MIDIbox SEQ V4 Release + Feedback

[strophlex]

Are you a Mac or Windows user?

Could you please check with a MIDI Monitor that only USB1 sends the MIDI clock?

Best Regards, Thorsten.

I am on Mac. Will check this in a few days. Thanks!

[stuartm]

Song names with 20 characters are already prepared, but they are not editable yet.

I'm not sure if they are really so important anymore since the new session concept gives you a better way to name (and organize/backup) your projects anyhow.

Dang, I omitted to read the sessions as they have a separate page. Yes, sound perfect for me.

In fact, I'm starting to think about the whole bunch of possibilities the sessions will introduce ... nice! :)

[Echopraxia]

TK this thing is AWESOME!!!

Great job with the session saving! There are so many features on this thing!

I like the way you can hold the mute button to mute parts of a drum track. Is there a faster way to change the note value of a drum part rather than holding the menu key and pressing the event key. Also how do you use the parameter layer on a drum track? I see that you can do roll, delay and others but how do you place them?

I was messing with the triplet divider with a track I made that was just regular 16 base and when I would change it to 16T base it would cycle through the 16 steps then on the next pass it would only make it through the first 8 steps resulting in weird beats. The step view helped verify this. How can I get this particular pattern which was made in 16 to act "normal" in 16T?

So far I have only made one session pattern but there are so many tweaks you can do I can tell you I will be up late for the week.

Regards,

echo

PS you'll be getting a beer come payday :)

PSS I don't know what happened but some of the leds are not working at all. They were placed properly and soldered correctly. Perhaps I didn't do a quality check on ALL the leds before soldering them. I do know that some of the led circuits with bad leds do work because I had an led in one of them before I soldered to make sure I placed them correctly and not backwards onto the pcb.

[Echopraxia]

I am looking into the transpose feature as I am not understanding how to use a keyboard on the midi in of the SEQ to transpose tracks properly. I understand that you select your track and use menu--mode then select transpose. But you also have to go to menu-midi and mess with "in ports" there and that is where I get confused.

[Echopraxia]

I was messing with the triplet divider with a track I made that was just regular 16 base and when I would change it to 16T base it would cycle through the 16 steps then on the next pass it would only make it through the first 8 steps resulting in weird beats. The step view helped verify this. How can I get this particular pattern which was made in 16 to act "normal" in 16T?

I just read the manual about this. I put "sync to measure" back to "no" instead of yes and it loops only through the 16 steps. But I thought that when not "syncing to measure" a track will not sync to the rest of the tracks. Is this thinking correct? If I have a complete 16T pattern that I want synced together will I be stuck with it having to cycle through 24 steps??? (16 steps + 8 steps)??? My tiny brain won't grasp your genius.

Regards,

echo

[Echopraxia]

The manual trigger is very fun!

It works really good when you slam the snare a bunch and then press select at the end. Easy way to improvise a beat.

Nice job!

Regards,

echo

[TK.]

TK this thing is AWESOME!!!

I know :)

I like the way you can hold the mute button to mute parts of a drum track. Is there a faster way to change the note value of a drum part rather than holding the menu key and pressing the event key.

There is no faster way, but you can store your drum map (and labels), resp. the complete track configuration, in a preset file to re-use it later for other tracks.

Presets are not part of a session, but globally stored in a special folder on SD card.

In other words: after you prepared the drum maps for your gear, you won't have to do this time consuming work again.

Also how do you use the parameter layer on a drum track? I see that you can do roll, delay and others but how do you place them?

Just move an encoder to change the value.

PSS I don't know what happened but some of the leds are not working at all. They were placed properly and soldered correctly. Perhaps I didn't do a quality check on ALL the leds before soldering them. I do know that some of the led circuits with bad leds do work because I had an led in one of them before I soldered to make sure I placed them correctly and not backwards onto the pcb.

Please create a separate troubleshooting topic if you are not able to find the error.

I am looking into the transpose feature as I am not understanding how to use a keyboard on the midi in of the SEQ to transpose tracks properly. I understand that you select your track and use menu--mode then select transpose. But you also have to go to menu-midi and mess with "in ports" there and that is where I get confused.

