MIDI & keyboard control

Fire cues, switch banks and drive the deck from a MIDI controller — plus a computer keyboard you can reshape to fit your show.

Audio · Updated 2026-06-30

CueCart plays from your hands or your gear. Beyond clicking pads, you can fire cues, switch banks and run the DJ Deck from a MIDI controller — a pad controller, a MIDI keyboard, a control surface, anything that sends MIDI — and reshape the computer keyboard into whatever layout suits the show. Every route does the same thing under the hood, so a click, a key and a MIDI note fire a cue identically — you're free to mix them however you like.

Connect a controller

Plug in your controller, then open Settings → MIDI. CueCart lists the MIDI inputs it can see; tick the ones you want it to listen to. You can run several at once — a pad controller for cues and a small surface for the deck, say.

Down in the footer, a small MIDI activity light pulses whenever a note or control message arrives. It's the quickest way to confirm CueCart is hearing your gear before you start mapping anything — if it doesn't blink when you press a pad, check the input is ticked and your controller is on the right port.

Fire a cue from a MIDI note

Every cue pad can listen for its own MIDI note. Open the Cue Editor → Triggers, click Learn under MIDI note, and play the note you want. CueCart binds it and shows the note on the pad face, so you can read your whole mapping at a glance.

Global, not bank-bound. A cue's MIDI note fires it from any bank, whatever page you're looking at — unlike a cue's keyboard label, which only fires on the bank you're currently viewing. That makes MIDI notes ideal for the handful of cues you must be able to hit instantly all night.
Channel-aware. Set a MIDI channel for the note, or leave it on any channel (omni) so it fires however your controller happens to be configured.
Conflict aware. If the note you learn is already used by another cue or a bank, CueCart warns you — a gentle heads-up, not a block, so you stay in control.

To remove a binding, click Clear.

Switch banks by key or MIDI

Banks are your show's pages, and each one carries its own triggers so you can change page without reaching for the mouse. Open Bank Settings → Triggers.

Select key. Each bank has a keyboard focus key — press it and that bank comes to the front, ready for its pads to trigger. By default F1–F12 map to banks 1–12. Click Learn and press any key to override that default; the learned key then replaces the positional F-key for that bank. CueCart warns you if the key already does something else (a pad key, or another bank).

Select via MIDI. Learn a MIDI note that jumps straight to a bank, with the same channel options as cue notes. A bound bank note always focuses the bank first, so you can flip pages from a controller mid-show.

Next / Previous bank. Step through your banks in order with a MIDI control or a key — handy when you have more banks than dedicated buttons. These, plus a direct Select bank 1–8, are available as bindings in Settings → MIDI.

Reshape the computer keyboard

The computer keyboard isn't fixed — tune it to your hands in Settings → Keyboard.

Off or Positional. Choose how the pad grid responds to typing:

Off — pads don't fire from the keyboard at all (clicks and MIDI still work). Good when you'd rather keep the keyboard for transport and bank keys only.
Positional — the keys lay out across the pad grid and fire the pads of the focused bank. Switch banks (by F-key, learned key or MIDI) and the same physical keys play the new page.

Pick a layout. A live preview shows exactly which key sits on which pad:

QWERTY, AZERTY and Dvorak match common physical keyboards — pick the one that matches yours so the on-screen labels read true.
Custom lets you build the grid key by key: click a cell in the preview, then press the key you want there. Right-click a cell to clear it (Backspace or Delete work too). Use this to carve out a hand-shaped cluster for the cues you fire most.

Pin a layout to a Set. A Custom layout can be pinned to a particular Set (in Set Settings → Keyboard), so that show always opens with the keyboard you built for it. Built-in layouts stay global — they describe your physical keyboard, so they follow the machine, not the Set. Unpin at any time to fall back to your global layout without losing the custom one you saved.

Drive the DJ Deck from MIDI

The DJ Deck takes MIDI too, so you can run long-form playout from the same controller while the deck stays independent of your cartwall. Bind any of these in Settings → MIDI:

Deck play / pause, Deck cue, Deck stop — transport.
Deck tempo and Deck volume — map these to faders or knobs for live control.

Alongside the deck, you can also bind Master volume, Phone (headphone) volume, and Stop cue pads to MIDI — so your house level, your cans and the "bring the pads down" button can all live on the surface.

How "Learn" works everywhere

Mapping is the same wherever you do it. Click Learn, and the control shows Listening…; press a pad or key, or nudge a fader, and CueCart captures it. Click Clear to unbind. Where a binding clashes with something else, you'll see a non-blocking warning so you can decide whether it matters — nothing is forced, and nothing changes until you act.

What you can bind

For quick reference, the actions available to MIDI in Settings → MIDI:

Levels — Master volume, Phone (headphone) volume.
Cue pads — Stop cue pads; plus a per-pad note on each cue (in the Cue Editor).
Banks — Select bank 1–8, Next bank, Previous bank; plus a per-bank note (in Bank Settings).
Deck — Deck play / pause, Deck cue, Deck stop, Deck tempo, Deck volume.

Where to next

Triggering & going live — firing cues by click, key or MIDI in the show.
The Cue Editor — bind a MIDI note (and a key) to a single cue.
Banks — organise your show across pages you can switch by MIDI or key.
The DJ Deck — the streaming player you can run from the same controller.