Is it possible to send a MIDI Clock message that can halve the current tempo or potentially double it?
This could prove very useful for controlling loopers with built-in drum beats. Let’s say you’ve locked in your tempo (120 bpm) for what you’re looping but you want the drum beat to play half-time (60 bpm) or double-time (240 bpm). I feel like this could be achievable and would be a really neat feature when controlling the tempo on your MIDI capable pedals (delay pedals or looper pedals) via the MIDI Controller.
I’ve done it with a guitar pedal that has a CC for tap tempo. On “press” you can send a CC Sequence Generator. Program the Sequence generator to start on the press. For example, using engine 1 have it Start, Engine 1, Once Only, Follow MIDI Clock “Yes”, Note division 1/2, CC# is whatever the tap (on my Mood MKII it’s 107). I defined the Sequence Generator Engine 1 with two values, 0 and 1.
From what I recall, I thought having note division at 1/4 would be sending tap tempo, so 1/2 would be half speed and 1/8 would be double speed, but for some reason I’m pretty sure tap tempo was actually half notes, not quarter notes. So you’ll need to experiment with the division.
Also, the pedal I was using had a CC# to ignore MIDI clock.
I’ll check this out! In my specific case, the looper itself doesn’t even have a MIDI port so I’m using relay switching to set the tempo. That said, I may be able to use this method to achieve my goal. Overall very clever approach to this specific problem! I’ll give it a shot!
@AB484 So I actually spent quite a bit of time with this last night and it doesn’t seem like this is possible for my situation. Why yes it is possible to achieve this with CC# Sequences following the BPM on half, quarter and eighth notes, this is however not possible to do with relay switching from my estimation.
I’m using the Boss RC3, which I’ll admit is an outdated looper pedal, however it does have a TRS relay switch port with the following capabilities:
Stop Looper: NO Tap on Tip while looper is playing
Clear Loop: Hold NO on Tip for 2 secs
Tap Tempo: NO Tap on Tip while looper is stopped
Next Loop: (not yet tested, but manual mentions using the second pedal on a Boss FS-6)
Previous Loop: (not yet tested, but manual mentions using the second pedal on a Boss FS-6)
Thus far I have one of the Omniports set up to sync tempo on the tip and it has worked fantastically for that purpose making it super easy to sync all my time-based pedals with my live looping.
Feature Request
@james@benjamin
That all said, it would be really cool if the Morningstar Editor was capable of either:
Modifying the tempo based on the current tempo to be able to halve or even double it. (I know you can increment or decrement the current bpm by 1, but that’s all I could find)
OR
Having the ability to send sequence messages to relay switches which would in turn allow the user to halve or double the current tempo when using relay switching. That along with many more applications for relay switch capable devices
I do this in a different way with my el capistan delay. It and several pedals like it have a CC message for the subdivision, so I have a preset with half note, quarter and eighth with corresponding expression sweeps to match.
If there is a way to do this in the controller I don’t know of it.
You mind me asking which delay you’re implementing this with so maybe I can help you come up with a work around?
So I have no problem accomplishing this with my delay pedal. I use the Meris LVX and it’s incredible versatile and would work great for this application.
However, my Boss RC3 looper is an older pedal without a MIDI connection and so I have to use relay switching, via one of the omniports, in order to send the current BPM to it. The goal of this post is to be able to quickly halve the current tempo in order to slow down the beat of the drum machine built into the looper. That or even potentially double the current tempo.
This way the BPM I set will still stick to my MIDI capable pedals the way I’d like, however the drum machine I’m playing with would then be more flexible on the spot while staying in time.
I am currently working thru some midi clock programming issues myself so I understand. Hopefully someone can let us know if there is a way to do this quick and easily.
An interesting tidbit with MIDI Clocks that I’ve learned trying to solve this problem. Apparently when you have an Omniport configured to “Sync” (Either Ring or Tip) with MIDI Clock in the Omniport Configuration, the MIDI Output Mask does not apply to MIDI Clock messages. Either that or MIDI Output Masks never apply to MIDI Clock messages.
My thinking was that if I had a song synced to 166 bpm for instance, that I could then sync my looper to 83 bpm (exactly half) so that the drum track and my delay would be in sync exactly to my liking at least for a specific bpm…
That all said, unfortunately sending out multiple different MIDI Clocks at once via the Output Mask will not work with Omniports configured to sync with midi clock via their Tip or Ring.