 amp Data2 LG Control Center 1113 127 LG internal menu MIDI MESSAGE A GANTROL BUMRER J MIDI MESSAGE EE CONTROL MALME n A MIDI message can consist of 1 2 or 3 bytes a status byte plus optionally 1 or 2 data bytes Depending on the chosen MIDI message type the Data1 and Data2 columns will be enabled or disabled The actual meaning for each of the additional data bytes is listed in the message table of Appendix A MIDI data bytes are 7 bit values this means their value can vary between O and 127 There is one exception ProgramChange values can optionally be expressed as a value between 1 and 128 This possibility is explained i
122. es the value of one or more data variables This is yet another way of tuning the content of a preset or effect by selecting another preset A typical scenario for the use of data variables suppose you define the lower row of 4 presets in a certain bank as patch presets which select a certain sound The higher row contains 4 stomp boxes which engage certain effects for that sound The use of data variables for the stompbox ControlChange numbers enables you to change the type of effect linked to each stompbox of the upper row depending on the currently selected preset in the lower row Ef See chapter 17 9 2 for setup of MIDI data variables Additionally two GORDIUS specific messages can be used at any place within a patch message stream in order to increment or decrement any variable value just select the IncVar or DecVar message and specify the variable to be modified As one example this powerful feature gives you the possibility to browse all the sounds of an effects module with only 2 presets Up preset sends IncVar VariablePC followed by ProgramChange VariablePC Down preset sends DecVar VariablePC followed by ProgramChange VariablePC A third related GORDIUS specific message is called ShowVar It allows you to display the current value of any variable on the display for a few seconds This way you know at any time what is the actual value being used for any of the
123. etected on the FCB controller ports In order to do this detection an ActiveSense message is sent to the slave controller port at regular intervals The busy LED flashes whenever a patch download or firmware download is in progress It also shows the metronome beat when metronome or tap tempo functionality is being used GORDIUS POWER M Little Giant 168 B MIDIIN i MIDI OUT FCB M BUSY El Little Giant indicator LEDS MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 76 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 4 The graphical LCD display To be correct the graphical display is not an LCD but a PLED polymeric LED display This technology has a number of advantages over the classical LCD display its pixels can be considered individual small LEDs which emit bright green light when activated This means that a PLED display doesn t need any backlight it has a far superior contrast ratio and this results in very good readibility in varying lighting conditions As opposed to the traditional fixed character displays a graphical display allows for variable font sizes which is a big advantage for a floorcontroller lots of information can be displayed on the screen while doing a setup using the built in menus while bigger size characters can be used in runtime mode making the info clearly visible even when standing on a certain distance from the controller The Little Giant features a number of different display modes which are covered in the nex
124. ext property which is MESSAGESTREAM 1 Each patch can send an arbitrary number of MIDI messages when its switch is being depressed and a different set of messages when its switch is being released For now we will not send anything on switch release which means we will keep MESSAGESTREAM 2 empty In the first message stream we will send 2 bank select messages plus a program change message which is the standard way of selecting a sound in an effects processor which supports multiple banks of sounds Chs0l CE 00 00 lt select coarse bank 00 ch 01 CC 32 00 within this range select fine bank 00 CROLL PE 00 t an This bank select the Tirst sound Ch 01 indicates that all messages will be sent on MIDI channel 01 Let s add these 3 MIDI messages to the first messagestream of our patch Select MESSAGESTREAM 1 and click its content which is currently none You now see an empty list of MIDI messages so you click the icon to add a first message By default a PC 00 on channel 01 is added to the message list Click this message in order to further edit it mre Ba JE Ed SE Ready to edit the first MIDI message of the patch clicking the Edit button will enter edit mode for the selected MIDI message The first property to be specified is the MIDI message type When editing the message type a list is displayed of all available types to choose from Apart from 19 different types of MID
125. f the pedal and adapts its input circuit accordingly Tip and heel switch simulation A very powerful feature is the software simulation of a tip and or heel switch available in each expression pedal setup This feature gives you the same functionality as if you would have a real momentary or toggle switch mounted underneath the pedal at tip position or at heel position This virtual switch can for instance be used to activate and deactivate the effect being controlled by the expression pedal Simply move the pedal to its limit position heel down or tip down as you prefer and the controlled effect wah for instance is disabled Expression pedal engage value Another interesting option you can choose to have the continuous control initially enabled only after reaching a certain value This is especially useful in order to avoid sudden volume boosts when switching presets Imagine that for a certain preset you have linked a high gain effect to the expres sion pedal If the pedal happens to be in the tip position when switching presets you might get a very uncomfortable sudden volume boost This can be avoided by specifying a low engage value for this expression pedal setup in that case after switching preset you first need to move the pedal down to that low engage value Only when you reach this value the effect is enabled and can be further controlled with the pedal No more unpleasant surprises ER See chapter 17 3 for detail
126. g schematics MIDI connections and routing If your controlled gear does not react upon any floorboard action first thing to check is the MIDI USB routing see chapter 6 o as soon as you have a USB cable connected between LG and PC this connection will force all MIDI output to go to the PC instead of to the MIDI output Your PC needs to have an application running which actively forwards all messages further to the MIDI OUT port of the PC o If your floorboard has a USB cable connected and seems to react very slowly patch LED going on only half a second after clicking a switch check if a MIDI application is actively listening to the correct MIDI IN device If ControlCenter is launched for instance but an incorrect MIDI IN device is selected the LG will send MIDI messages to the USB connection and wait for a response for 0 5 second after each message You can notice this as the LG reacting very slowly to each switch click o The MIDI monitor screen of the LG only shows activity on the MIDI ports not on the USB ports So nothing will appear on that screen if no data is forwarded to the MIDI OUT port Troubleshooting 170 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Factory reset If you believe your setup is somehow corrupted causing the Little Giant to behave incorrectly you can do a factory reset at all time This clears the preset memory of your unit completely bringing it back in the state in which you received it This factory reset can be
127. g selection One restriction which should be emphasized there is always one single setlist activated in the Little Giant This means that Direct Song Select allows you to directly jump to any song within this setlist but not to a song which is not included in the current setlist In between sets you can use the internal menu structure to easily activate a different setlist After that you can again directly select any of the songs within that setlist using the Direct Song Select keypad mode Remark As you have noticed there is one particular difference between ProgramChange direct select and the other keypad modes After activating PC direct select keypad mode you stay in this mode until you explicitly send the Keypad mode off command Therefore it is logical to use a stompbox preset for keypad mode activation deactivation The other keypad modes are automatically deactivated after selecting a preset bank or song This means that it probably makes more sense to use a momentary effect preset to activate this mode instead of a stompbox One technical detail in order to have this momentary effect behave correctly you need to put the keypad activation message in the second message stream instead of the first message stream If you don t do this the LED will not go off when releasing the mom effect switch because no LED refreshing is done while keypad mode is activated Using keypad mode 89 180 GURDIUS Litt
128. g started using Little Giant Control Center 32 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 12 Testing the setup Now that you downloaded the setup to your unit it s time to have a closer look at the Little Giant screen The details display already gives you some more info than the empty screen you saw on initial startup Little Giant 1 current set list current song BANE 1 current bank Ho current preset switch assignments Details display No set lists or songs have been defined but the first bank of your setup is automatically selected and its name is displayed on the screen You didn t click any preset yet so the current preset still shows none and in the bottom part of the screen you can get an overview of all presets assigned to switches of the current bank Scroll the rotary knob and you can check all switches of bank 01 You will see that as expected switch 1 till 4 are linked to patch 1 till 4 switch 5 and 6 are linked to the 2 stomp box effects and switch 7 is linked to the momentary effect 3 12 1 Checking LED and display behavior Now click a few foot switches and see what the LEDs and display indicate Clicking switch 1 will select preset 1 Its LED is ON and the LCD shows PATCH 01 as current preset If you now click switch 2 preset 1 is deselected and preset 2 is selected as reflected in its LED and on the LCD display But you also notice the LED of switch 5 is burning Indeed your Chorus effect is automat
129. g stream 1 activate MIDI msg type range MIDI msg stream 2 deactivate PATCH EXPR PEDAL SETUPS STOMPBOXES MOM EFFECTS EXTRA PATCHES MIDI mesg stream 1 depress MIDI msg type range MIDI meg stream 2 release the Little Giant setup structure The Little Giant setup structure 63 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Maybe the easiest way to get an overview of the setup structure used in the Little Giant is through a schematic picture The diagram on the previous page shows you the hierarchy of the different setup elements used in a Little Giant setup lf we go top down the highest level in this structure is the setlist which obviously consists of several songs Each song can be linked to one bank What might not be clear from the simplified diagram you can reuse the same bank for different songs no need to create a new bank for each song Similarly of course you can reuse the same song in different setlists Setlists and songs are optional elements in a Little Giant setup If you don t want to use these you can as well just create a number of banks and use the up down switches to scroll through the full bank list of your Little Giant A convenient feature is that you can give each bank a relevant 16 character name not just 01 02 The next level in the structure below the bank is the preset This is the element which is linked to each switch of a bank A bank can have up to 32 switches
130. gh contrast suitable in highly varying ambient lighting conditions 2 Rotary control knob Turning and clicking this digital knob allows for menu navigation data entry and display mode selection 3 Preset foot switches The foot switches used for preset selection The unique design of the switches allows them to be used both as foot switch or as manual switch for desktop use Although rugged all metal switches they are more silent than regular metal foot switches used for this type of application 4 Up down foot switches Used for scrolling through all banks or for scrolling through a set list Keeping the up or down switch pressed for a second engages auto scrolling 5 Preset 9 DirectBank1 and preset 10 DirectBank2 foot switches The LittleGiant can be configured to have 2 Direct Bank switches These allow direct single click access to 2 banks containing a set of commonly used presets It is also possible to configure the Little Giant to have 24 presets per bank In this extended bank mode the D1 and D2 switches are providing single click access to any of the 3 subsets of 8 presets within each bank The Little Giant a quick overview 12 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 2 3 The Little Giant Control Center Te Little Giant Control Center File Tools Help QuickConnect b QuickDump E Global setup Pedal setup Patch setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup Communication MIDI monitor Board layout LEDs and
131. gn any PC number to each of the patch presets and any CC number to each of the stompbox and momentary effect presets An incoming PC or CC message with the specified number and using the MIDI channel specified in the global setup see chapter 17 2 4 will trigger the preset just as if a Little Giant footswitch was clicked In case of a stompbox preset a CC value of 64 or higher will switch the stompbox on while a value lower than 64 will switch it off Similarly a momentary effect is engaged when receiving a CC with value gt 64 and released when receiving a value lower than 64 17 5 5 Stomp boxes LG Control Center Stomp boxes _ 17 Lumos Boost A 12 Flang Trem Phas hd I SD 1 RC Booster LG internal menu PRESET 1 E REE El An important feature of a preset is that it can automatically initialize a number of stomp box effects next to selecting the required sound patch In ControlCenter just click the button next to the stomp boxes list in order to add all stomp boxes to be activated when selecting the current preset A popup appears with a list of all defined stomp boxes You can multi select all required stompboxes in one go An important point to notice stomp boxes can be switched on or off when selecting a certain preset In both cases you need to add the stomp box to the stompbox list of the preset first Then you specify whether the stomp box needs to be turned on
132. graphical display and to avoid any residual image when keeping the same info displayed for a long time the Little Giant has a built in screen saver The activation delay for this screen saver can be customized between 1 and 15 minutes It is not possible to fully disable the screen saver 17 1 11 Scrolling through display modes LG Control Center User interface Global setup Display modes When using footswitches to scroll through display modes scroll through following modes W Details Bank and preset Preset XL Setlist Setlist XL Banklist Banklist XL MIDI monitor q Sa Sa al al ala LG internal menu not available As is explained in chapter 10 4 you can dedicate one or two footswitches to scrolling through the different available display modes You can also specify that you want to scroll through a small subset of the available display modes only This subset is defined by checking the desired display modes in this global setup topic This selection only applies to the display mode scrolling using a dedicated foot switch When using the rotary knob you always scroll through all available display modes regardless of this setting Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 116 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 12 Patch message resend LG Control Center Global setup Miscellaneous Patch message resend Don t select the same pat
133. h will turn on The first MIDI message stream of a patch is sent when the patch switch is depressed Optionally a second message stream can be sent when releasing the switch In practice this second message stream might not be used very often A stomp box represents a certain effect chorus delay etc It can have 2 states on or off lts LED reflects this state it is on when the stomp box is activated and off when it is not active Each click on a stomp box switch will toggle its state between active and not active While only one patch can be active at the same time many stomp boxes can be activated simultaneously Selecting a stomp box will not deselect the currently active patch The first MIDI message stream of a stomp box is sent in order to activate the stomp box while the second MIDI message stream is sent in order to deactivate it This means that the second stream is sent when the stomp box switch is clicked a second time This is clearly different from the other patch types the 2 MIDI message streams of a stomp box are sent alternatively when depressing its toggle switch no messages are ever sent when releasing the switch A momentary effect represents an effect which is only activated temporarily while its switch is being pressed A good example is the sustain pedal for a synth The LED again indicates the effect activation which means that this time it will only be on as long as the switch is being pressed Just like st
134. he preset connected to each of the LG switches When you turn the rotary knob you can scroll from Switch 01 to Switch 10 and back to show the preset linked to each of the switches But again no presets are defined yet so for now they all will show none 3 4 Installing and launching Little Giant Control Center The LGCC installation file can be downloaded from the GORDIUS website http www gordius be Double click the msi file in order to start the application installation This will guide you through the typical installation steps Welcome lo the LitlleGian Control Center Setup Select Installation Folder Contin Installation Wizard Tha instales vel guide you hoah he depa squad bo mubal Liisi Condal Cender on your The intak ell muta Liteon Control Canter lo the following holder The rides oak to tad Lillian Contd Genter on you came scompaler Ta tall iva hii babda ick Het To mitad bo differed foda enter ll balon ot dick Tiiri Chk Hear bo slo the relation Folder EP Paes GORDIUSALGCS Drowse L Dik Cos tp eel tS The Litte Giant Combe sofa H bee available ond can be dedicada nti J ad cope ind debi eth E EL Feria upia fe te GORDIUS DEI see begh availabe ho Ceres 1 a GONS Peetu dl Gar he Gba by ir ie uh EARN wah Thies Ao PL pole and mare ane probeched by intelectual prope bear Mo cer ihal modity reverie engecer idii ihtedsenhis of nary ey mole Copied ot popstar mens a Installing LitlleGiant Control Cent
135. he previous setup QuickConnect The quick access buttons 15 5 The Communication tab The communication tab is the place where you initialize all communication with the Little Giant Now we are not talking about the plain MIDI communication No this is about the specific communication between Control Center and Little Giant for downloading or uploading patch setups or for doing a firmware upgrade All this is done through the USB connection of your unit C oy x g 15 Little Giant Control Center File Help QuickConnect bol QuickDump Global setup Pedal setup Patch setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup Communication MIDI monitor j MIDI interface MIDI IN device LittleGiant MIDI OUT device LittleGiant e connect to Little Giant Setup info Little Giant info Patch setup memory 0 Type LG Preset setup memory 0 Serialnumber 0104 Bank setup memory 0 E Hardware revision 1 0 Song setup memory 0 Firmware version 1 5 3 Loaded setup file Patch Dump Firmware upgrade send patch dump a gt receive patch dump download new firmware EJ the Communication tab How to use LG Control Center 96 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 5 1 MIDI interface setup First thing you need to do is connect to the Little Giant In order to do so you need to select the LittleGiant as MIDI device both for input as for output The two dropdownboxes in the MIDI interface fie
136. his is out of control of the LG Next to external switch controllers also MIDI enabled continuous controllers can be used as external controller for the Little Giant The continuous stream of CC messages sent by this type of controller can be used to trigger the more complex expression pedal setups of the Little Giant Again just connect the MIDI output of such a continous controller to the MIDI IN of the LG in order to use it as a slave This means that you are not limited to using expression pedals with the LG you can as well connect other types of MIDI enabled continuous controllers like ribbon controllers breath controllers etc fe How to enable the use of external controllers is explained in chapter 17 2 4 Extending the Little Giant 60 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 7 3 External switches Apart from the slave controllers which can add a bunch of extra switches to your setup the Little Giant also has 2 separate mono jack inputs which can be used to connect separate external switches to the floorboard You might want to dedicate these switches to specific functionality like a mute or tuner button a MIDI panic button etc When activating these 2 external switches in the global LG setup they will be added to your bank setup and you will be able to program them just like any other internal switch of the LG Alternatively you can also dedicate the 2 switches to be used as an extra pair of up down switches
137. hrough MIDI This manual does not contain an introductory guide on MIDI However lots of info on this topic can be found on the internet The first part of the manual contains 2 getting started guides The first one leads you through the first steps of programming your controller by use of the Little Giant Control Center the PC editor which can be freely downloaded from the GORDIUS website The second guide leads you through exactly the same user scenario but this time the setup is done using the Little Giant as a standalone device that is without a PC connected to it Different important concepts of the setup are being introduced in those getting started guides More in depth info about the different parts of a Little Giant setup is given in the succeeding chapter The second part of the manual is a detailed reference guide of each of the programmable options of the controller Only after browsing through this reference you will obtain a good view on the extended possibilities of your controller As you will learn in that part of the manual several advanced controller features are accessible through the PC editor only and cannot be edited through the local menu structure of the unit Finally the manual concludes with a few appendices which give you a short overview of the possibilities and specifications of the product Introduction 9 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 2 The Little Giant a quick overview 2 1 The Little Giant Rear Pa
138. ically switched on after selecting preset 2 Select presets 3 and 4 to verify the behavior of the stomp boxes being automatically selected the way you programmed it Of course after selecting a preset you can still switch individual stomp boxes on and off while the same preset is still selected No matter what is the current state of the stomp boxes they are reset to their programmed initial value when selecting one of the 4 presets Click switch 7 to verify that this is a momentary effect it doesn t cause any preset to be deselected and also its LED is only on for the time you are pressing the foot switch Finally you can click switches 8 9 or 10 nothing will happen because you didn t link any preset to those switches Before having a closer look at the actual MIDI messages being sent by the foot controller let s switch to bank 2 by clicking the Up foot switch The LCD will show the newly selected bank name BANK 02 and you will notice that the LEDs 5 and 6 did not change state Indeed the stomp boxes are defined in the global bank so they are available on the same switches in any bank However no presets are linked to switches 1 to 4 of this bank so nothing happens when you click these The previously selected preset is still active as you can also see on the LCD display Indeed when switching back to BANK 01 using the Down switch the LED of the selected preset goes on again Getting started using Little Giant Control Cent
139. icon in order to add a third message at the bottom of the list This time the generated default PC 00 message is exactly what you want as third message of this patch so no further editing is required Your first patch now has a first message stream containing following 3 MIDI messages MIDI message list for the first patch Getting started with the Little Giant 42 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 6 4 Creating more patches When you return to the patch list which contains PATCH 1 as only patch you can now add more patches in exactly the same way Select and click PATCH 1 in order to see the 5 command icons on the bottom of the screen Click the icon to add a new patch which is called PATCH 2 Edit messagestream 1 of this patch and add a single MIDI message to it Edit this ProgramChange message modifying the Program Number to 01 and keeping everything else on their default values Continue the same way until you have a list of 4 patches named PATCH 1 till PATCH 4 The first patch will send 3 MIDI messages bank select program change as described above the other patches will just send a single PC message with ProgramChange Number for each patch varying from 01 to 03 This might be a good moment to try out the other options in the patch list menu select the first patch and click the add icon to see that a new patch PATCH 5 is added right after the selected patch in the list Th
140. id of clicking the rotary knob unintentionally with your foot during live use of the floorboard 17 1 5 Program Change display range LG Control Center Global setup User interface ProgramChange display range PC 000 PC 127 LG internal menu not available The MIDI standard uses a value range of 0 127 for all its data bytes ControlChange number ControlChange value ProgramChange number Note number or Note velocity all those values are represented by a 7 bit number and therefore can have a value between O and 127 However a ProgramChange number in most cases corresponds to a certain sound in a MIDI controlled sound module synth effect When referring to the sounds in a bank many manufacturers prefer to use a number starting from 1 up to 128 even if the underlying MIDI value will still be one less A MIDI message PCOO will activate sound 1 of the device while PC 127 will activate sound 128 Therefore the Little Giant Control Center has the option to show all PC numbers one higher that is Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 113 180 GURDIUS Little Giant using the range 1 128 This is the case in the patch setup tab where PC values are entered but also in the MIDI monitor tab where received messages are displayed This setting also applies to the LG internal screens the messages shown on the MIDI monitor display of the LG and also the valu
141. ilable stomp box patches is shown and you can select your CHORUS patch as the main patch for this preset When you leave edit mode you return to the list of stompbox presets which now contains your CHORUS preset Click it and select the Add icon again in order to add a second stompbox preset Edit this preset rename it to DISTORTION and select the DISTORTION patch as its main patch Ready to do the same for our momentary effect Getting started with the Little Giant 46 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 7 2 Creating momentary effect presets Return to the PRESET SETUP menu and select the second item which is called Effect presets This is the first step of the mom effect preset creation which proceeds exactly the same way as you just did for stomp box presets Create one preset call it SUSTAIN and modify its main patch As you are currently in the mom effect preset setup you will notice that the patch list shown when doing the main patch selection now contains the single momentary effect patch which was created in a previous step Select it and leave edit mode for this momentary effect preset 4 7 3 Creating patch presets Now we come to the most important part of the preset setup creating patch presets The main difference with the previous 2 steps will become obvious when you start editing the newly created patch presets apart from the preset name its main patch and the expression pedal relate
142. in order to use all advanced features in your live setup And the internal menus can still be used at all time to do late minute offline setup changes Throughout this manual we will go into detail about each and every option of your Little Giant and we will clearly indicate which options can be programmed both locally and through the PC application and which options can only be programmed using the LG Control Center The Little Giant a quick overview 13 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 3 1 Before reading this chapter This chapter guides you through the first use of your Little Giant foot controller lt shows you how to get started and do a first simple MIDI setup using the Little Giant Control Center As mentioned before using the Control Center highly increases the ease of use when doing an initial setup from scratch lf you are currently not equipped to use the Windows PC editor you can skip this chapter and follow the getting started guide in the next chapter instead That one describes exactly the same scenario but depends solely on the built in menus of the Little Giant withouth any use of Control Center 3 2 Making the connections Thanks to the MIDI monitor capabilities of ControlCenter and of the Little Giant controller itself it is not necessary to connect any gear to the MIDI OUT port of the LG in order to check the dummy setup which you will create here If you do co
143. in patch but possibly activating different stomp boxes or different expression pedal setups In some cases it can be interesting to switch between those presets without resending all the MIDI messages related to this same main patch Indeed with some devices reselecting the same patch results in a short drop out of the sound Therefore an option is available which blocks resending the same patch message stream more than once With this setting activated you can also safely reselect a preset in order to bring all related stomp boxes in their programmed initial state again without this causing a new activation of the main patch Ef See chapter 17 1 12 for setup of this option The Little Giant setup structure 69 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 8 5 Banks As the Little Giant has 10 preset switches and you definitely will need more than 10 presets in your setup it makes sense to organize those presets in multiple banks The Little Giant supports using up to 250 different banks A bank setup is pretty straightforward for each bank you can link any preset to each of the available switches It might be interesting to notice that there is no restriction whatsoever on the type of preset you link to each switch While some floorboards force you to use a certain row of switches for patch presets while another row of switches can be used exclusively as so called instant access switches or stompboxes there is no such restriction in the Little Gian
144. ing is done based on the MIDI channel of the messages any of the 16 channels can be blocked or allowed on each of the 2 ports Also System Common or System Realtime messages can be optionally blocked or passed Ef See chapter 17 2 5 for setup of MIDI filtering USB and MIDI routing filtering 57 1180 GURDIUS Little Giant 7 Extending the Little Giant 7 1 Slave controllers As mentioned in chapter 5 3 the Little Giant has 2 dedicated MIDI ports for connecting one or more additional slave controllers A slave controller adds extra switches to the layout offering more direct access to a large number of presets at the cost of having a bigger footprint on stage In the future a dedicated GORDIUS slave controller will be designed Today the very popular and low priced Behringer FCB1010 can be used as LG slave controller As an alternative also support for the Roland FC 200 and FC 300 boards is implemented Two dedicated MIDI connections are required for connecting the slave controller This enables two way communication in one direction the foot clicks of the slave controller are forwarded to the Little Giant where all logic is triggered to transmit whatever complex preset data linked to that switch In the other direction the Little Giant returns info to the slave controller about the currently active preset stomp boxes etc This way the LEDs on the slave controller can correctly reflect the current state of all its switches In o
145. ing sent when rocking the pedal You have the choice between ControlChange PitchBend and ChannelPressure but leave it on the default type ControlChange Modify the control number to 7 which is the MIDI standard for volume adjustment The other properties can also be left unchanged the used MIDI channel is 1 the value at the heel position is 0 and the value at the tip position is 127 as both values are separately adjustable you could choose to use a more narrow adjustment range or even create an inverse adjustment slope by choosing the tip value lower than the heel value Now that we have created an expression pedal setup let s assign it as default setup for pedal 1 Return to the main menu choose Global settings gt ExprPedal setup and select Expr pedal 1 This shows the empty list of setups for this pedal Click the Add icon and select the only available setup called VOLUME The list of expression pedal setups for pedal 1 now contains this single setup i lt is even possible to assign more than 1 expr pedal setup to a single pedal The result is the same as if you would rock 2 or more expression pedals at the same time A typical example where this could be useful is when you want to adjust volume of different devices simultaneously while these devices are listening to different MIDI channels You could even create a fader control which fades between 2 sound sources by giving the two individual volume adjust
146. ing sweep with the same ControlChange number when de activating the effect the 2 sweeps will be smartly joined together when the effect switching is done faster than the sweep itself As soon as you deactivate the effect which still has a rising control sweep running the sweep will be interrupted and the parameter value will start descending from the point it reached at that moment till the end value of the descending sweep Fine coarse and slow sweeps There are a few different sweep types which can be used A fine sweep will send all intermediate values between the start and end value of a ControlChange message as described above The delay between each message is expressed in units of 2 ms This results in a full range sweep values going from 0 to 127 with a total duration of up to 32 seconds A coarse sweep will increment or decement its controller values in steps of 4 This results in a coarser adjustment but also in a faster sweep up to 8 seconds full sweep time which can be desirable in some situations A slow sweep as the name suggests can be used if you want to create a sweep which takes a long time The slow sweep uses delay units of 16 ms which results in a possible full range sweep time of up to 258 seconds more than 4 minutes But this slow sweep also has another important property which might be the primary reason to prefer it in some scenarios While a fine or coarse sweep is running no other messages can be sent
147. instance when receiving or transmitting MIDI Clock messages or when connecting a device which emits a constant stream of ActiveSense messages A third option is to use these LEDs as indicator for an activated D1 or D2 bank This is specifically useful in the case of the LG M which doesn t have dedicated D1 D2 LEDs when you would use 2 external footswitches connected to the jack inputs for activating the 2 Direct banks 17 1 3 General behavior when scrolling through banks or songs LG Control Center Global setup User interface Up Down switches in Song mode Up Down switches in Bank mode To go to next song To go to next bank dick the Up key dick the Up key dick the Down key dick the Down key LG internal menu not available The Little Giant like most other controllers has an Up and a Down switch to scroll through all its banks Most logical way to do this is to use the Up switch to proceed to the next bank and the Down switch to return to the previous bank When scrolling through a set list you might start wondering what exactly is the most logical way to use the Up Down switches Following the same logic as with banks you might say that the Up switch proceeds to the next song while the Down switch returns to the previous song However in setlist display mode the Little Giant shows part of the current setlist on the graphical display When looking at this list tt might feel
148. ions as a standard external MIDI to PC interface forwarding any MIDI message from the LG MIDI IN port to the PC while all PC generated MIDI messages are forwarded to the LG MIDI OUT port Whenever a USB connection is made the MIDI messages generated by the Little Giant as a result of a footswitch click are no longer sent directly to the LG MIDI OUT port but they are redirected to the USB port and forwarded to the PC instead This allows you to control any MIDI aware application like Ableton Live Cubase Guitar Rig etc with your feet If you still want to have the generated MIDI messages available at the MIDI OUT port too just make sure your MIDI application does the correct routing from MIDI IN port to MIDI OUT port on the PC You can read more about MIDI routing in the next chapter Firmware upgrades An obvious advantage of the USB connectivity is that it allows for easy firmware upgrades of the Little Giant products Using the Little Giant Control Center this is just a matter of a few mouse clicks ER See chapter 18 on how to execute a firmware upgrade 5 2 MIDI IN MIDI OUT Of course the main functionality of the Little Giant is to send MIDI commands to any MIDI capable device Therefore the MIDI OUT port is the most important connection on the unit Connect this port to the MIDI IN port of any device which you want to control with Little Giant The messages sent by the Little Giant through its MIDI OUT port can be combined
149. is if a USB connection with a PC is active send all MIDI messages to the USB port If no USB connection is active send them to the MIDI OUT port As a consequence if a USB connection is active and you still want the messages to appear on the MIDI OUT port your PC needs to forward all messages coming from the USB MIDI IN port to the USB MIDI OUT port This is exactly what the mentioned Forward checkbox in Control Center does In general other MIDI related PC applications will have similar forwarding functionality Make sure you are in BANK 1 this is the case when one of the 4 preset LEDs 1 till 4 is on If that s not the case you are currently in BANK 2 so just click the Down switch once Now click switch 1 and have a look at the MIDI monitor display This is what it should show Received MIDI messages 01 ControlChange 000 000 01 ControlChange O32 000 01 ProgramChange aga 01 ControlChange 010 000 01 ControlChange 011 000 MIDI messages for preset 1 MIDI messages for preset 1 shown in Control Center shown on the Little Giant Indeed first you see the 3 messages which you defined for preset 1 2 CC messages plus 1 PC message doing the bank select and patch select 01 indicates that everything is sent on MIDI Channel 1 while the rightside arrow indicates that we are looking at outgoing messages Incoming MIDI messages will show an arrow at the left side of the message line Following this are 2 messag
150. is setting a LED in the dim state indicates a deactivated stompbox You can use this setting to have an easy distinction between stompbox switches and patch switches a non activated patch preset will have an off LED while a non activated stompbox will have a dim LED When using dim LEDs you have the choice between 2 different settings for LED brightness in the dim state low or medium You can try out what setting fits you best in order to have a clear distinction between the 3 different LED states The option show metronome activity on switch LEDs allows to disable the flashing switch LEDs which are used by default to show the metronome tempo When disabling this option you will still be able to see the metronome tempo on the smaller BUSY LED While you will probably prefer to use the switch LEDs for real metronome use the built in clock can also be used for other purposes than a metronome like specifying the length of a synced delay in a message stream See chapter 14 1 or synchronize external MIDI Clock controlled devices In those cases you might not always need the obvious flashing of the switch LEDs Finally there are a few choices for the use of the MIDI LEDs By default these LEDs are used to show any activity on the MIDI IN OUT ports of your Little Giant This can be helpful to check if your controller is actually sending or receiving data In some specific situations you might prefer to disable these LEDs for
151. isabled you probably didn t specify in your global setup that you will be using 1 external expression pedal see previous topic Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 18 180 GURDIUS Little Giant File Tools Help QuickConnect QuickDump E Global setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup Communication MIDI monitor Channeli Controlchange 7 000 127 Default expr pedal assignment as External expr pedal 1 External expr pedal 2 External expr pedal 3 External expr pedal SWE atu itil ES a a f a gt Ta triggered by CC 0 triggered by cc 0 triggered by CC triggered by cc 0 Setup data loaded expression pedal setup tab Y It is even possible to assign more than 1 expr pedal setup to a single pedal The result is the same as if you would rock 2 or more expression pedals at the same time A typical example where this could be useful is for adjusting volume on different devices simultaneously while these devices are listening to different MIDI channels You could even create a fader control which fades between 2 sound sources by giving the two individual volume adjustments an opposite adjustment slope Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 19 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 8 Patch setup Y The Little Giant provides 3 types of patches called regular patches stomp boxes and momentary effects The main difference between the 3
152. itches O Send a ProgChange message Use the internal switches ps _ Selecta preset a j P _ Use the slavecontroller switches e Select a bank _ Select a song LG internal menu not available Specifies what exactly you want to activate while in keypad mode and whether you want to use an external slave controller as numeric keypad or the internal LG switches See chapter 13 for a detailed explanation of keypad mode 17 1 18 BankSelect messages LG Control Center cars r Global setup Miscellaneous BankSeleck messages use CC 00 and cc 32 use CC 00 only use CC 32 only LG internal menu not available As explained in chapter 13 the Little Giant can be used in keypad mode In this mode it can send any arbitrary ProgramChange message as its number is being typed in with the foot switches The full value range of 0 999 is supported divided in banks of 128 Therefore additional BankSelect messages are automatically prepended to the ProgramChange message whenever a different bank is accessed A full BankSelect message consists of 2 CC messages with number 00 MSB and 32 LSB however some devices only support CCOO others only support CC32 Therefore you can customize this BankSelect message structure here Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 120 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 2 MIDI routing and filtering 17 2 1 Generated message routing
153. ited adjustment range you might want to check the interconnection or try swapping the wires of ring and tip Volume pedals as opposed to expression pedals have 2 separate jacks an input and an output jack They are designed to accept an audio signal an instrument cable and attenuate the audio signal directly In order to use these as an expression pedal internal rewiring or the use of a Y shaped conversion cable is required in order to obtain the wiring shown in the picture on the next page as an option the Little Giant can also be equipped with 4 expression pedal inputs instead of 2 expr pedal inputs and 2 external switch inputs Extending the Little Giant 61 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Another topic is the type of potentiometer used An expression pedal normally has a linear potmeter in order to have a smooth adjustment of any sound parameter while a volume pedal normally has a logarithmic potmeter which is better tuned to give the perception of a linear volume adjustment over its full range One of the more advanced features of the Little Giant is the possibility to digitally adjust the sweep curve of the connected pedals This way the type of potmeter is no longer an issue the LG can compensate the sweep in order to have a linear parameter adjustment with a logarithmic potmeter or a smooth volume adjustment with a linear potmeter In the Little Giant setup you will be able to freely assign any part of a parameter adjustment
154. ittle Giant connections 54 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 6 USB and MIDI routing filtering The Little Giant gives you several different options to route its MIDI messages through the MIDI ports or USB connection 6 1 Generated MIDI message routing OO MIDI application SWITCH PRESSES MIDI OUT XA 2 USB only automatic USB or MIDI eee i ee a LG message routing By default the routing for generated messages is automatically selected depending on whether a USB cable is plugged in or not All messages generated by clicking a foot switch or by rocking an expression pedal are sent to the MIDI OUT connector of the LG unless an active USB connection is detected In that case all messages are sent to the USB port and no longer sent directly to the MIDI OUT port of the Little Giant If you are using the USB connection but you also want to forward the MIDI from the PC to the MIDI OUT port of the LG you need to forward all messages by use of any MIDI capable application on your PC You can for instance use the Little Giant Control Center for this by checking the Forward messages checkbox in the MIDI monitor tab So the message forwarding is depending on the running PC application therefore this path is indicated with a dotted line in the routing diagram If you want to have the generated MIDI messages available at the MIDI OUT port only wether or not the USB cable is plugged in you can set the MIDI OUT routing
155. iver installation As with anydetecti USB device which is connected for the first time ng the a few text balloons near the icon tray at the rightunit as i Found New Hardware Little Siank y Found New Hardware lower corner of the screen show the progress ofMIDI USB Composite Device the hardware detection Just give the PC theUSB time to completely finalize this procedure device A A By M 10 2 is y ai completely similar for those other operating systems y Found New Hardware By the way although the Control Center ME Device application is currently still Windows only the Little Giant unit can be used as MIDI USB eam ezen Sy mex nina interface for Windows PCs as well as for Linux a SO AAA E y Found New Hardware x Now let s have a look at the Little Giant LCD screen The display shows you an overview of the current setup But as the Little Giant is shipped with empty setup memory the screen doesn t contain much information yet Your new hardware is installed and ready to use Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 15 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Little Giant J Global Crone J 4 Switch Al F none 1 Initial overview screen No set list or song name is shown As there are no banks defined yet the lt Global gt bank is shown as currently selected and since no presets exist yet none is shown as currently selected preset The lower part of the screen shows t
156. l menu MAIN MEHU SETLISTS Global settings BOTSA Tribute Presets amp banks Wir E a co OA Pat 7 Hew Years Eve ae Tete a Aamua Up to 10 setlists can be created each containing up to 50 songs If this 50 song restriction is too limiting for you you can also choose to chain all defined setlists together so that they act as one big setlist see chapter 17 1 3 The setlist shown at the top of the complete list of setlists is the one which is automatically loaded at startup of the Little Giant Activating a different setlist is done by moving the required setlist to the top of the list in the LG setlist menu sorry for the confusing terminology speaking of setlist lists Little Giant setup reference setlist setup 158 180 GURDIUS Little Giant As with most other items creating new setlists is done by clicking the button below the setlist list You will also notice a copy button which makes it easy to create an alternative setlist starting from an existing one The further setup of setlists is again very straightforward since it consists of naming the setlist and defining the contained songs and their order One more option is to skip some songs as explained below 17 8 1 Setlist name LG Control Center Setlist details Mame Entire set 011 LG internal menu Hew Year s Eve SETLIST HAME Hen Year s Eve bi En A setlist name can be anythi
157. ld in the editor user interface as long as you don t leave an edit field the editor doesn t see any change It is a good idea to save your setup to harddisk every now and then while doing this demo setup This way you don t risk to lose your work You can do this through the menu item File gt Save setup as You will see later that you can easily download your setup to the Little Giant using the QuickDump button in the menu bar You can even send a modified setup without first saving it to disk this can be a very quick way to test out small setup changes After modifying the first stomp box name into CHORUS also rename the second stomp box to DISTORTION and name the momentary effect SUSTAIN a typical example for a momentary effect which is only active as long as the switch is being pressed Next let s go to the most important part of the patch setup the MIDI message stream content 3 8 2 Specifying MIDI messages for each patch Select PATCH 01 As you can see in the patch details pane there are 2 tables available for defining 2 message streams each patch can send an arbitrary number of MIDI messages when its switch is being depressed and a different set of messages when its switch is being released For now we will not send anything on switch release which means we will keep the second message stream table empty In the first message stream we will send 2 bank select messages p
158. ld let you do so MIDI interface MIDI IN device LitleGiant MIDI OUT device LitleGiant connect to Litte Giant MIDI interface setup Remember as explained in the LG Control Center Quick Start Guide your Little Giant uses a generic USB driver As a result it is possible that it appears in both dropdownboxes as something with a general name like USB audio device The screenshot above was taken from a Windows Vista machine As you can see Vista is a little smarter in detecting USB connected devices While connecting it retrieves the necessary info from the unit in order to nicely display its real name LittleGiant even though you didn t need to install a GORDIUS specific USB driver If the Litte Giant was not yet powered on or connected to the USB bus of your PC when launching Control Center the dropdownboxes will not contain the necessary entries to select In that case just click the refresh button in order to refresh the content of the selection boxes Once the correct items are selected in both dropdownboxes click the button labeled connect to Little Giant which has the same effect as clicking the QuickConnect button in the top right corner of the application window Now the PC initializes USB communication with the Little Giant If this succeeds the patch dump receive buttons in the lower part of the screen will be enabled 15 5 2 Little Giant Info field While initializing the communication
159. le Giant 14 Advanced features delays sweeps and loops The Little Giant has a number of advanced features which you will not find in any other foot controller on the market Although it clearly is not meant to be a sequencer machine it doesn t have the large storage capacity needed for this kind of functionality the LG does contain some powerful logic to do much more than just sending a few control messages on each foot click A number of GORDIUS specific messages which can be inserted at any place in a MIDI message stream give you some advanced message sweep and message loop possibilities ER See chapter 17 4 4 for setup of MIDI messages including the GORDIUS specific messages 14 1 Customizable delay With the Delay message you can insert a delay of customizable length at any place within your MIDI stream The delay length can be anything between 0 016 and 2 032 sec adjustable in steps of 16 ms It will be obvious that this delay message opens the possibility to store real MIDI sequences in the message stream of a preset With a single foot click for instance a sequence of NoteOn NoteOff messages can be sent to a sound module or a number of parameters in a MIDI controllled module can be changed over a certain timespan The delay can also be used to solve possible technical issues with the controlled gear Problems have been reported about certain devices which cannot cope with multiple MIDI control messag
160. log a MIDI Channel value change Alesis 5R 18 sh Change value to 15 when selecting following patch Patch PATCH 01 3 Stomp box ON ChannelSelect Stomp box OFF Momentary effect Cancel Ok MIDI Channel value change dialog You can define a variable value change when selecting any patch when switching a stomp box on or off or when selecting a momentary effect Little Giant setup reference the use of variables 161 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 9 2 MIDI Data variables LG Control Center Variables Data variables Data variable names Value changes for CCNumber A CCValue A VarQ3 Vard4 AE age age Gale a LG internal menu not available The use of Data variables is covered in detail in chapter 9 3 Setup is done in a very similar way as setup of MIDI Channel variables explained in the previous topic The only difference is that MIDI Channel variables can be used without specifying any value change rule just giving meaningful names and unchecking unused channels will help you in making the patch setup easier to do Data variables on the other hand don t make much sense unless you specify a number of rules to change their values That s obvious if a variable value would never change you can as well use fixed values in your patch setup a Data variable value change CCNumber A Change value to 18 E when selecting following patch
161. lrol E ESCEA SWITCHES A A E al HARDWARE LAYOUT He of ExprFedals Slave controller SIRE ES a GLOBAL EXPRESETUP Expr pedal 3 Expr pedal 4 Fe EXTRAS DL AS s SUIECR Tocks LED behavior Metronome El EXTRAS ie past 4 a TEN CED Behavior Metronome EXTRAS HIDI routing quebec ESTRAS MIDI routing Switch locks A Ee AE Metronome SERVICE HE OF ExXPRPECALS az H El SLAVE CONTROLLER i EsTERH SWITCHES Hone connected 02 extra presets 0 Estra Up dour obirectirDirect2 DIRECTIDIRECTZ Don t use DirD OUse Di only olse D2 only OUse Di and De MIDI ROUTIHG Hee Ene z LOCKS LED BEHAWIOR Hever dim LEDs CAlways dim LEDs obim if non empty obim if oaff stomp METROMONME E 1 EE E ABOUT MY LIMIT Hil Type LG HU version 1 8 Fl version 1 5 8 Serial nr i234 FIRMWARE UPGRADE Click w to start firmware download process H El in case of FCB1010 only MIDI OUT ROUTING oTo MIDI OUT only oTo USB onl USE or MIDI OUT MIBI FWD ROUTING 0 Don t forward oTo MIDI OUT only To USE onl SE or MIDI OUT MEHO LOCK Hot activated OActivated UP DOWN LOCK Hot activated OActivated 175 180 GURDIUS Little Giant MATH MEHU Presets sb nas a ie Speci ol banks MESSAGE SETUP fake bes O a l ESE E a Special banks MESSAGE SETUP Patches Pieeeks Poet teen DANE S z MESSAGE SETUP Patches
162. lt switch which you can define for each bank see chapter 17 6 2 Obviously several songs can share the same bank layout In that case they will also share the same default switch for that bank Therefore you might prefer to use default song presets instead of default bank switches Another advantage of a default preset is that it does not need to be part of the selected bank layout It s not needed to have this preset linked to any of the switches which obviously is necessary when you use the default switch functionality This can save you one more switch to be used for other things while the song initialization is done by automatically transmitting the hidden default preset In case you define both a default song preset and a default bank switch the default preset is selected first and the default switch is activated right after that Little Giant setup reference song setup 157 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 8 Setlist setup LG Control Center song setup Set lists Entire set 01 Set list details Entire set 02 E 30 set Se Entire set 011 Content 4 Wishing Well Mf Hands Open W No One Knows W So Lonely W Come As You Are Cars W Subterfuge 7 Should I Stay 9 Word Up Wl One Vision iW White Wedding J Enemy Within 4 Original Sin A Original Sin 2 Y Basket Case Come Together wf Money Mf Rockin World le jim l l LG interna
163. lus a program change message which is the standard way of selecting a sound in an effects processor which supports multiple banks of sounds CM 0d CC 00 00 select coarse bank 00 ch 01 CC 32 00 within this range select fine bank 00 Che Ol PC 00 gt in this bank select the first sound Ch 01 indicates that all messages will be sent on MIDI channel 1 Let s add these 3 MIDI messages to the first message stream of our patch Click the button below the first message stream table three times This will add 3 MIDI messages to the table they all default to ProgChange 0 Now use the different dropdown boxes in order to fill in the correct message types and data values as described above The result should look like the screenshot shown on the next page Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 22 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Patch Stomp box Momentary effect details Advanced settings Name Delayed activation Patch content Main h First message stream Channel01 y ctrichange BE o Channeli Ctrichange 32 o Channel Progchange at poog Second message stream Channel Message type Ciatal Doge Details view of the first patch The MIDI channel dropdown box by default contains 16 entries named Channel01 up till Channel16 In one of the global setup tabs Global gt Variables you can specify which of the 16 channels you are
164. m the up down switches 2 CTL switches are available which are used as Direct1 and Direct2 switch here The stereo jacks for external switches CTL3 CTL7 can are used as preset switches 6 10 in this order When you select a preset using one of these switches the corresponding green switch LED labeled 6 10 will be on to indicate the currently active preset Extra expression pedals connected to the FC 300 jacks are not supported The 2 built in pedals can be used together with 2 external expression pedals connected to the LittleGiant jacks Extending the Little Giant 58 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Adding more than one slave controller is possible by chaining multiple FCB1010 units together The TO FCB connector of the Little Giant is connected to the MIDI IN of the first FCB1010 The MIDI OUT of that unit is connected to the MIDI IN of the next slave controller And so on finally connecting the last MIDI OUT to the FROM FCB connector on the Little Giant This way a big loop is generated which gives the LG complete control over all slave controllers and vice versa Chaining 2 FCB1010 slave controllers to the Little Giant In this scenario of chaining multiple FCBs you need to give a unique index from 1 to 3 to each FCB This can be done by keeping 2 switches pressed during startup of the FCB Pressing key 1 6 during startup gives the FCB index 1 Pressing key 1 7 during startup gives the
165. mally open or normally closed see topic 17 1 15 17 4 7 Delayed activation LG Control Center Delayed activation Advanced settings No activation delay Delay the patch activation Delay the patch deactivation Delayed activation Delay value 600 seconds 1 16 notes Cancel OK LG internal menu not available The activation of a patch can be delayed for a certain amount of time This means that the patch messages are not sent the moment you click the foot switch but they are sent only after the programmed delay A delay of up to 15 seconds can be specified Also the deactivation of a patch can be delayed Especially useful for momentary effects you can release the effect switch immediately still the effect will stay active for the given amount of time in case of a deactivation delay the delay starts running from the moment you release the footswitch Little Giant setup reference patch setup 141 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Apart from specifying an absolute delay you can also specify the delay in terms of an incoming MIDI clock In that case the delay unit is 16 notes which is the same as 6 MIDI clocks The actual delay time will vary with the incoming MIDI clock frequency A deactivation delay is not available for stomp boxes since these contain no switch release messages An activation delay for stompboxes is applied equally when switching the stompbox on or off For
166. me by clicking the rotary button 2 times This toggles display selection mode on and off and at the same time clears the monitor screen Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 34 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 12 3 Monitoring the MIDI messages There are 2 easy ways to monitor the MIDI messages being sent Since you have your Little Giant connected to your PC the Control Center up and running and the connection between both active you just used it to download your test setup you will be able to view all MIDI messages in the MIDI monitor tab of Control Center Indeed all messages sent by the Little Giant are going to the USB connection and are received by the Control Center application which is listening to this MIDI USB port Therefore all MIDI messages will be displayed in the MIDI monitor window of Control Center Now notice the checkbox Forward messages to MIDI OUT port below the MIDI monitor window Make sure this checkbox is checked This way all displayed messages are also forwarded through the USB connection back to the Little Giant and further toward the MIDI OUT port When this is the case you will also see the same messages appear on the built in MIDI MONITOR screen of the Little Giant itself Y Actually there are several different ways to route the MIDI messages over the USB bus or directly to the MIDI OUT port A few choices are available in global setup for this We currently use the default behavior which
167. ments an opposite adjustment slope This finalizes our demo setup You can leave setup mode again by keeping the rotary knob pressed Now you are ready to try out the setup which you just created Getting started with the Little Giant 51 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 10 Testing the setup Actually we have now created exactly the same setup as the one created in the previous chapter where the use of Control Center is explained Therefore you can now switch back to the testing topic of that chapter topic 3 12 in order to read about how to test this setup A few differences to take into account the setup of previous chapter was created with Control Center there it is very easy to create a preset for each patch The preset automatically takes the same name as the patch it is linked to Therefore the previous chapter might talk about presets with the name PATCH 01 PATCH 04 while the setup of this chapter contains presets which still have their default names of PRESET 1 PRESET 4 testing the MIDI messages sent by the Little Giant can be done both in Control Center or with the built in monitor screen of the Little Giant Both methods are described in the testing topic of previous chapter while obviously only the built in screens are relevant if you don t use Control Center With these few remarks in mind just skip back to topic 3 12 now in order to test the setup you just created
168. n BPM When a MIDI clock signal comes in on the MIDI IN port of the LG you can choose to show the actual tempo of that clock on the display ee This display option is acticvated in the MIDI slave global setup See chapter 17 10 3 MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 81 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Show tuner info Displaying tuner info is very gear specific functionality the Little Giant does not contain any tuner function Indeed you can t even connect a guitar signal to the pedalboard it is merely a MIDI controller However several external guitar processors do contain a built in tuner A very popular one is the TC Electronic G Major Another guitar processor which happens to be used frequently together with the Gordius products is the Fractal Axe FX Both these units have the possibility to send out realtime tuner info on their MIDI OUT port On general request of the G Major Axe FX users the possibility was added to the LittleGiant to display this tuner info on its graphical display This way you don t need to turn your back to the audience while tuning if you have the effects processor installed in a rack behind you A few things need to be done before remote tuner display can work an extra MIDI connection is needed from rack to LG in order to transmit the tuner data Under normal conditions you only want to control the effects processor from the LG so a MIDI connection from LG to controlled gear is sufficient but in order
169. n chapter 17 1 5 A very powerful feature of the Little Giant is the possibility to use data variables in your setup You can read about this in chapter 9 3 When data variables have been defined they will appear as extra choices in the dropdown box in both Data columns of the MIDI message table Finally the data value dropdownboxes also contain the choices random and prev random which give the Little Giant the freedom of sending any random value between 2 customizable limits This option was introduced to you in chapter 9 5 Little Giant setup reference patch setup 138 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The raw data view While the standard table view of ControlCenter gives you a user friendly way to add messages to a message stream with dropdown boxes to choose any of the available message types MIDI channels or data values you can as well have a view on the raw MIDI data You do this by clicking the Raw data button The transmitted MIDI messages are shown as a sequence of bytes in hexadecimal notation A radiobutton allows you to switch to decimal view You can even enter MIDI data directly in this raw data view Moreover this is the only way to add SYSEX messages to a patch setup Indeed sysex messages are multi byte messages while the table view doesn t allow to specify more than 2 data bytes for each message BF 71 7F s F5 00 01 BF 5E 7F FO 7F 10 06 02 FT Raw MIDI data HEX format 191 113 127 245 000 001
170. n thinking about a real setlist where you actually browse through the list from top to bottom Therefore you can also choose to use the down button for proceeding to the next song Also a few options are available to choose what to do when reaching the last song of a setlist You can block any further scrolling you can move to the first song of the list again or you can proceed to the next setlist With this last option it is possible to chain all available setlists together and make them behave as one giant setlist ee See chapter 17 1 3 for setup of the different setlist browsing options mi Go oe the flow Mexicals In my head Setlist display mode As the name suggesis the setlist XL display mode is exactly the same as the previous one except that the font used for displaying the song names is doubled in size This mode might be more convenient when using the Little Giant as floorboard while the smaller font is still very well readable when the LG is used as desktop controller In standard font size up to 8 songs of the set list can be displayed while the XL mode still shows a list of 4 songs If the current song name is longer than 8 characters in XL mode it will automatically scroll back and forward in order to show the full name maximum 16 characters wide in large font lt gt but GOTSA Tribute Wo eaa vette aT Setlist XL display mode MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 79
171. ncnnnos 1441 Customizable delay aura Rae ees 14 2 ControlChange SWeePS cooooccccnnncccccncnonncnnnnnonnnnnnennnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnannnenoss 143 Message DOS utilice bisacals 14 4 Temporary blocking of MIDI transmissi0ON ccccooncnccccnncncccnncnncnnncnncnnos 15 How to use LG Control Center cccccccccccceccececcececcccuceccececeeceeeecucaeeesaesecaees A UN 19 2 Me Toos Men ps and 153 TAG hee lla SA a a e 15 4 The QuickConnect and QuickDumMp DUttONS ccccccccccccccccccononnnnnnnnnnnnnos 15 5 TMeCommunicalion ta aaa eaves a dees 15 5 1 MIDI interface SetUpP cccooonncncoconnonoconnnnconanonoonanennnnnnnnonnannnnonanennnnnneos 15 0 2 Lille GIOntinto TOMO ii io DO OUDIO Eld cuesti n tir TOD TPAC OUI D coated dd 1593 Fimmware UD OIA cis ii 15 6 ThRe MID Monto TaD caa iia 157 A A A a a a 16 How to use the built in Little Giant MENUS cc ec ceceececceccececcecceceeceeeeneass Table of contents 5 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 1 Navigating the MENUS aa OO 16 2 Managing lists OF tems viii ii inaa ia a a a aa lides d 101 16 3 Properly Menis ua ALA Ea 102 16 3 1 Editing string Properti8S cooonciccocnnnococonnncononnnnnonannconannnnonnnnnnnnannnnononnnnnnnannnnonannnnnnos 102 16 3 2 Editing numeric pPrOperti8S cocooncnocoocnnnnconononcoconnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnannnnonannnnnnnns 103 1 3 3 SNe TET SCICCHOR eisa a a a a a a ea 103 16 34 Mul
172. nding multiple messages for control of many different devices A patch can be programmed to send one or more complex sysex messages too The upper limit for the total content size of 1 patch is no less than 256 bytes Following properties need to be specified for each MIDI message MIDI Channel LG Control Center TIC FX LG internal menu The MIDI channel entry is only relevant for so called channel messages that are MIDI messages which can be sent on 1 out of 16 different MIDI channels Other MIDI message types are System Realtime or System Common which are not channel specific The channel entry box will be disabled for this type of messages While the actual value for the MIDI Channel is an integer between 1 and 16 ControlCenter makes things somewhat more user friendly As mentioned in chapter 9 2 you can give a meaningful name to each of the MIDI Channels you are going to use These names will then appear in the selection dropdown box in the Channel column of the MIDI message table Setup of MIDI channel names is covered in chapter 17 9 1 Message type LG Control Center Cirichange LGinternal menu MIDI MESSAGE MESSAGE TWPE MESSAGE TYPE E ER ennn E ne Ho E E Hobedtt E Fe be Little Giant setup reference patch setup 137 180 GURDIUS Little Giant The Little Giant supports sending any type of MIDI message But it also adds a number of GORDIUS specific messag
173. nel 5666 _GURDIUS d FROM FCB TO FCB 0 1 woe usa 1 9V DC power input with power switch Make sure to always use the included power adapter or an equivalent regulated adapter with 9V DC output and supplying at least 500 mA DC current 2 1 5 5 mm jack positive center 2 USBconnection The USB connection can be used to connect the Little Giant to a Windows Mac or Linux PC The LG will be recognized as a standard USB audio device It is compatible with built in drivers on all supported operating systems so no additional driver installation is required 3 Main MIDI IN MIDI OUT connector pair The MIDI OUT port is the main connection to all the gear you want to control using your Little Giant The MIDI IN port can be used to merge an additional MIDI signal with the messages generated by the Little Giant The LG can also do some extra processing on the incoming MIDI signal like MIDI Channel filtering or MIDI Clock processing 4 FloorControlBoard connector pair These ports can be used for connecting an external slave controller which provides extra switches up to 32 switches per bank When not using an external foot controller the ports can be reconfigured to be an extra pair of regular MIDI IN OUT ports The Little Giant a quick overview 10 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 5 Expression pedal inputs The high quality Neutrik stereo jack connectors can be used to connect 2 expression pedals to the LG
174. ng up to 16 characters long 17 8 2 Setlist content LG Control Center Set list details Content 7 Wishing Well a Hands Open Mo One Knows So Lonely Come As You Are Cars t Subterfuge T Should I Stay Word Up One Vision White Wedding Enemy Within Original Sin Original Sin 2 Basket Case Come Together Money Rockin World qe SS SSeS SSS SS ala a a SJ Little Giant setup reference setlist setup 159 180 GURDIUS Little Giant LG internal menu Hew Year s eve SETLIST CONTENT ou would know Al A e ece Li io With tre a You would Eno sE A it Meso E REE El a l Important detail to notice the popup in ControlCenter which lets you add new songs is a multi select popup It is very easy to select a whole range of songs to add and afterward delete individual songs if needed The up and down arrows can be used to change the order of the songs One extra feature is the possibility to skip one or more songs You do this in ControlCenter by unchecking the according checkbox in the setlist content When using the built in menus the radio button shaped toggle icon can be used to toggle the song status between played indicated with a full circle and skipped indicated with a hollow circle This feature lets you easily remove songs from a setlist temporarily If a few songs will not be played on your next gig
175. ng any of those help buttons When after some time you feel comfortable with each part of the setup you might prefer to hide the help buttons again in order to have a less cluttered user interface Context sensitive Help button About Just shows a traditional About box How to use LG Control Center 95 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 15 4 The QuickConnect and QuickDump buttons These quick access buttons are located in the upper right corner of the Control Center main window and they are actually duplicating the functionality provided by the buttons in the Communication tab labeled connect to Little Giant and send patch dump You can read about their functionality in the next topic The big advantage of those 2 replicated buttons is that they are directly accessible from any tab in the application The QuickConnect button also provides an easy way to spot if the connection between PC and LittleGiant is activated once connected the QuickConnect button color changes from red to green The QuickDump button is a very handy shortcut to be used while trying out some detail changes within your setup You can easily change one setting click the QuickDump button in order to send the change to your Little Giant even without saving the setup file and immediately test the effect of the change If it turns out not to do what you wanted you can immediately undo the change and click the QuickDump button again in order to restore t
176. ng preset you can specify the rules to be applied Actually you do this simply by specifying the modified bank layout which will be activated whenever the rule triggering preset is selected The modified layout is specified just like a regular bank layout by double clicking or right clicking a cell and assigning a new preset to that cell LESLIE Do nothing Clear this switch Select modified patch preset Select modified stomp box preset Select modified mom effect preset Goto You will notice a few small but important differences with the context menu of the regular bank setup This time there is an option Clear this switch which does not clear the current table cell Instead it fills the cel with the text cleared Indeed this indicates that the rule will actively clear the switch and remove any preset which was previously linked to this switch On the other hand the option Do nothing will now clear the current cell of the rule table Indeed an empty cell means don t change the behavior of this switch just leave the assigned preset untouched It is important to notice that you only need to fill in the cells of those switches which actually need to change behavior when the triggering preset is selected all other cells can remain empty Little Giant setup reference bank setup 154 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 7 Song setup LG Control Center song setup Songs Nishing W
177. nnect one of the devices which you want to control with your LG you might want to replace the example MIDI messages in this guide with the control messages your specific gear expects adapter O 5 Little Giant o sen to Y o2 El Bee ot O i Di 3 kona 10 20 10 OF UE Little Giant optional expression pedal Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 14 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Connect the power adapter to the Little Giant check if the power switch is off and plug it into a wall outlet While the LG power is off use the USB cable to make a connection between LG and PC If you have an expression pedal available you can plug it in the jack marked EXPR 1 Optionally you can already connect any gear to the MIDI OUT connector of the LG 3 3 Turning on the power Make sure your PC is up and running Switch on the LG power After the initial solash screen which shows the installed firmware version an overview screen is shown on the LG display We will come back on the content of this screen later first let s concentrate on what happens on the PC right after power up of the Little Giant The PC detects the new hardware connected toor Mac one of its USB ports It recognizes it as aPCs standard audio and MIDI device and activatesThe the necessary drivers for it Those drivers areproced part of the operating system so there s no needure for A A By lt mM 10 23 for any additional dr
178. nnnnnnnnnonononos 180 Table of contents 8 180 Copyright O 2007 2009 GORDIUS All rights reserved All information in this document is subject to change without notice GURDIUS Little Giant 1 Introduction 1 1 A personal thanks know many user manuals start with it The obligatory thank you for buying this product paragraph In this case however would like you to accept this small introductory note as a personal and sincere word of appreciation for the interest you are showing in the GORDIUS products Today as I write this note GORDIUS is celebrating its first anniversary In this first year the Little Giant has taken its first steps on stage and we were excited to learn about the wide range of applications where the product proved its usefulness and versatility Thanks to the very small scale approach of GORDIUS we were able to fine tune our product designs based on the invaluable user feedback we received from the early adopter users Today we are proud of the result and we re convinced that you will be surprised by the tremendous amount of possibilities this little gorgeous MIDI controller will open up for your rig wish you lots of fun with the Little Giant Xavier De Donder GORDIUS September 15 2008 1 2 About this manual Since the Little Giant is a highly complex MIDI controller we do expect the reader to have some background knowledge about MIDI in general and the way devices are being controlled t
179. nnnrnnanrnnnnnens 40 463 Speciving MIDI MESSAGES suert dai 41 AOA Cheating More patches ai AREA A 43 46 9 Creating SOMO DOXeS iii ee ae 43 46 6 Creating momentary COS RA da cd 44 4 6 7 What do we have up till NOW ooccccccocnnncnncccnnancnncnononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnancnnnnnonancnnnnonannnnnnnnnnns 45 AT reses cli iio ile aSa 46 4 7 1 Creating StOMPDOX presets occccccconnnconccccoonconononannnonnnonnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnannnnnnnnnnas 46 4 7 2 Creating Momentary effect preSelS oooonccicccocnnnnonnnononnnnnnnonannnnnnnnancnnnnnnnancnnnnnnannnnnnnnnnns 47 APS Creating PCN Preseli xxkccsensasiitestand a a a aa a aaia aaia 47 AJA Whatdo we have up till Now aim fees Ree A 49 AG BAS Cl ia 50 4 9 Expression pedal SOLU ista a obey gear A seducaaseen ce E AE 51 T HOSTING AIG SUD sca actrees da aia 52 5 Overview of the Little Giant CONNEctiONS occccccccccoccnnncnnnnccnononanncnnnnnonononanncnnnonononannennnnnononenannnnnns 53 A 53 2 MIDEN MN OU Tucci o td E 53 Oa PROMEDIO ED a e ol 54 O4 EXPR EXPRE2 SW Sent da eatse acted ja head a eed Jac blsad nuded daceoes 54 o USB and MIDETOUTIMG URENO ecuacion 55 6 1 Generated MIDI message routing oocccccnncccccncnnnncnnnoconnnncnnnnnononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnncnnnnnononnnanncnnns 55 Table of contents 3 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 6 2 Incoming MIDI MESSAGE FOULING sicieeVediateeveidcaasdelecive ia ladera ies 56 603 PCB COMODO COMMOULAU OM
180. nt ControlCenter it is possible to choose the preferred behavior and let the LG display values between O and 127 or between 1 and 128 In this Getting Started Guide we use the default behavior of displaying O 127 for all message types 2 When editing a MIDI value you will notice that the LG offers an extended range of 0 143 to choose from which adds 16 extra values to the normally allowed range These higher values are used to specify 1 out of 16 possible variables as MIDI data value Advanced functionality which is outside the scope of this Quick Start Guide The preferred way to set up variable values is through the LG ControlCenter which works with user friendly variable names instead of the cryptic values of 128 143 For now use the standard value range of 0 127 and ignore these higher data values Clicking the return icon finalizes the editing of your first MIDI message and brings you back to the MIDI message list which now displays this first CC 000 000 message You add a second message to the list by clicking the first message and then selecting the Add icon This adds a new PC 000 message beneath the first one Click this message in order to edit it the same way you did before This time specify CtriChange as message type 032 as Control Number and leave the Control Value to its default value of 0 Return to the message list click the newly added message and again click the
181. nt way to scroll through a large bank list or setlist is by using the rotary knob Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 112 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 4 Avoiding unintentional scrolling or menu activation LG Control Center Locks Menu knob lock activated Up Down switch lock activated LG internal menu MATH MEHO GLOBAL SETUP Ex TRAS LOCKS a a HAG gp Global settings 1 Hardware layout Suiteh tacks eines A Presets Bar zoe i l EEE moe eee Res pl p e Rete cone FE Bo bili gt In some specific cases you might want to avoid that an unintentional click on the up or down switch immediately results in proceeding to the next or previous song or bank for instance when rig layout or vision impairment inhibit a clear view on the floorboard Therefore an option is added to lock the up down switches When this lock is activated you need to keep the up or down switch pressed for about a second before it actually reacts In this mode auto scrolling through banks is not possible A second option is the menu knob lock Activating this option makes it more difficult to enter menu setup mode or to change display mode you need to keep both the up and down switch pressed with one hand while clicking or turning the rotary Knob with your other hand in order to activate display mode selection short rotary click or setup mode long rotary click This option can be helpful in case you are afra
182. ntroller adds 10 extra switches to your setup You will immediately notice this in the bank setup tab of Control Center 10 extra columns will appear in the bank setup table We also mentioned before that a third FCB slave controller simply mimics the functionality of the internal LG switches You will notice this in the bank setup table when specifying 3 FCB1010 units in the global board layout tab 30 extra colums are added to the bank setup table But whatever change you make to the setting for internal LG switch 01 10 will be duplicated in the column for FCB switch 21 30 Chaining multiple units is only supported when using the FCB1010 not when using one of the Roland controllers Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 107 180 GURDIUS Little Giant External switches LG Control Center Globalsetup Boardlayout External switches no external switches 2 external preset switches 2 external up down switches 2 external 01 D2 switches LG internal menu MAIN MENU GLOBAL SETUP HARDWARE LAYOUT EXTERN SWITCHES APrredal Se Cup 3 E A AA A il extra Presets ES Ese ina A O Extra Up down 1 ras EFF 31 aus Estras J CESTE Switches i Setlists Service TPIirectl Directy ODirect1 Direct 2 2 a 2 external switches can be connected to the jack inputs These switches can be treated as an extra set of regular preset switches 2 extra columns are added to the bank setup in order
183. nus while running through this chapter Or you can delete the setup and start from scratch following all steps as described Clearing the complete setup is very easy with Control Center just select the menu File gt New setup and send this empty setup to your Little Giant by clicking the QuickDump button 4 2 Making the connections In this Getting Started guide we will again guide you through a very basic dummy setup Thanks to the built in MIDI monitor capabilities it is not necessary to connect any gear to the MIDI OUT port of the LG in order to check the setup you have created If you do connect the gear you want to control with your LG you might want to replace the example MIDI messages in this guide with the messages your specific gear expects as control messages ua a MIDI OUT expression to device pedal power Little Giant expression pedal optional Getting started with the Little Giant 37 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 3 Turning on the power Switch on the LG power switch After the initial solash screen which shows the installed firmware version an overview display is shown for the current setup As the Little Giant is shipped with empty setup memory the screen doesn t contain much information yet Little Giant 1 Blobal gt Crone J 4 Switch Hl F Crhone Initial overview screen No set list or song name is shown As there are no banks defined yet the l
184. ny preset dim LEDs if an OFF stompbox DIM LED brightness low medium show metronome activity on switch LEDs MIDI LEDs show MIDI activity show Direct1 Direct banks are not used LG internal menu MATH MEHU GLOBAL SETUP EXTRAS LEC BEHAVIOR Global settings Hardware layout HIDI routing Hewer dim LEDs BSPPPeda Sebel EC dor He CS hlwaus dim LEDs Ire l ET pl THe he ta oODim IF non empty Setlists ODim if off stomp Ea The LEDs of the LittleGiant can have 3 distinct states on off or dim While the on and off state clearly indicate the current state of the linked preset the dim state can have several different meanings depending on your personal preference The 2 easiest options are never dim LEDs always use on or off LEDs always dim LEDs always use on or dim LEDs This makes your floorboard easily visible on a dark stage while still clearly indicating activated presets or stomp boxes The 2 remaining options need some more documentation dim LEDs if any preset when using this setting a LED in the off state indicates that no preset is linked to this switch This way you know it doesn t make sense to click that switch nothing will happen anyway A dim LED indicates that a non active preset is linked to the switch dim LEDs if an OFF stompbox Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 110 180 GURDIUS Little Giant when using th
185. o get back to the top level of the menu structure first Indeed at this point we have finalized our first small setup However before testing out what we just created let s add just one more element an expression pedal setup If you don t plan to use any expression pedal in your setup you might just skip this last step Getting started with the Little Giant 50 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 9 Expression pedal setup Just go back into setup mode by keeping the rotary knob pressed for a few seconds Now go to Presets 4 banks gt Patches gt Expr Pedals and again like before click the icon to add a first expression pedal setup up to 16 different setups can be created which can be used by a maximum of 4 externally connected expression pedals Y The built in setup menus which are being used in this Getting Started Guide provide the possibility to create and modify the most important settings of an expression pedal setup On top of that the Little Giant Control Center PC application provides more advanced extra features like defining an engage value automatically activating or deactivating a certain effect when moving the expression pedal within a certain adjustment range etc Click the expression pedal setup and go into edit mode First property is the name of the setup Modify it into VOLUME which is the most commonly used continuous control Next property is the tyoe of MIDI message be
