Using message scroll to send out Note on/Note off messages

MIDI Control
1

Hello,

I would like to be able to use 1 switch on the MC6 to send out various notes (in a fixed order).

Ex: i press the switch once, it sends a C, a second time then it will stop the C and start a D, a third time stops the D and sends E etc

Is it possible ? If i want to control the length of each note, will message scroll work with LONG RELEASE ?

Cheers

2

Iā€™d programm a ā€˜note off allā€™ message on ā€˜pressā€™. That way you could play a sequence of notes. Holding down the footswitch would function as a rest between notes. You might need some time to get used to it, because at first it feels odd to play notes on release.

3

Yes i tried last night and it works. But there is still clearly a pause and the timing to press/release is very tricky because there is a pause even after the release. Any possibility to get rid of this pause altogether ?

Also, i just realized that by assigning note on messages to make full chords on some presets, i ll be able to sequence not only notes but chords. This is one step closer to what i m lookign for, but it still requires a bit of tap dancing vs a real sequencer. I really hope the firmware upgrade to allow chords sequencing will happen soon !

4

Could you have each note be preceded by a ā€œnote off allā€ release message, and then use a press action set to a utility action to have message scroll send 2 messages per release? That way every release dis-engages previous note and engages the new one, without a pause between.

5

You would need just a single note off message on press. The press will always execute first. It doesnā€™t have to be part of the message scroll sequence.

6

Iā€™m experimenting with playing chords, too. Iā€™m planning to pre programm chords on individual presets and use a ā€˜message scrollā€™ preset with a sequence of ā€˜engage presetā€™ messages to trigger the chords. Havnā€™t tested this yet.

7

Ahh, I thought the issue was the gap between the press and release, which might be solved by having both execute on a release.

8

thats exactly what i did. On PRESS Note off all. On release, Note On. Still there is a pause. But , it might be due to some latency on the Enzo X. I do not know yet

9

i ll try it tonight and report back.

10

Putting the MC in looper mode might help with the latency.

Next step would be to use the drum sequencer of my Akai and convert at input to play actual sequences. But my hopes arenā€™t too high that this will work. I expect a lot of latency with that approach.

11

Soā€¦ I tried to sequence chords last night :

  • i created 4 presets, with Note on messages for each chord.
  • i checked ech individual preset and they worked, (i had to add a note off message at the beginning of each one, for this trial). The Enzo played the correct chords each time.
  • Then i copied the scroll message preset i had made the day before for notes sequencing, and replaced the note on messages with ā€˜Engage preset ā€¦ā€™ messages. I did not change the other messages that are engaged upon ā€˜Pressā€™ action (such as Note off as the first message , and patch selection on the Enzo X).
  • By the way, i m using an FS3X as aux switch for this, assigned to these 2 ā€˜sequencerā€™ presets (the note sequence that worked yesterday, and the new chord sequence).
  • But last night, it did not work : the FS3X did activate the proper preset on the MC6 because the correct patch change info was sent to the Enzo X. However no sound came out , the chords were not played.
  • Weirder :
  • the note sequence that worked like a charm yesterday did not work either last night (it also only set up the correct patch on the Enzo, but no notes being played). However i did not change anything on that preset
  • And finally one preset (completely unrelated, to set up some other pedals and loopswitcher) froze, and the MC6 Pro would restart by itself after being frozen for a couple seconds.

Basically, i had already noticed, but the MC6 pro seems quite sensitive to notes on messages, it seems easy to make it bug ? Finally, i simply deleted one message from the preset that was freezing, then saved, then put the same message back in, saved again, and it worked againā€¦

But the issue of no notes being played is still there.

12

Thanks for sharing, thatā€™s unexpected. I think Iā€™m not able to test it myself until next week. But Iā€™ll report back.

Maybe we can find a different way to do this.

As of now I did not have any issues with note on/off messages. But we will see if I can confirm that this is a bug.

13

Ok so hereā€™s last night status :

  1. it seems that after my initial successful trial for the notes sequence via message scroll preset, I had added a PRESS message that caused the Enzo to produce no sound (it was a PC to change the patch on the Enzo). Because when i delete that PC message, i have sound again. I do not know why that PC was causing an issue though. I am managing this differently now, so its not a roadblock.

  2. By deleting the other PRESS messages that i had (other PC messages, for Chroma Console and Hydra 4X), now i get close to no latency, it sounds very good indeed, FOR THE NOTES ONLY SEQUENCE

  3. Now the chords sequence worked fine. The only downside vs notes only is that i havenā€™t been able to get rid of the latency yet, even when reducing much the LONG PRESS delay time.

  4. However, in the end, I still get unexpected sudden occurrences where the MC6 Pro restarts on its own (even though it does not freeze anymore on any presets). I ve no idea why yet.

14

Got finally around to do some testing. Iā€™ve pre-programmed some chords on different presets and triggered those via a ā€˜message scroll/engage presetā€™ with ā€˜ā€˜engage presetā€™ messages on release and a single ā€˜note off allā€™ on press, to play a basic progression.

Iā€™ve had no issues doing this on the MC itself.

However Iā€™ve encountered some issues when trying to trigger the ā€˜message scrollā€™ from an external controller (AKAI MPK Mini Plus).

I encountered crashes/restarts of the MC, too. But Iā€™ve been able to sort that out. The problem was a Midi loop, once I got that sorted everything works just fine.

Some of the issues were caused by the behaviour of the midi message converter. I tried to convert incoming pc messages send from the AKAIā€™s drum pads to cc messages on the MCā€™s channel to trigger the message scroll. I noticed that the original messages got still passed through to the nanobox tangerine I use to play the chords. @james has been so kind to put out a custom fw to deal with that.

Then I realized that the original message still got to the tangerine via the ā€˜mirror usb inputā€™ thatā€™s hidden in the controller settings menu of the MC. This can only be changed on the hardware and isnā€™t accessible via the editor. Thatā€™s kind of a nasty prank, I had to dig really deep through the forum to find the answer to that problem. Iā€™didnā€™t even know that this setting exists :rofl:

Triggering the engage preset messages via the AKAIā€™s pads works very good. Much faster than using the MCā€™s footswitches because there is less distance to travel.

Now I have to figure out how to synchronize the AKAI, the Tangerine and my RC 500 to finally make use of this setup. Syncing the three devices doesnā€™t work atm. I experience offsets due to different responses of the devices to midi clock and realtime messages.:neutral_face: