General/Stepper combination question

I have a set of eight numbered pistons and I would like to use them as is common on a cathedral organ in the British Isles to step up through a saved bank of generals ("stepper" on the cathedral organs I have played, as opposed to the "sequencer" which is similar but is a totally separate system with its own unique screen, buttons and memory). Is there a way to make the current stepper frame display a unit value that is one higher than it is by default?

Here is an explanation of the issue.

I auto-detected stepper frames 000 for piston "1", 001 for piston "2", 002 for piston "3", 004 for piston "4", etc. up to 007 for piston "8".

In the General Settings | General Preferences screen I have limited the number of pistons to eight and have made it so that my advance pistons will make the following frame active:


The default behaviour means when I press piston "1" it makes frame 000 active:


and when I press piston "6" it makes 005 active


and when I press my advance piston three times it wraps around to 010:


This is all expected behaviour.

Is there any way when I press piston "1" that it will load stepper frame 001 and when I press piston "8" it will load frame 008? And a press of the advance piston at this point will make 011 active? Setting the pistons as "1" for 001, "2" for 002 and so on still produces the above behaviour, albeit without being able to access xx0 using a piston press and with the xx8 frames not being triggered by the advance piston.
There doesn't appear to be an offset option in the menu. The mental gymnastics required to remind oneself 002 is actually produced by a push of piston "3" would present a danger during live playing.

Thanks very much in advance.

You'll probably find what you need at:
"Organ settings >> MIDI/Key Triggers for... '

Select "Registration: stepper: trigger xx8" (for example)

Click "Auto-detect settings" to assign the desired button

Button 000 is for setting the stepper and the cued frame to frame 0.
Therefor you have to auto-detect this button (000) to the General cancel button of your organ. In general to turn off all stops, this button is already used. Result, the general cancel has 2 functions.
Next is to auto-detect stepper frames xx1 for piston "1", xx2 for piston "2", xx3 for piston "3", xx4 for piston "4", etc. up to xx8 for piston "8".

If you will not start the stepper at 0, then you have to do extra things:
the ◄◄ and ►► buttons in the cued part of the window will set the hundreds of the stepper and ◄ and ► the tens of the stepper. Pressing the units the stepper goes to that value.
For example with a starting point of 123, then you have to push ►► button 1x, ► button 2x and at last button xx3.

Is there any way when I press piston "1" that it will load stepper frame 001 and when I press piston "8" it will load frame 008? And a press of the advance piston at this point will make 011 active? Setting the pistons as "1" for 001, "2" for 002 and so on still produces the above behaviour, albeit without being able to access xx0 using a piston press and with the xx8 frames not being triggered by the advance piston.
There doesn't appear to be an offset option in the menu. The mental gymnastics required to remind oneself 002 is actually produced by a push of piston "3" would present a danger during live playing.

I think you are right. There is no way in Hauptwerk to specify the starting number for the combination stepper pistons. As you note you can have it work with the number of pistons you have available but you can't make it start at 1 and go from 1-8 and then 11-18. If you have 8 pistons it goes from 0-7, 10 - 17, etc.

You could re-label the the pistons on the console!

Iain

Thank you everybody for your replies.

You'll probably find what you need at:
"Organ settings >> MIDI/Key Triggers for... '

Select "Registration: stepper: trigger xx8" (for example)

Click "Auto-detect settings" to assign the desired button

Thanks. As far as I understand this isn't a problem with MIDI events.

If you will not start the stepper at 0, then you have to do extra things:
the ◄◄ and ►► buttons in the cued part of the window will set the hundreds of the stepper and ◄ and ► the tens of the stepper. Pressing the units the stepper goes to that value.
For example with a starting point of 123, then you have to push ►► button 1x, ► button 2x and at last button xx3.

You're quite right in that I could manually cue the desired stage in Hauptwerk, but on organs in the British Isles the Generals stepper does that automatically and advances through the Generals stages in the following series:
001 > 002 > 003 > 004 > 005 > 006 > 007 > 008 > 011 > 012 > 013 and so on.
This is displayed on a small screen at the console.
I should clarify that the sequencer is a separate unit and works like Hauptwerk's native functionality and must be turned "on" by the organist, so the Generals stepper is the default at these organs.

Sorry to be verbose, this just clarifies the situation to anybody reading this in the future.

There is no way in Hauptwerk to specify the starting number for the combination stepper pistons. As you note you can have it work with the number of pistons you have available but you can't make it start at 1 and go from 1-8 and then 11-18. If you have 8 pistons it goes from 0-7, 10 - 17, etc.

You could re-label the the pistons on the console!

Thanks Iain for the clarification. One could, but I've only ever seen a piston labelled "0" to be used as the General Cancel, as it implies that this cancels a registration rather than suggesting that it bears a pre-set combination. All organs I have played on professionally have started their generals and divisionals at "1" for this reason. Having xx0 stages crops up only on the sequencer where there is no way they could be confused for anthing other than a sequence of stages.

I'll see about making a feature request. Thanks to everyone for your learned responses.

The Peterborough sample set includes "its own" sequencer which works as you want (cf SSL). Most (all?) other "English" instruments make use of the native HW sequencer.

My console has "dedicated" pistons for the sequencer which are independent of the "generals". [8 in the swell key slip S1 -S8, 8 in the great key slip S9 S0 <unused> +10 -10 +100 -100 000 ]. I have "advance" pistons in each key slip and on the toe pistons and one "back" piston in the choir key slip and I use an LCD display to record the current combination.

Iain