186. o possible to re assign a different MIDI control function to the knob depending on the currently selected preset This is possible by adding a GORDIUS specific RotaryAssign message at any place within the MIDI message stream of a preset ee See chapter 17 1 9 for global rotary knob assignment In order to activate the assigned rotary adjustment you need to put your unit in rotary adjust mode This is done by clicking the rotary button until a hollow circle is shown in the right upper corner Once this mode is selected turning the rotary knob will do the assigned MIDI adjustment HOTSA Tribute gt rotary adjust mode Tanalegd Up BANK He Hl Funk 4 Switch Hl F Recti solo MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 83 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 12 MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo The Little Giant has a number of timer related features lt can be used as a metronome with pre programmed BPM as a master clock with adjustable tempo through footswitch tapping it can display the BPM value of an incoming MIDI Clock signal etc 12 1 The metronome Sync Master function A metronome can be activated which uses briefly flashing switch LEDs to indicate the tempo When activating the metronome its BPM value is displayed on the LCD screen for a few seconds The metronome can be programmed and activated globally through the global setup of the LG This means that it will stay active no matter which preset is currently s
187. o right Two tabs don t contain info belonging to the current setup the Communication tab as you will see later in this chapter is the place where you select your Little Giant as MIDI USB interface and where you can initiate setup downloads or uploads and firmware downloads The MIDI monitor tab gives you the possibility to inspect the MIDI messages sent by your Little Giant We will be using this monitor at the end of this chapter in order to test our demo setup Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 17 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 6 Global settings For this demo setup we will suppose that you have 1 external expression pedal at your disposal So the first thing you need to do is specify that one expression pedal will be connected to your Little Giant You do this at the lower right part of the Board Layout tab which is part of the Global setup and which is active at first startup of the application In this same tab just verify that the Little Giant LG is selected as the Gordius product you want to create this setup for With these settings the screen should look exactly the same as the Control Center screenshot shown in the previous chapter In this demo setup we will not alter any of the other global setup items everything can keep its default value 3 7 Expression pedal setup Next tab in the Little Giant Control Center user interface is the Pedal setup tab Here up to sixteen different
188. odified curves very smooth when changing the reference points Finally you can also freely draw the curve without any limitation You might use this in order to invoke special effects using your expression pedal by creating a curve which is nothing like the standard steadily increasing curves Expression pedal sweep curve setup Edit curve 4 predefined custom smooth curve straight lines free drawing ER The sweep curve setup tool is covered in detail in chapter 17 3 10 but the screenshot above already gives you a good view on the possibilities The Little Giant setup structure 67 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 8 4 Presets As mentioned in the setup overview at the start of this chapter a preset combines a patch with one or more corresponding expression pedal controls Just like patches there are also 3 types of presets patch presets stomp box presets and momentary effect presets The main property of a preset of whatever type obviously is its main patch which of course has the corresponding type patch stomp box or momentary effect Next to this the preset defines the expression pedal behavior for each of the connected pedals while this preset is active This behavior can be don t change the expression pedal Just let it adjust the setting it was adjusting before let the expression pedal use its global default setting disable the expression pedal while this preset is active activate one or m
189. omp boxes selecting a momentary effect does not deselect the currently active patch The first MIDI message stream of a momentary effect is sent when depressing the effect switch The second message stream is sent when releasing the switch So with regards to MIDI messages the behavior is identical to regular patches However this time the second messages stream is an important part of the patch setup As it is needed to deactivate the momentary effect you will never leave this second message stream empty Maybe message stream is a big word here because in most cases a stomp box or momentary effect will be activated and deactivated using a single ControlChange message A Little Giant setup can contain up to 128 patches 32 stomp boxes and 32 momentary effects Each of the 2 MIDI message streams of a patch can contain up to 256 bytes of data a MIDI message consists of 1 2 or 3 bytes except sysex messages which can have more bytes ee See chapter 17 4 for details on doing the patch setup The Little Giant setup structure 65 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 6 3 Expression pedal setups The Little Giant has 2 or optionally 4 stereo jack inputs for expression pedals Each of these pedals can continuously control one or more MIDI parameters The parameter s being controlled can be global throughout your setup or can be depending on the currently selected preset In order to define the different types of control 16 expression pedal setu
190. option each reference point is connected with a straight line segment Finally you can also enable free drawing simply use your mouse to draw a line from left to right Since a computer mouse is not exactly the easiest drawing tool it might be a good idea to create a rough sketch of the curve you have in mind and then select the smooth curve option in order to transform it into a nice smooth curve This curve can be further finetuned by dragging the reference points up or down Which predefined curve is the best to use for my type of expression pedal If you re interested in knowing more about log pots used in volume pedals versus linear pots used in expression pedals the internet obviously is a great source of information We suggest to enter the term The Secret Life of Pots in your search engine This will lead you to an interesting article about this matter After reading this you will have no problem knowing which type of curve to use for which type of pedal and which application e a volume pedal typically causes relatively small signal changes in the lower adjustment range while the changes are remarkably larger in the upper adjustment range Therefore choose a log curve if you want to use such a volume pedal for linear parameter adjustment e Use an antilog curve when you want to use an expression pedal for volume adjustment Indeed such a curve transforms the behavior of a linear pot in
191. or menu 16 3 3 Single item selection In some cases filling in a property is done by selecting an item from a list For instance each song has a bank property which denotes the bank activated when selecting this song When editing the bank property of a song a list of all available banks will be shown and you will be able to use the rotary knob to select one item from the list To go back without selecting any item just click the return or cancel icon instead You will see this kind of selection menu for editing all single item properties throughout the setup BANE BANK 61 l BANK Bla A oneni HE E a Example of a single item selection menu How to use the built in Little Giant menus 103 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 3 4 Multiple tem selection Some item properties consist of a list of subitems For instance each patch preset can contain a number of momentary effects to be activated When editing the mom effects property of a patch preset the current list of selected momentary effects for this preset will be shown and you will be able to add more effects to the preset remove effects from the list or change the order in which the effects are activated Adding moving and removing items is done using a toolbar which looks very similar to the toolbar for list menus MOM EFFECTS El El fel Example of a multi selection menu COMIN When editing a property which contains a list of items
192. ore specific expression pedal setups for this preset Remark the one or more pedal setups in the last option indeed you can link more than one setup to the same pedal The result is the same as if you would rock 2 or more expression pedals at the same time A typical example where this can be useful is for adjusting volume on different devices simul taneously while these devices are listening to different MIDI channels You could even create a fader control which fades between 2 sound sources by giving the two individual volume adjustments an opposite adjustment slope Extra properties for patch presets Also already mentioned in the setup overview the patch preset is more powerful than the other preset types You can for instance define which stomp boxes need to be automatlically activated or deactivated when selecting a certain patch This was already covered in some detail in the getting started guides earlier in this manual This also reveals another interesting reason to consider the patch and the preset as 2 separate concepts in the setup you could easily create different presets which are just combinations of the same patch with different stompbox settings No need to redefine the same MIDI message streams for each of these preset variations just reuse the same patch setup but link it to different initial stomp box states Similar but probably less used is the possibility to link momentary effects to a patch preset
193. oth approaches are not really compatible Therefore a specific GuitarRig compatible mode was added which lets you use the LG as GuitarRig floorboard without any problem Here are the differences between both implementations In norma mode when selecting a patch preset the LG first sends the patch messages followed by all activation messages for the stompboxes linked to that preset These stompbox activation messages can be on or off messages depending on the desired startup state of each stomp box In toggle message or GuitarRig mode the LG will only send stomp box messages for those stomp boxes which need to be in the on state when activating the preset This way the toggle message of those stomp boxes will bring the stomp boxes in the on state while the lack of any toggle message for the other stomp boxes will ensure that these stomp boxes remain in the off state In order for this to work correctly make sure that in the rack itself all stomp boxes are defined to be initially off wnen switching presets For stomp box presets in norma mode the first message stream is sent when the stomp box is turned on and the second message stream is sent when the stomp box is turned off In toggle message mode there is no such thing as an or message and an off message there is only one toggle message Therefore in this mode the MIDI messages for stomp boxes are sent exactly in the same way as th
194. p of the different metronome and taptempo options It s interesting to know that a tap tempo switch can also be used to modify the global metronome tempo The main characteristic of the global metronome is that it stays active even when you switch presets When you define a dedicated taptempo switch you can modify the running metronome tempo with that switch After that you can select other presets and the LG clock will still be running with the adapted tempo This can be very interesting in case you want to make use of the synced delay feature in several presets for instance Remember in this scenario the global metronome can be stopped by defining a switch which sets the BPM value to 000 In order to avoid any possible confusion it might be interesting to mention that here we are talking about a GORDIUS specific taptempo implementation which results in a continuous stream of timing messages MIDI Clock or other being transmitted to the connected devices It enables you to easily modify the timing of sequencers loopers or other timing dependent devices Or it can be used for something as simple as finding out exactly what BPM you are currently playing just tap along with the song and read out the BPM display on the screen without transmitting any clock messages This is something else than the taptempo functionality which many sound controllers have built in in order to modify timing dependent sound effects like delay tremolo
195. p structure 68 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Once you notice the patch you need you stop clicking and after a short programmed delay the patch will be activated ER See chapter 17 5 for details on doing the preset setup TRIGGER presets A patch preset has one more interesting option you can indicate to use it as trigger This does not change anything in the way it sends its MIDI messages or the possibilities it has to activate or deactivate stomp boxes The only difference with a regular patch preset is its LED behavior the LED of a trigger preset only stays on as long as the trigger switch is being pressed after that it goes off This is indeed exactly the same LED behavior as a momentary effect switch except that the trigger preset is not intended to be used as a simple effect switch like for instance a sustain pedal As the name suggests you would typically use the trigger preset where you want to trigger an action on a certain device for instance trigger the Play action of a sequencer the Record or Overdub action of a looper device etc In order to obtain maximum flexibility you have one additional choice when defining a patch preset as trigger You can choose whether selecting the trigger also deactivates the currently active patch preset which is the normal behavior for patch presets only 1 patch preset can be active at the same time or if it leaves the currently selected patch preset active As just explained in any ca
196. pdown box shown above while the Variant radiobutton is selected Now you can start adding messages to the 2 message stream tables of the current patch in order to define the content of this patch variant If a patch variant is very similar to the main patch content or to another previously defined variant you can start from a copy of that content to define the new variant You do this by clicking the copy button left of the add button This will automatically create a variant with identical content as the currently active content You can start doing the necessary changes from there After doing the setup the variants dropdown box lets you select the defined content of any of the variants for the given patch Remember the dropdown box mentions the name of the preset which will cause the patch variant to become active This advanced feature concludes the section about patch setup Little Giant setup reference patch setup 142 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 5 Preset setup LG Control Center Preset setup Patch Presets Stomp box Presets Mom effect Presets Preset details GREEN TEMP BOOST i Main path BLUE TEMP STANDBY DRY DRY ka BLUE BOOST 5 RED d FLANG TREM PHAS Stomp boxes Momentary effects LUMOS BOOST a a sD 1 Lumos Boost a al RC BOOST E Flang Trem Phas le XTC FX LOOP 7 SD 1 i da E RC Booster a XTC BOOST 2 XTC STANDBY Extra patches ae
197. pedal display LG Control Center Global setup Expression pedal display 7 Show expression pedal values constantly when movement stops LG internal menu not available Specifies whether you want to see the current expression pedal value displayed on the LCD screen for a few seconds whenever you move the pedal The displayed value is what is actually being transmitted that is the value after applying the range scalings and transmission curve transformation Displaying this value constantly might influence the pedal responsiveness If that s the case you can choose to show the pedal value only when movement has stopped that is when no more MIDI messages are being transmitted 17 1 9 Rotary knob assignment LG Control Center SS Global setup User interface Rotary knob global assignment Expr EXPRPEDAL 01 Expr EXPRPEDAL 0 2 LG internal menu not available As explained in chapter 11 a MIDI control function can be assigned to the rotary knob You have the choice between any of the defined expression pedal setups or a Tempo adjustment Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 115 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 10 Screen saver LG Control Center User interface Global setup Screen saver Activate screen saver after 15 minutes of inactivity LG internal menu not available In order to preserve the lifetime of the
198. ps are available We will see in a later topic how to link any of these setups to each of the pedals In each expression pedal setup you define which MIDI channel and MIDI message type needs to be sent ControlChange is the most commonly used MIDI message for expression pedals but there are two other message types related to continuous control PitthBend and ChannelPressure The Little Giant allows to send those message types too A specific feature for PitchBend messages is that these have the possibility to use a much higher resolution than the other message types While the MIDI standard provides 7 bit values for most messages a PitchBend message can combine 2 such 7 bit values in order to obtain a smooth wide range adjustment with 14 bit resolution For each pedal setup the required output range minimum and maximum values for the continuous control output can be specified The full range of the pedal movement is used to send MIDI messages in the given output range By choosing a smaller output range you can achieve finer control over any parameter Choosing an inverted range is also possible resulting in the heel down position sending a higher controller value than the tip down position Autocalibration No pedal calibration is needed with the Little Giant You can connect any resistive type expression pedal to the input jack see chapter 7 4 for jack interconnection details an auto sensing circuit detects the resistance o
199. r each 24 MIDI Clock messages The same message type is used as for the metronome or taptempo messages Little Giant setup reference metronome tap tempo and MIDI clock 166 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 18 Doing firmware upgrades 18 1 Checking your current firmware version When starting up your Little Giant a splash screen is displayed which mentions the current firmware version of your unit LG splash screen You can also review more info about your unit by going to the following menu GLOBAL SETUP Hardware layout ExprPedal setup MATH MEHO mao eae nl i Seryw lice oras Setlists al ABOUT MY UNIT HU Type HL version Fl version 1 5 3 Serial ne 6123 E The same info is retrieved from your Little Giant when Control Center makes a connection with the unit It is displayed in the Communication tab of Control Center Litte Giant info Type LG Serial number 0123 Hardware revision 1 0 Firmware version 1 5 3 LG info field Doing firmware upgrades 167 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 18 2 Preparing for a firmware upgrade You will understand that it is very important not to interrupt a firmware upgrade by any means as this could result in a non functioning unit which cannot be booted any more If this would happen a technician intervention would be necessary in order to bring the unit in normal working condition again Therefore make sure to disconnect all cables from the Little Giant MI
200. range to the full sweep of the pedal by specifying which value corresponds to the tip position and to the heel position You can easily create a reverse adjustment range by specifying a tip value which is lower than the heel value It is even possible to simulate a footswitch placed underneath the tip or the heel of the pedal without the need for an actual footswitch You can do so by engaging a preset whenever the pedal reaches the end of the sweep range ER These and other options will be covered in chapter 17 3 about the expression pedal setup expression pedal Internal connection schema of a compatible expression pedal When using an FCB1010 as slave controller of course you can also use the FCB expression pedals for continuous control The Little Giant supports 4 expression pedals in total so you can combine the 2 FCB pedals and 2 external pedals for 4 independent controls When chaining 2 FCBs as slave controllers the expression pedals of the second unit will duplicate the functionality of the external expression pedals Extending the Little Giant 62 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 8 The Little Giant setup structure 8 1 Overview SONG SONG BANK PRESET PATCH PRESET STOMPBOXx PRESET MOM EFFECT PRESET SONG MOMENTARY EFFECT i dardo SETUPS MIDI msg stream 1 depress msg typa range di MIDI msg stream 2 release EXPR PEDAL SETUP STOMP BOX EXPR PEDAL SETUPS MIDI ms
201. rato Solo Channel Message type Datal Whammy Joa Soe gt LG internal menu MAIN MEHO Mabel he a MESSAGE SETUP Ce oe PATCH SETUP STOMPBORES APO E x a E MOM EFFECTS padala E EA i Gm EEE arses T m ef Pects nks Special banks Patches PATCH SETUP Expr pedals El ome eo E rrr 5 E El BE ES FS EE Ree earn y PATCH SETUP Expr pedals Stomp boxes At ie patties decease The patch setup can be considered an important part of a Little Giant setup After all this is where you define the individual MIDI messages which need to be transmitted when selecting any patch And sending MIDI messages that s the core business of the Little Giant Little Giant setup reference patch setup 134 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Chapter 8 2 explains in detail what the different patch types stand for you have patches stomp boxes and momentary effects The patch setup tab of ControlCenter gives you 3 separate lists one for each patch type These lists can contain up to 128 patches 32 stomp boxes and 32 momentary effects Whenever you select one item in any of the 3 lists the details for that item are displayed in the rightside detail pane where the patch properties can be edited Similarly the internal Little Giant menus contain the same 3 separate lists which lead to the edit menu for each of the created patches 17 4 1 Managing patch lists LG Control C
202. rd However if you don t plan to use an external slave controller you can as well configure these ports to act as regular MIDI ports In that case all MIDI messages sent to the MIDI OUT port will also be duplicated and sent to the TO FCB port And all MIDI messages coming in on the FROM FCB port will be correctly merged with MIDI IN messages and both will be forwarded following the same routing options as described above ER See chapter 17 2 3 for activating the FCB control ports as extra MIDI ports USB and MIDI routing filtering 56 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 6 4 MIDI message filtering Some MIDI filtering functionality is available in the Little Giant This is particularly useful when using both MIDI OUT ports of the LG that is when configuring the FROM FCB TO FCB ports as regular MIDI IN OUT ports In that case the MIDI filters can divide the MIDI messages over the 2 outputs in an intelligent way MIDI IN MIDI OUT MIDIUSS FROM FCB routing MIDI filtering TO FCB SWITCHES MIDVUSE Xi routing MIDI filtering in case of using 2 MIDI OUT ports In the diagram above you see the 2 routing blocks discussed before After this MIDI USB routing 2 independent MIDI filters can be activated one for each of the 2 MIDI OUT ports All MIDI messages are running through the filters and you can choose to filter out a subset of these messages to be forwarded to each of the OUT ports The filter
203. rder to work as a slave controller for the Little Giant the FCB1010 needs to be upgraded with a GORDIUS specific firmware EPROM which can be obtained for free This special firmware indeed turns the FCB1010 into a dummy controller which does nothing but forward the foot clicks as a simple MIDI message to the LG and receive simple MIDI messages from the LG which are used to control all LEDs This way there is no more need to do any programming on the FCB1010 All preset programming is centralized inside the Little Giant MIDI engine The FC 200 and FC 300 offer the same kind of slave functionality out of the box by use of their SysEx mode Whenever connecting such a floorboard to the LG this one sends the necessary commands to automatically switch the FC 200 300 to SysEx mode and turn it into an LG slave controller The FC 300 offers the additional advantage of an on board 2x16 character display The LG can take control over that display and use it to show song bank and preset names 1 ara AT LittleGiant driving the FC 300 display Switch mapping for FC 200 and FC 300 The switch layout of the FC 200 is very similar to the FCB1010 lt also has 10 preset switches and a bank up and bank down switch However the FC 200 has one extra CTL switch which is used as Direct1 switch here lt activates DirectBank 1 The switch layout of the FC 300 is somewhat different only 5 preset switches are built in Apart fro
204. regular patches List of stomp boxes List of momentary effects And this are the MIDI messages assigned to those patches Messagestream 1 Messagestream 2 Channel01 Channel01 Channel01 CtrlChange 00 CtrlChange 32 ProgChange 00 PATCH 03 PATCH 04 CHORUS DISTORTION SUSTAIN ChannelOl ChannelOl Channel01 Channel01 Channel01 Channel01 Getting started with the Little Giant ProgChange ProgChange ProgChange CtrlChange CtrlChange CtrlChange 01 02 03 10 dl LZ Channel01 Channel01 Channel01 CtrlChange 10 0 CtrlChange 11 0 CtrlChange 12 0 45 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 7 Preset setup Next step in our first setup is creating a preset for each patch Y A preset basically adds some important information to the patch It defines for each patch which stomp boxes need to be activated automatically how the expression pedals need to behave etc The initial setup of all these presets is quite tedious not so when using the Little Giant Control Center there you can create alll needed presets with a single mouse click but in the end they add a lot of flexibility to the way you can organize your complete setup In our example we will define different combinations of stomp boxes to be activated when selecting each preset patch 1 will switch both stomp boxes off patch 2 will switch on the chorus patch 3 will switch on the distortion and patch 4 will switch on choru
205. reset switch for this functionality you can also connect 2 external switches to the jack inputs and specify that these switches will act as D1 and D2 switches Extended banks While using a standard Little Giant footcontroller without any slave controller it is still possible to have as many as 24 presets per bank available instead of the default 10 presets per bank 1 for each footswitch In order to achieve this the D1 and D2 switches can be used to directly access 1 out of 3 sub banks within each bank instead of using the direct bank functionality with D1 and D2 both deactivated footswitch 1 to 8 access preset 1 to 8 of each bank with D1 activated footswitch 1 to 8 access preset 9 to 16 of each bank with D2 activated footswitch 1 to 8 access preset 17 to 24 of each bank Ef For setup info about this see topic 17 1 16 The Little Giant setup structure 70 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Default switch for each bank Each bank can have a default switch defined When scrolling to that bank the default switch is selected automatically The result is the same as if you would have selected the bank and immedia tely after that you would have clicked its default switch The use of a default switch allows for a one click initialization of your rig when proceeding to a next bank or song 8 6 Setlists and songs This part of the setup doesn t need a lot of documentation Up to 10 setlists can be created The
206. rrently active preset When a preset contains several sequential patches see topic 17 5 7 the patch name display will indicate which of these patches is currently active after clicking the preset switch ee This display option can be activated in the global setup See chapter 17 1 7 Show expression pedal value You can optionally choose to show the expression pedal value whenever you rock one of the connected expression pedals This way you can be certain that the expression pedal is actually sending MIDI data or you can move the pedal until it reaches a certain value Also this display option can be activated in the global setup You have the possibility to postpone value display till after you stopped moving the pedal This ensures that the continuous MIDI data stream is not influenced by the realtime value display ee This display option can be acticvated in the global setup See chapter 17 1 8 Show data variable value In chapter 9 3 you can read about the use of data variables which give you a very powerful tool for making your setup very dynamic The use of variables can result in a pretty complex setup Therefore it can be a handy feature to visualize the current value of any variable for a few seconds This can be accomplished by adding a specific DisplayVariable command anywhere in a patch message stream Show tempo value Whenever you activate a metronome or a taptempo preset the current tempo will be displayed i
207. s Now that we have covered the general look and feel of all major menus in the Little Giant setup the next chapters will lead you through each of the setup steps in detail The order in which the different topics are covered is also the order in which you should proceed with the setup and not by coinci dence it is generally also the order in which the different menu topics appear in the setup hierarchy How to use the built in Little Giant menus 105 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 The Little Giant setup reference This chapter describes in full detail each of the setup options of your foot controller lt covers the way to set things up both using LG Control Center LGCC and using the built in menus of the Little Giant LG Several advanced features can be programmed with Control Center only This will be clearly indicated in this chapter The different setup topics are covered in the order in which you will logically encounter them when doing a full MIDI setup of your controller 17 1 Basic global settings 17 1 1 Board layout Controller type LG Control Center Globalsetup Boardlayout Controller type LGM Litte Giant Module LG Litte Giant LG X Big Little Giant LG M 4 Litte Giant Module w 4 expr LG 4 Litte Giant w 4expr pedals LG X 2 Big Litte Giant w 2 expr LG internal menu not available obviously In Control Center you can choose the type of controller you will
208. s to any possible sound or to any part within your setup This is where keypad mode comes to the rescue In keypad mode the switches of the Little Giant are used as a numeric keypad This can be used for several different scenario s you can enter any arbitrary ProgramChange number While typing the entered number is displayed on the LCD display and as soon as you have typed the 3 digits of the number a ProgramChange message is sent you can enter any arbitrary preset number and as soon as you have typed the 3 digits of the number the preset is selected Presets are not explicitely numbered in an LG setup 001 simply corresponds with the first patch preset in the list 002 with the second and so on Typing a number for a non existing preset will do nothing Similarly you can enter any arbitrary bank number in order to directly select a bank out of the full bank list Finally you can also directly select any song within the current setlist using keypad mode Any of these modes can be activated in the global setup Ef See chapter 17 1 17 for setup of the keypad mode You can enter or leave keypad mode by using the GORDIUS specific Keypad mode command in any patch message stream As a parameter to this command you can specify any MIDI channel this channel will be used to transmit the ProgramChange messages with the entered PC number Another option is to specify off as parameter which means th
209. s and distortion simultaneously Of course after selecting any preset you can still switch each of the individual effects on or off here we are just talking about the initial state of each effect when first selecting a preset Return to the main menu select Presets amp banks and then Presets As you can see we have 3 types of presets just like there are 3 types of patches Let s start with the stompbox presets 4 7 1 Creating stompbox presets Click the Add icon to create a first preset It is called PRESET 1 by default Select it and click the hammer shaped icon to enter edit mode for this preset You will see there are 3 properties which can be changed the preset name its main patch and its setting for expr pedal 1 Remember in the first step of this setup you specified that 1 expression pedal will be used If you would have specified a different number you would see additional entries here in the preset edit menu in order to set up the expression pedal behavior for each of the connected pedals Indeed each expression pedal can be defined to behave differently for each preset We will skip this feature for now and leave the default behavior of no change for our expression pedal in all presets Edit the default name PRESET 1 Call this preset CHORUS and then goto the MAIN PATCH property and click the default setting of none in order to change it At this time a list of all ava
210. s in the bank setup table You can specify following properties for each bank 17 6 1 Bank name LG Control Center eneral O LG internal menu A bank name can be anything up to 16 characters long In Control Center you modify a bank name by double clicking the first column of a row in the bank setup table and typing the name into the table cell As mentioned before this is not possible in the upper part of the table which contains the global and direct banks 17 6 2 Default switch LG Control Center PULSE CHORUS Clear SLAPBACK Select patch preset CAVE Select stomp box preset Select mom effect preset Goto E Hees d 2s ult swite h Little Giant setup reference bank setup 151 180 GURDIUS Little Giant LG internal menu BAHE 1 DEFAULT SWITCH E PEEAULT SWITCH aa iH A ey see eos none 1 E l FCBIB18 switch Fe Double clicking or right clicking any cell in the bank setup table in ControlCenter opens the context menu shown on previous page You can use it to define any of the switches in a bank as default switch After doing so the table cell gets a different background color When using the internal LG menus you first need to specify the type of switch you want to use as default one of the internal switches an external switch connected to the jack input or one of the switches of a connected FCB10
211. s list Each click will create a new patch give it a unique default name and add it to the respective lists of patches stomp boxes and momentary effects The result should look like the screenshot below LG Little Giant Control Center Se File Tools Help QuickConnect E QuickDump E Global setup Fedal setup Patch setup Preset setup Bank setup Song setup Communication MIDI monitor Patch Stomp box Momentary effect details Patches Stomp boxes Momentary effects Advanced settings STOMPBOX 01 MOMEFFECT 01 Name STOMPEOX 01 Grouped stomeboxes Delayed activation Patch content 8 Main D First message stream Second message stream Channel Message type Datal aarte SEE BAAS Setup data loaded Patch setup creating new patches As soon as you select an item in one of the 3 left hand lists the details for this patch are displayed in the rightside details panel The only patch data available right now is the name of each patch Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 21 180 GURDIUS Little Giant While leaving the names PATCH 01 PATCH 04 unchanged let s give the stomp boxes a more meaningful name Select STOMPBOX 01 and overwrite its name in the textbox of the details pane name this stomp box CHORUS Remark that you need to leave the textbox editing field for instance by clicking the tab button in order to confirm the change This is the case for any edit fie
212. s on doing the expression pedal setup The Little Giant setup structure 66 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Expression pedal sweep curves In general you can have 2 types of potmeters used inside expression or volume pedals linear pots or log pots In a very rare case a third type antilog pots also calle C type pots are being used One type is optimized for volume control as it is matched to the logarithmic response of the human ear toward sound pressure another type is optimized for doing a linear parameter adjustment With the Little Giant you can combine both types of pedals to do any type of adjustment Or you can use a single pedal to do different types of adjustments depending on the currently selected preset This is possible because the sweep curve of the expression pedal can be digitally adapted Up to 4 different curves can be defined and linked to any of the 16 available expression pedal setups One of the curves even offers full 14 bit support in order to take maximum advantage of the high resolution capabilities of PitchBend control The Little Giant Control Center offers an easy to use drawing tool which offers a number of options it lets you choose between a number of predefined curves ranging from logarithmic over linear to an antilog curve You can also finetune or adapt those curves to the actual behavior of your expression pedal through the use of several editable reference points The tool keeps the m
213. safely call the Little Giant a MIDI Sync master Another interesting scenario where this metronome can be used is in combination with so called SyncedDelay messages As you will read in chapter 14 1 a delay can be inserted at any place in the MIDI message stream of a patch This delay can optionally be synced to the internal MIDI clock controlled by the LG metronome When using the metronome as an internal clock for synced delays or as a master clock for connected devices you might prefer not to see the flashing switch LEDs all the time In that case you can simply disable this option and have the clock tempo displayed through the flashing of the small BUSY LED only ER See chapter 17 10 for setup of the different metronome and taptempo options ER See chapter 17 1 2 for enabling or disabling the flashing switch LEDs GORDIUS specific messages are available in the MIDI stream setup you can add them just like you would add regular MIDI messages to the stream MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 84 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 12 2 Tap tempo TapTempo can be seen as an extension to the metronome functionality described above lt adds to the metronome the possibility to adapt its tempo through successive foot clicks As mentioned in previous topic a preset dependent metronome can be defined by adding a GORDIUS specific metronome message to the patch message stream Similarly a GORDIUS specific taptempo
214. sages at all A last possibility is to use a dim LED to indicate a non activated stompbox This is a convenient way to show the difference between stomp box switches with dim LEDs and patch switches with off LEDS Ef See chapter 17 1 2 for setup of different LED behavior options 10 2 Extra functionality for the switch LEDs One convenient extra feature which reuses the switch LEDs is the metronome and tap tempo functionality You can read more about these features in the next chapter Basically the Little Giant has an easily customizable metronome which uses the switch LEDs to show a short flash on each beat ER See chapter 17 10 for setup of metronome and tap tempo MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 75 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 3 Indicator LEDs The Little Giant contains a number of square indicator LEDs the red power LED is on whenever the unit is switched on and receives power the yellow USB LED indicates if the USB connection is being used The LED goes on as soon as the computer detects the USB connection and goes off when the cable is disconnected It doesn t indicate the USB data traffic just the USB connection the MIDI IN and MIDI OUT LEDs flash as soon as there is any activity on the MIDI IN or MIDI OUT ports You can optionally disable these LEDs for instance in case there is constant activity due to ActiveSense or MIDI Clock messages The FCB LED goes on as soon as an external slave controller is d
215. se the trigger LED will go off when releasing its switch the choice you have is whether the LED of the previously active patch stays on or if it also goes off Ef See chapter 17 5 8 for trigger preset setup Grouped stomp boxes Grouping stomp boxes is not really a preset related topic but it is interesting to know about the possibility when doing your preset setup In the stomp box setup you can specify a group of stomp boxes which is always used in a mutually exclusive way This means that you never want to activate more than one stomp box of that group simultaneously When you have added a number of stomp boxes to such a group it is no longer necessary to deactivate one stomp box manually before selecting another one just click any stomp box in the group to activate it and any other activated stomp box within that group will be deactivated automatically This feature will also make your preset setup more straightforward while you normally need to add all stomp boxes which you want to activate or deactivate to the stomp boxes list of a preset this is no longer the case for grouped stomp boxes just add the single stomp box which you want to activate the rest is done automatically Ef See chapter 17 4 5 for grouped stomp box setup Avoiding repeated program changes One more option which is interesting to mention here as was explained at the start of this topic different presets can be created all referencing the same ma
216. selecting a new patch the LED of the previous patch will turn off A stomp box represents a certain effect chorus delay It can have 2 states on or off lts LED reflects this state it is on when the stomp box is activated and off when it is not active Each click on a stomp box switch will toggle its state between active and not active While only one patch can be active at the same time many stomp boxes can be activated simultaneously Selecting a stomp box will not deselect the currently active patch A momentary effect is only active as long as its switch is being pressed A good example is the sustain pedal for a synth As the LED indicates the effect activation it will only be on as long as the switch is being pressed Just like stomp boxes selecting a momentary effect does not deselect the currently active patch As an example we will create 4 regular patches 2 stomp boxes and 1 momentary effect now Getting started with the Little Giant 39 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 6 1 Creating your first patch From the main menu select Presets amp banks gt Patches gt Patches You now see the empty patch list El Clicking the Add button will create a first patch its default name is PATCH 1 You can now click this item currently the only item in the list in order to edit it At this time a number of icons appear which let you move delete or edit the item or add another new tem to the list
217. setups can be created which can be used by a maximum of 4 externally connected expression pedals We will create one setup for the most commonly used continuous control volume Click the button below the empty list in order to create a pedal setup You can change the name of the newly added pedal setup by doubleclicking the EXPRPEDAL 01 default name It sounds logical to name the new setup VOLUME instead The used message type for this continuous control is ControlChange Other supported message types are PitchBend or ChannelPressure Next change the value in the CC Nr column to 7 ControlChange number 7 is the de facto MIDI standard for main volume adjustment All other settings can keep their default values Double clicking the input or output range field will pop up a dialog which shows some of the more advanced programming possibilities for an expression pedal setup which will be covered in a later chapter Also the sweep curve setup which can be accessed by clicking the large graph like button in the lower right corner is advanced functionality out of scope for this getting started chapter In the lower part of the Pedal setup tab you can assign one or more expression pedal setups as the default setup for each of the 4 expression pedals Assign the VOLUME setup which you just created to external expr pedal 1 by clicking the button next to the first listbox If this button is d
218. sider this as a set of dependency rules which can be expressed as follows if preset X in bank Y is selected then modify switch n and link it to preset Z instead The most common usage of this kind of rules will be when defining a number of patch presets in a bank combined with a number of stomp boxes It can be very interesting to modify the kind of effect each of the stomp boxes controls depending on the patch preset which is currently active Ef See chapter 17 6 5 for setup of dependency rules 9 2 MIDI channel variables For each of the channel type MIDI messages added to a preset message stream you can define the MIDI channel on which the message needs to be sent Instead of specifying a channel number between 1 and 16 the Little Giant Control Center lets you specify and use meaningful names for each used channel At the same time these names actually become the name of a MIDI channel variable As a result you can add a set of rules which modify the actual value for each of the MIDI channel variables depending on the selected preset In other words selecting any preset can modify the MIDI channel used by other presets This allows a control preset to modify the MIDI channel used by any other set of presets stomp boxes or expression pedals A typical scenario where this feature can be very powerful is when controlling two devices of the same type two loopers for instance Let each of the devices lis
219. specifying which of the available effects are activated when selecting a certain sound In that case specifying the activated stompboxes in the LG preset setup ensures that the correct effect LEDs are on when selecting the preset In this screnario the LG doesn t need to send the stompbox activation MIDI messages since your effects processor takes care of initial effect activation By checking this global checkbox no effect activation messages are sent when selecting a preset only the stompbox LED are brought into sync with the effects processor Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 117 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 1 14 Special stompbox behavior GuitarRig compatible mode LG Control Center Globalsetup Miscellaneous Stomp box behavior normal behavior use toggle messages GuitarRig mode LG internal menu not available Experience has learned that some effect controllers have a rather peculiar way of implementing stomp box control More specifically Guitar Rig a popular software based effects rack only gives the possibility to toggle effects through use of a MIDI command rather than supporting a MIDI command to switch an effect on and another command to switch it off When you are familiar with the Little Giant approach for controlling stomp boxes using 2 different MIDI streams for switching stomp boxes on or off you will understand b
220. ssion pedal setup 130 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 3 10 Expression pedal sweep curve setup LG Control Center Pedal setup sweep curve setup LG internal menu not available Four different sweep curves can be designed with this small tool These curves are stored in your Little Giant as part of a patchdump Each selected expression pedal setup activates one of the four sweep curves In case you are using an expression pedal to send PitchBend messages it is a good idea to use curve 4 for that adjustment curve 4 is the only one which uses a high resolution of 14 bits The PitchBend message is the only type of message which supports this high resolution through the use of 2 data bytes All other messages use 7 bit resolution Expression pedal sweep curve setup Edit curve 1 predefined p linear antilog Expression pedal sweep curve setup tool You have the possibility to choose a predefined curve varying between log over linear up to an antilog or exponential shape Or you can use one of those predefined curves as starting point then select the custom option and drag each of the 9 reference points up or down with your mouse in order to reshape the curve A clever alghorithm ensures a smooth curve at all times Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 131 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Another option is to choose for straight lines instead of a smooth curve With this
221. stomp box As mentioned before this is the MIDI message which will switch the chorus effect off when clicking the stomp box a second time Add a second stomp box to the setup call it DISTORTION and add a CC message with ControlNumber 11 both to the first and the second message stream Again the CC message in the first message stream has ControlValue 127 while the one in the second message stream has ControlValue 0 4 6 6 Creating momentary effects No need to explain how to add momentary effects to your setup This is completely identical to the way you created the 2 stomp boxes A momentary effect sends the MIDI message s of the first message stream when clicking the foot switch and sends the message s of the second message stream when releasing the foot switch This is the only difference with a stomp box a momentary effect is only activated as long as its foot switch is being pressed For your demo setup select mom effects in the patch setup menu in order to create one single momentary effect Call it SUSTAIN and add to both message streams of this effect a ControlChange message with ControlNumber 12 again one with value 127 in the first stream and one with value 0 in the second stream Getting started with the Little Giant 44 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 6 7 What do we have up till now This is how the different patch lists look like after executing these steps T T 7 MEE SUSTAIH List of
222. stomp boxes or momentary effects one bank can contain nothing but patch presets while another bank can contain nothing but stomp boxes or any mix of both Presets to be reused in all banks can be linked to a switch of the global bank This way they are available in all banks which do not have any other preset assigned to that same switch Starting from the main menu select Presets amp banks and then Banks Similar to the different items you added before use the Add icon to create 2 banks named BANK 1 and BANK 2 Select BANK 1 and enter edit mode for this bank Leave its name unchanged skip the Default switch property with this property you can define a switch which will be automatically selected when scrolling to this bank and scroll through all remaining properties You will notice an entry for each switch of the current bank Let s start with the preset for SWITCHO1 click the current value of none then select Patch to indicate you want to link a patch type preset to this switch You now get a list of all available patch presets Select PRESET 1 this links preset 1 to switch 1 of bank 1 The same way link PRESET 2 to switch 2 PRESET 3 to switch 3 and PRESET 4 to switch 4 of this bank You can skip all other switches they will be left blank for now and also skip any further setup for bank 2 We still have to assign the stomp boxes and momentary effect to a s
223. t Moreover if needed the switch type of a certain switch can be different for each bank fy See chapter 17 6 for details on doing the bank setup The Global bank You might find it convenient to dedicate one or a few footswitches to a certain task in all banks a Tune Request footswitch for guitarists for instance or maybe a MIDI Panic button for synth players In order to achieve this in an easy way the Little Giant provides a Global Bank If you assign a preset to a switch of this global bank it will automatically be available in all banks which have no other preset defined for that switch Indeed after defining such a global switch it will be part of all banks while it is still possible to again override this global switch behavior in one of the banks by doing a preset assignment for the switch in that specific bank only Direct bank 1 and Direct bank 2 The two direct banks offer a way to have a larger number of commonly reused presets readily available from any bank While you can scroll through the complete list of defined banks sequentially using the up and down switches the direct banks can be directly accessed from any bank with one single click on the dedicated D1 or D2 switch In order to use direct banks on the Little Giant you can specify that switch 9 needs to be used as D1 or Direct bank 1 switch Similarly switch 10 can be used as D2 or Direct bank 2 switch If you don t want to sacrifice a p
224. t ControlNumber 12 Of course the behavior of this momentary effect is different from the stomp boxes with a stomp box the 2 different MIDI message streams are sent alternately when switching the effect on or off The momentary effect on the other hand sends the MIDI message s of its first message stream when depressing its foot switch and it sends the message s of the second message stream when releasing the foot switch Indeed a momentary effect is only activated as long as its foot switch is being pressed Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 26 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 8 4 What do we have up till now These are the patches which we just created Patches Stomp boxes Momentary effects PATCH 01 CHORUS SUSTAIN PATCH 02 DISTORTION PATCH 03 PATCH 04 our demo setup so far and these are the MIDI messages assigned to those patches Messagestream 1 Messagestream 2 Channel01 CtrlChange Channel01 CtrlChange Channel01 ProgChange 02 Channel01 ProgChange PATCH 03 Channel01 ProgChange PATCH 04 Channel01 ProgChange CHORUS Channel01 CtrlChange Channel01 CtrlChange 10 0 DESTORETON Channel01 CtrlChange Channel01 CtrlChange 11 0 SUSTAIN Channel01 CtrlChange Channel01 CtrlChange 12 0 Don t forget to save your work selecting File gt Save setup Getting started using Little Giant Control Center 27 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 3 9 Preset setup Next step in our first setup is crea
225. t Global gt bank is shown as currently selected and since no presets exist yet none is shown as currently selected preset The lower part of the screen shows the preset connected to each of the LG switches When you turn the rotary knob you can scroll from Switch 01 to Switch 10 and back to show the preset linked to each of the switches But again no presets are defined yet so for now they all will show none 4 4 Entering setup mode Enter setup mode by keeping the rotary knob pressed for about 2 seconds This will bring the main menu on the screen You can scroll through the menu items by turning the rotary knob You can select an item by clicking it with the knob and you can return to a previous menu by scrolling to the pack arrow shown in the bottom right corner of each menu At any place in the menu structure keeping the rotary knob pressed for about 2 seconds will cancel setup mode and bring you back to runtime mode All setup modifications are automatically saved oras Setlists Main setup menu If you did not keep the rotary knob pressed long enough to enter setup mode but you did a short click instead you will enter display screen selection mode This mode is indicated by 4 arrows being displayed in the 4 corners of the screen While in this mode turning the rotary knob will scroll through the different available display modes Since we didn t create any setup yet there are not many rele
226. t filtering will only be enabled when you have configured this port as a regular MIDI output Each filter setup pane contains 4 buttons which are actually just shortcuts to check or uncheck a larger number of checkboxes in the filter 01 08 09 16 all or none After using any of these buttons you can still make smaller changes by clicking the individual checkboxes As you can see the filter works on MIDI channel you can define for each of the 2 MIDI OUT ports separately which of the 16 MIDI channels are passed and which are blocked Apart from this you also have 2 categories of MIDI messages which are not channel specific System Common and System Realtime messages The filter can optionally pass or block each of those 2 categories The MIDI messages belonging to those categories are listed below An exception is made for sysex messages these are never filtered MTC Quarter Frame MIDI Clock Song Position Pointer MIDI Start Song Select MIDI Continue Tune Request MIDI Stop System Common messages System Reset System Realtime messages Little Giant setup reference MIDI routing and filtering 124 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 3 Expression pedal setup LG Control Center Pedal setup Volume Channelo2 ControlChange 7 000 127 000 127 1 Wah Channel ControlChange y 24 005 122 000 127 prev active Wah activate 2 LG internal menu MAIN
227. t side indicates an outgoing message lf messages are sent to the USB port and there is no PC application which forwards the messages further to the MIDI OUT port of the Little Giant nothing will appear on the built in MIDI monitor screen In order to inspect MIDI messages sent to the PC through its the USB connection you can use the MIDI monitor view of ControlCenter instead or any other MIDI monitoring tool like MIDI OX for instance MIDI MONITOR lc io o ee LE LAA AA DEA EE ine DL BE de de e e de sl EC NOTE ge HO MIDI monitor display mode MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 80 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 4 7 Extra display options On top of the different display modes discussed in the previous topics the LittleGiant allows you to temporarily show extra information which can be useful during live use Show Patch name Several display modes give you a clear view on the currently selected preset However as you have learned in chapter 8 a patch preset can also control the state of several stompboxes momentary effects or it can even contain several patches which can be activated sequentially by clicking the preset switch several times in a row Therefore displaying the current patch name can give you some useful extra info When clicking a stompbox or momentary effect the selected stomp or effect name can be displayed for a few seconds After that the display can again show you the name of the cu
228. t topics You can choose the display mode which fits your needs best during live use Your preference is auto matically stored in the units permanent memory so that it starts up in this mode next time you power on the device Changing display mode is done with the rotary knob Click the rotary knob until display mode selection is active This is marked by showing four small arrows in the four corners of the display Now you can rotate the knob to scroll through the different display modes When the desired display mode is active click the rotary knob again in order to confirm the selected mode 4 arrows indicate display selection mode A second way to change display mode is by use of one of the footswitches In order to do so you can link a preset to the footswitch and add the GORDIUS specific DisplayMode command to the message stream of that preset When adding this command to the patch message stream using ControlCenter you can specify as parameter which display mode you want to select Or you can also create one or two scroll switches which scroll through all desired display modes by selecting DisplayMode next for one button and optionally DisplayMode previous for a second button The global setup allows you to specify the display modes you want to scroll through using this scroll footswitch If you want to scroll through 3 of the 8 available display modes just select them in the according
229. tch is defined Chapter 8 2 explains in detail the meaning of first and second message stream which is different for patches momentary effects and stompboxes patches and mom effects send their first message stream on switch depress and second message stream on switch release while stompboxes only send a message stream on switch depress first one when activating the stompbox second one when deactivating the stompbox 17 4 4 Adding MIDI messages LG Control Center XTC crx y Ctrichange gt 113 127 XTC CFX w ctrichange 94 127 aaa LG internal menu E El BE E See chapter 16 2 for general info about managing item lists using the LG internal menus Little Giant setup reference patch setup 136 180 GURDIUS Little Giant In the two ControlCenter MIDI message tables you sequentially add all the messages which you want to send when the current patch is selected You add entries with the button delete entries with the button and move messages up or down with the arrow buttons Obviously in this case the order of the messages in the table can be very important as it is the order in which the messages are actually sent The Little Giant doesn t have a strict maximum number of messages per patch as most other MIDI controllers have The memory organization is dynamic which allows a broad range of patch sizes from very small single message patches to very extended patches se
230. tch name see 10 4 7 below In mu head kecti solo Bank amp Preset display mode 10 4 3 Preset name display If you prefer to see the preset name in very big characters this is the mode to use lt takes advantage of the graphical nature of the display which enables the use of custom font sizes This mode displays the name of the currently selected preset in very big size characters It shows the first 10 characters of the name spread over 2 rows of 5 While browsing through banks or songs the bank or song name is displayed until you again select a new preset kecti solo Preset name display mode MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 78 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 10 4 4 Setlist amp Setlist XL display Attention these display modes are avaibable only in case you have created at least one setlist in your setup In setlist display mode you can scroll through the songs of the currently active setlist using the up and down foot switches or simply by turning the rotary knob The display shows you the currently active setlist the current song is framed with a dotted line and the bank linked to that song is automatically selected Through the global setup of Control Center it is possible to customize the way you browse through setlists You can choose to use the up switch of the foot controller to move to the next song similar to the classic browsing through banks up next bank This might seem illogical whe
231. ten to a different MIDI channel use a MIDI channel variable when defining the control switches for those devices the start stop record dub switches and then have a selection stompbox which simply modifies the MIDI channel variable when toggling its state This way you can let a row of switches control looper A or looper B depending on a single stomp box state MIDI clock metronome and tap tempo 72 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Of course apart from the advanced possibilities the use of variables also gives a very simple but very important advantage if you need to change the MIDI Channel used by a certain unit you just need to change one single value the MIDI channel variable No need to scan the complete patch setup in order to modify all messages sent to this unit this is taken care of by the global variable Ef See chapter 17 9 1 for setup of MIDI channel variables 9 3 MIDI data variables Completely analog to MIDI channel variables also MIDI data values can be represented by variables instead of fixed values Most MIDI messages like for instance a PC or CC message contain 1 or 2 data bytes These bytes can have a value between O and 127 However apart from specifying the data values of each MIDI message directly in the patch setup you can also use any of 16 available data variables instead You simply give these variables a meaningful name and an initial value Then you add a set of rules specifying how any patch chang
232. ter Globalsetup MIDI Routing MIDI Filtering enable MIDI OUT filtering MIDI channels sent to MIDI CUT port MIDI channels sent to TO FCB port WiiWl2 Wis 2 4 4 5 Kle 2 7 H e 7 F2 7 3s 7 wis Mle 4 7 Mla w9 2 10 4 114 124 130 14 Y 15 4 16 If 9 2 10 4 ii 12 Y 134 14 4 15 4 16 W System Common System Realtime System Common System Realtime 01 08 09 16 al none o1 08 09 16 all none LG internal menu not available The Little Giant offers some possibilities to filter the outgoing MIDI messages This filter influences both the generated messages and the messages forwarded from the MIDI IN port s Especially when configuring the control ports to act as an extra set of regular MIDI ports see 17 2 3 the filtering functionality can be very interesting It can be used to split the total MIDI message stream into 2 separate sub streams this way decreasing the number of messages sent on each port It is obvious that any filter logic on the MIDI stream will need a minimum be it very small amount of processing time Therefore the filtering system is by default disabled in order to keep the latency delay between switch click and transmitted MIDI message to an absolute minimum When enabling the filtering possibility through the global checkbox in ControlCenter one or two detail panes become available to set up the filter details The TO FCB por
233. ter Metronome TapTempo v activate global metronome Tempo 1120 BPM Y emphasis onthe firstbeat of 4 4 send following msg on each beat Channel Sound Canvas Message type NoteOn Ott High beat Di D2 72 100 Low beat Di D2 60 50 LG internal menu MAIN MEMO GLOBAL SETUP EXTRAS Global settings Hardware layout HIDI routing J oe RAA RAE J Switch locks ana Extraz H h MR ol eon 3 Setlists Metronome Ea 0 Le ERES While the GORDIUS specific metronome message can be used to define a preset dependent metro nome which is only active as long as the preset is active the global setup allows you to activate a global metronome This one keeps running even when you switch presets It is activated and de activated through the indicated built in menu option or through ControlCenter Little Giant setup reference metronome tap tempo and MIDI clock 164 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Several more advanced options can be set through ControlCenter only as shown in previous screenshot Apart from the visual metronome indication flashing switch LEDs also a MIDI message can be sent on each beat The message type dropdown box gives you the options MIDIClock ControlChange or NoteOn NoteOff When using ControlChange or Note messages the MIDI channel and the D1 Data1 and D2 Data2 values need to be specified These data values are the ControlChange Number and Value
234. the 2 other patch types you can only specify an activation delay if you have no messages programmed in the second message stream since this could lead to confusing situations where the switch release message would be sent before the delayed switch depress message Unlike the programmable delay which can be inserted at any place within a message stream by using a Delay message see chapter 14 1 this activation delay is non blocking you can just go ahead and click other foot switches or use the expression pedals while the activation delay is still running 17 4 8 Patch variants setup LG Control Center Patch content Main Variant for PATCH O02 LG internal menu not available The concept of patch variants is explained in chapter 9 4 In most cases you can just ignore this functionality and you can work exclusively with the main patch content with the Main radiobutton selected If you do want to use this advanced feature you first have to enable it globally see chapter 77 9 3 After doing so the Variant radiobutton and the copy ado and delete buttons are now enabled By default the Main radiobutton is checked and you define the main content of your patch using the 2 message stream tables When you click the button shown in above screenshot a popup lets you choose the preset which will activate a patch variant This preset then is displayed in the dro
235. ting a preset for each patch Y A preset basically adds some important information to the patch lt defines for each patch which stomp boxes need to be activated automatically how the expression pedals need to behave etc At first the existence of both patches and presets might look like an unnecessary overkill complicating the whole setup But in the end you will notice how it offers a high level of flexibility with the possibility to reuse the same patches in different presets etc After creating all needed patches the creation of a corresponding preset for each patch is just a matter of one mouse click in Control Center In our example we will define different combinations of stomp boxes to be activated when selecting each preset the preset linked to patch 1 will switch both stomp boxes off patch 2 will switch on the chorus patch 3 will switch on the distortion and patch 4 will switch on chorus and distortion simultaneously Of course after selecting any preset you can still switch each of the individual effects on or off here we are just talking about the initial state of each effect when first selecting a preset 3 9 1 Creating the presets Go to the Preset setup tab of Control Center Here you find a very easy way to create a preset for each available patch the Sync buttons below each preset list take care of this Simply click the Sync button below each of the 3 preset lists Patch presets Stomp box presets
236. tiple item sel ction sneen a eaa a a A 104 16 3 5 Toggling the state of listed temMS coooocnnncnnccocnnnnnnononannnnnononannnnonnnancnnnnnnnnncnnnnnnnancnnnnss 105 17 The Little Giant Setup relereniCE nenn e a a E E 106 ia Basic GIOWAlS SUNG S e asilos E AE 106 TA BORA OU Aita 106 17 1 2 General LED SettiNQS oooccnnnccnnnccoconnnnnncnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnonnnnncnnnnnnnnnnnnannnnnnnnnnnnnannnennnnns 110 17 1 3 General behavior when scrolling through banks Or SONGS cccocccccoocnnnnccnnnccnnnonannnnnnnnnos 111 17 1 4 Avoiding unintentional scrolling or menu activatiOD oooocccconnnnncocoonnnnoonannconanennonanennnnnos 113 17 1 5 Program Change display TanQ6 cccccccccnnconcccconnnononononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnannnnnnnonancnnnnrnannnnnnnnnnns 113 17 1 6 Bank Preset display mode OP IONS ooocccccccconnconccononnonnononannnnnonnancnnnonnnanennnnonancnnnns 114 O e AMA 114 17108 Expression DELS OSI iio 115 TAO Roay NOD a SS OAMI a N 115 IZA TO OCC Vd tddi le 116 17 1 11 Scrolling through display MOES siiin a a 116 Abe PACH mess ago TES ClO iia 117 17 1 13 Disable sending stompbox initialization messages oooocccnncccconncnnoconannnnnonnanennnnnnonnnnnnnns 117 17 1 14 Special stompbox behavior GuitarRig compatible mode ooocccccccccnnccnnccccanoncnnnnns 118 17 1 15 FCB Relay DehaViOT ooooccccccconnnconcccnoononnononannnnnnnonannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrnnnnrrnanennnnnnns 119 11 16
237. tivated stompboxes You can now proceed with editing the 3 remaining patch presets adding the 2 stomp boxes to the stomp boxes list of each preset but with different initial states as mentioned at the start of this topic Getting started with the Little Giant 48 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 7 4 What do we have up till now This is how the different preset lists look like after executing these steps PRESETS PRESETS PRESETS TN iin G sri PRESET PRESET 4 Ex E E List of patch presets List of stomp box presets List of mom effect presets Main patch setup for each preset PRESET MAIN PATCH PRESET 1 PATCH 1 PRESET 2 PATCH 2 PRESET 3 PATCH 3 PRESET 4 PATCH 4 CHORUS CHORUS DISTORTION DISTORTION SUSTAIN SUSTAIN And these are the linked stomp boxes for each patch preset STOMP BOXES STOMP BOXES STOMP BOXES STOMP BOXES o CHORUS El e CHORUS o CHORUS a CHORUS 0 DISTORT ION ODISTORTION DISTORTION a DISTORTION PRESET 1 PRESET 2 PRESET 3 PRESET 4 Getting started with the Little Giant 49 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 8 Bank setup At this point you are ready for a last important step in the initial setup assigning presets to foot switches of your Little Giant Y All presets can be organized in a total of up to 250 different banks An important feature is that each type of preset can be freely assigned to any switch in each of the banks There are no predefined layouts for patches
238. to send to MIDI OUT only Similarly the routing can be set to send to USB only in case you don t want to send any generated MIDI messages to the MIDI OUT port ee Chapter 17 2 1 shows how to set up the routing options for generated messages USB and MIDI routing filtering 55 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 6 2 Incoming MIDI message routing A MIDI application MIDI IN MIDI OUT 1 don t forward 2 MIDI GUT only l l 3 USB only MIDI IN routing 4 automatic USB or MIDI The MIDI messages entering the Little Giant through its MIDI IN connector can be routed in a similar way as mentioned above The routing options for the incoming messages can be set independently from the setting for the generated messages Also there is an extra option you can choose not to forward incoming messages at all This can be an interesting option in case the Little Giant is part of a MIDI chain in which message forwarding could cause a MIDI loop Also incoming MIDI Clock messages could be used inside the LG for tempo display or for synchronizing sent MIDI messages while the clock messages themselves don t need to be forwarded ER Chapter 17 2 2 shows how to set up the routing options for incoming messages 6 3 FCB control port configuration The Little Giant has 2 control ports labeled FROM FCB and TO FCB These ports are used for communication between the LG and a slave controller FloorControlBoa
239. to a log pot which is what you need for smooth volume adjustment e For many types of effects you might just use some trial and error to find out which curve type gives the best response If you feel like the adjustment is too coarse in a certain part of the adjustment range just make the sweep curve less steep in that part and steeper in the part where the effect change is currently too small 17 3 11 Default expression pedal assignment LG Control Center Pedal setup Default expr pedal assignment External expr pedal 1 External expr pedal 2 External expr pedal 3 External expr pedal 4 Volume Wah 4 E g 2 I LG internal menu MAIN MEHU GLOBAL SETUP GLOBAL EXPRSETUP folobal settings Huare Lat Presets E BSF nuna Ap edal ZE UP E ongs Pas Expr pedal 3 Setlists Service Expr pedal 4 ba Fe a Little Giant setup reference expression pedal setup 132 180 GURDIUS Little Giant For each of the connected expression pedals one or more expression pedal setups can be selected as its default After powering the Little Giant all expression pedals send the messages defined in their default setup if any was specified When the listbox used for entering the default setups is grayed out it means that you first have to specify the number of connected expression pedals in the Board layout tab of Control Center 17 3 12 External trigger assignment LG Control Center e
240. to have tuner display a 2 way communication is necessary in order to avoid problems caused by a possible MIDI loop it is necessary to prevent the incoming MIDI from the Axe FX to be forwarded to the LG MIDI OUT and thus the Axe FX again Therefore using ControlCenter go to Global Setup gt MIDI Routing gt MIDI IN ports and specify don t forward When you use the internal menus of the LittleGiant you program this setting as follows Main Menu gt Global Settings gt Extras gt MIDI Routing gt MIDI FORWARD gt Don t forward sending Tuner info over sysex needs to be activated explicitly in the Axe FX unit Check your manual or the Axe forum to find out how to do this the Axe FX setup allows you to set a sysex ID This value is part of all the sysex messages sent by the Axe FX This ID needs to be set to its default value of 125 in order to have the tuner display functioning a tuner activation stompbox needs to contain at least 2 messages in each of its message streams on activation a GORDIUS specific TunerDisplay ON message needs to be sent followed by a regular CC MIDI message with value 127 which is sent to the guitar processor for enabling the tuner On deactivation the same CC message needs to be sent to the effects processor this time with value 0 in order to deactivate the tuner again After this message you need to add a GORDIUS specific TunerDisplay OFF message in or
241. to next preset Set as default switch previous preset previously active preset LG internal menu not available A few special functions can be assigned to a foot switch you can for instance dedicate one switch to go to the next preset in the complete LG preset list This allows you to have a preset browse switch similar to the up switch used for browsing through all banks Completely similar a foot switch can be dedicated to selecting the previous preset in the LG preset list This is analog to the down switch which lets you browse backward in the bank list In other words a set of 2 switches next 4 previous can be used for preset browsing Using a single switch is also possible since you will automatically jump back to the beginning of the preset list after reaching the last item The previously active presef is another function which can be assigned to a footswitch Do not confuse it with the previous preset which is referring to the preceding item in the preset list The previously active preset is the one which was activated before the current one In other words with this function you can create a return or undo button The same function is also available for tip or heel presets of expression pedals as mentioned in chapter 17 3 8 17 6 5 Preset dependency rules for banks LG Control Center Dependency rules for bank General 02 VIBR S
242. vant display modes for now So we will come back to this topic at the end of the setup procedure For now if you entered display screen selection mode by accident just click the rotary knob again to leave this mode the 4 arrows will disappear and enter setup mode by keeping the rotary knob pressed long enough Getting started with the Little Giant 38 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 4 5 Global settings For this demo setup we will suppose that you have 1 external expression pedal at your disposal We will create a simple setup for this expression pedal later on So the first thing you need to do is specify that one expression pedal will be connected to your Little Giant Select Global settings gt Hardware layout gt Nr of ExprPedals and turn the rotary knob to enter value 01 Click once to leave number edit mode then click the v shaped confirm icon to store the new setting Clicking the return icon instead would have cancelled the selected value and restored its previous value again Return to the main menu by clicking the return icon a few times 4 6 Patch setup y The Little Giant provides 3 types of patches called regular patches stomp boxes and momentary effects The main difference between the 3 types is the behavior of the LED accompanying the patch switch the currently selected patch is indicated with an illuminated LED Only one patch at a time can be active so when
243. witch We will use the global bank for this This means that the chorus distortion and sustain effects will be available in all banks Go to Main menu gt Presets banks gt Special banks and select lt Global gt The setup for the global bank is very similar to any normal bank except that you can t change its name or assign a default switch In this global bank link the CHORUS stomp box to switch 5 the DISTORTION stomp box to switch 6 and finally the SUSTAIN effect to switch 7 Just as a check you can now go back to the setup of BANK 2 goto the BANKS menu select BANK 2 and the Edit button You didn t assign any preset to any switch in this bank so all switch presets should mention none You will notice that this is not the case any more for switches 5 6 and 7 They mention the presets CHORUS DISTORTION and SUSTAIN That s because you just used the global bank setup to assign these presets globally As you can notice the BANK 2 setup mentions these preset names in between square brackets this way indicating the assignment is done on a global level and can be overridden here by assigning a different preset to switch 5 6 or 7 While still in this BANK 2 setup menu just keep the rotary button pressed for about 2 seconds This is a quick escape from setup mode it brings you back to normal runtime mode without the need to click the whole sequence of return buttons t
244. with following stomp boxes LG internal menu not available Chapter 8 4 has a topic on grouped stompboxes which explains this functionality in detail Little Giant setup reference patch setup 140 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Obviously this grouped stompboxes setup is only enabled for stompboxes not for patches or momentary effects For each stompbox simply specify which other stompboxes need to be disabled automatically when this one is enabled Specifying the stompbox group at one place is sufficient The same info will automatically be available in the details view of the other grouped stompboxes 17 4 6 Relay settings LG Control Center FCB1010 relay settings Advanced settings This patch activates relay 1 FCB Relays This patch activates relay 2 Cancel OK LG internal menu not available These 2 checkboxes let you define the relay behavior of an FCB1010 or FC 300 connected as slave controller Indeed both the FCB1010 and the FC 300 have 2 built in switch outputs which can be activated when selecting a stomp box toggling behavior or when selecting a momentary effect momentary behavior This is the reason why this relay setup is only enabled when the use of a slave controller is activated in the global setup and it is also limited to stompboxes and momentary effects not available for patches Also remember that you have a global setting to define if each relay needs to be nor
245. with the messages entering the main MIDI IN connector Also the MIDI stream of incoming messages merged with the internally generated messages can be sent both to the regular MIDI OUT port and to the port labeled TO FCB ee See chapter 17 2 3 for activating the FCB control ports as extra MIDI ports 5 4 EXPR1 EXPR2 SW1 SW2 The 2 external switch jacks can be used to extend your setup with 2 extra switches exactly the same way as a Slave controller can extend the size of each bank with 10 or more switches Apart from that the 2 extra switches can also be used as an extra pair of up down switches or as 2 Direct Select switches used for 1 click access to the 2 direct banks Ef More info about using external switches can be found in chapter 7 3 The stereo input jacks labeled EXPR 1 and EXPR 2 can be used to add 2 external expression pedals to your setup The LG setup allows for up to 16 expression pedal setups Any of these setups can be linked to each of the 2 expression pedals and this assignment can be done differently for each preset It is even possible to link more than 1 setup to a single expression pedal this way adjusting multiple continuous controllers with one pedal ee More info about connecting expression pedals can be found in chapter 7 4 Optionally the Little Giant can be ordered with 4 expression pedal inputs instead of 2 switch inputs 2 expression pedal inputs this version is called the LG 4 Overview of the L
246. y to do an initial setup than using the internal LG menus where you need to create each preset manually LG internal menu Ea See chapter 14 2 for general info about managing item lists For each preset following properties can be defined Little Giant setup reference preset setup 144 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 17 5 2 Preset name LG Control Center Mame DRY LG internal menu PRESET HANME RESET 1 bj En A preset name can be anything up to 16 characters long Only restriction it should be unique within its preset type In theory a patch preset and a stomp box preset can have the same name but in order to avoid confusion it is better to keep all preset names unique On the other hand it is very well possible to duplicate patch and preset names since both items are strongly related to each other 17 5 3 Main patch LG Control Center Main patch DRY LG internal menu The main patch is obviously the most important property of a preset This is the patch which will be activated when the preset switch is clicked 17 5 4 External trigger assignment LG Control Center Triogered byPc 1 lt LG internal menu not available Little Giant setup reference preset setup 145 180 GURDIUS Little Giant As explained in chapter 7 2 it is possible to enable external triggering of LG presets from a third party slave controller Here you can assi
247. y menu for the selected item which enables you to modify any of the item properties ADD adds a new item below the selected item All properties of the new item have default values which can be edited afterwards by clicking the edit icon the newly added item is already selected by default RETURN click this icon to deselect the currently selected item and return to the list menu where another item can be selected How to use the built in Little Giant menus 101 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 3 Property menus When clicking the edit icon for a selected item its property menu appears Use the rotary knob to scroll through all the available properties for the item click a property value to edit it or scroll down until the back icon is highlighted to leave the property menu again E E it ih eF ILH C on E E a O Soe 4 Example of a property menu 16 3 1 Editing string properties Most items in the Little Giant setup can be given a custom name which can be any string with a length of up to 16 characters Although there is no doubt that you will prefer to do this kind of setup using the Little Giant Control Center it is also perfectly possible to use the built in string editor menu for this In the string edit menu turn the rotary knob to go to the character you want to edit Press the knob to select it and again turn the knob to choose the desired character Press to confirm and the cursor a
248. y saved During setup no MIDI messages are received or sent by the Little Giant It is also good to know that no USB communication is active while in setup mode Therefore it is important to leave setup mode before launching Control Center and trying to start communication with the LittleGiant Remark if you are worried about possibly activating the setup mode by accident while playing live you can optionially lock the rotary knob In this locked mode keeping the knob pressed is not enough to enter setup mode You need to keep both up and down switches pressed along with the rotary knob before the unit enters setup mode See topic 17 1 4 for setup of this feature MAIN MEU Global settings al Example of a menu with back icon How to use the built in Little Giant menus 100 180 GURDIUS Little Giant 16 2 Managing lists of items The Little Giant setup manages many different types of items patches stomp boxes momentary effects expression pedals presets banks songs and setlists There is a list menu for each item type showing the complete list of created items of that type Chorus a Delay _ Bea Example of a list menu After selecting one item in the list the toolbar shows following icons MOVE after clicking the move icon the selected item can be moved up or down the list DELETE permanently deletes the selected item after confirming the deletion EDIT opens the propert
249. ybe patch variants which are not correctly set up Do you use preset dependency rules for the current bank Remember that this can overwrite the behavior of any switch of the current bank Did you specify a default preset for your songs which possibly causes unintended extra messages to be sent Did you specify stompbox groups These can cause extra messages to be sent for deactivating a previously selected stompbox in that group when selecting a certain preset Expression pedals If you are confident about the pedal connections by doing the diagnostic test mentioned at the start of this chapter and still have no messages transmitted by the expression pedal Check if you have a preset which disables the expression pedal see preset setup If that s the case any other preset needs to activate it again by specifying use default or activate listed pedal setups The default setting No change will leave the pedal non responsive if any preset disabled it previously Also double check that a default setup is specified for this pedal in the Pedal setup tab if you want to use the setting use default in the preset setup Check if all pedal setup settings are valid specifying the correct input and output ranges Remember that the use of an engage value will block sending any messages until that value has been reached Troubleshooting 171 180 GURDIUS Little Giant Un
250. yed in the rightside detail pane where the preset properties can be edited Similarly the internal menus of the Little Giant contain the same 3 separate lists which lead to the edit menu for each of the created presets 17 5 1 Managing preset lists LG Control Center New presets can be added by clicking the button existing presets can be deleted by clicking the button the lists can be sorted arbitrarily by using the up or down buttons Order of presets in the list is of no importance except your own convenience Just like with several other list types a copy button can be used to create a new preset which is a clone of the selected one The new preset is named copy of original preset name An interesting extra feature for preset lists is the Sync button With this button you can synchronize the preset list with the corresponding patch list The current preset list is compared with the patch list and for each patch which is not yet used as main patch for any preset a new preset is created This new preset gets the same name as the patch and the patch is assigned as main patch of this preset When doing an initial setup from scratch it is a good idea to do a complete patch setup first When you have defined all necessary patches a single click on the Sync button will automatically create a corresponding preset for each patch You will understand that this is a far more efficient wa

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