The "IN port" is a global selection for the physical MIDI interface (and MIDI channel) you want to use for transposing tracks.

E.g., by setting it to IN1 your keyboard has to be connected to the first MIDI IN port of the MBHP_CORE_STM32 module.

Use the integrated MIDI monitor of MBSEQ to check if MIDI events are received.

I just read the manual about this. I put "sync to measure" back to "no" instead of yes and it loops only through the 16 steps. But I thought that when not "syncing to measure" a track will not sync to the rest of the tracks. Is this thinking correct?

Yes, but if you restart the sequencer the track will be on sync anyhow.

"Sync to measure" can either be used as a permanent setting which sometimes leads to interesting results (especially when unequal divider values are used, but also for progression parameters)

Or it can be used to sync the track once only after divider values have been changed (after the sync happened you have to disable the function), so that the sequencer doesn't have to be restarted.

Alternatively the "one time sync" can be triggered by pressing the SELECT button in manual trigger page as you already noticed. :)

If I have a complete 16T pattern that I want synced together will I be stuck with it having to cycle through 24 steps??? (16 steps + 8 steps)???

Of course, the track length should be 24 steps to align with other tracks that are playing 16th notes.

The manual trigger is very fun!

I second this!

It works really good when you slam the snare a bunch and then press select at the end. Easy way to improvise a beat.

Hint: you can select multiple tracks and control the position for all at once.

Planned additional feature for this page: pressing two GP buttons will create a loop between these buttons until they are depressed again. :)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[gjvti]

.....

Planned additional feature for this page: pressing two GP buttons will create a loop between these buttons until they are depressed again. :)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

Wow that sounds very tempting :) something like a midi atomizer.

Perhaps with this the extended loop control from midi keyboard input could be implemented as well.

I thought that it could be something like that - you define a key range which only

changes loop range (steps) for example: with pressing any two keys within this defined

range on keyboard creates global loop between certain amount of steps: C1 and C1# loops

single step, C1 and D1 loops between two steps from current position and so on - perhaps

this could be usefull if this releases GP buttons for other tasks.

[Echopraxia]

TK thanks for taking the time to go through my messages.

Of course, the track length should be 24 steps to align with other tracks that are playing 16th notes.

On my good old tr-707 I could have a triplet time and have it only loop the 16 steps. This is why I am sad:( I love triplet time very much.

Hint: you can select multiple tracks and control the position for all at once.

Ahhh. The all button will be my new friend. Have not tried it yet but is there a way to only select certain tracks?

Stay tuned for more testing.

Regards,

echo

[TK.]

Ahhh. The all button will be my new friend. Have not tried it yet but is there a way to only select certain tracks?

No, the ALL button has a different function (not related to manual trigger).

You can select multiple tracks by pressing&holding the TrackSel button (tracks selected with GP buttons).

Alternatively press&hold a track button, thereafter press additional track buttons...

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[Echopraxia]

Messing with pattern changing and for some reason I can not switch a pattern on one of the track groups. Say I have it on A! and try to switch to B1. It flashes between the two and the leds on gp 1 + 2 go back and forth. What am I doing wrong? it doesn't change even after a long time. I thought this was a sync to measure thing but it did not do anything in this case. Do I have to create a new pattern or something?

Also when connecting with usb to computer there are 4 devices present. Why is this? Is there a certain work flow with using all 4 devices?

I also had a whole track group somehow switch midi channels to the def channels on track group #2. So my track group #3 went from being midi ch 9-12 to being the same as track group #2 which is midi ch 5-8. How did I do this?

I'll have to go through the feature references thread again.

Keep boxing.

Regards,

echo

[Echopraxia]

Messing with pattern changing and for some reason I can not switch a pattern on one of the track groups. Say I have it on A! and try to switch to B1. It flashes between the two and the leds on gp 1 + 2 go back and forth. What am I doing wrong? it doesn't change even after a long time. I thought this was a sync to measure thing but it did not do anything in this case. Do I have to create a new pattern or something?

never mind figured it out. I had to press one of th 1-8 pattern buttons of the left side to actually switch to the B bank.

Regards,

echo

[TK.]

Also when connecting with usb to computer there are 4 devices present. Why is this? Is there a certain work flow with using all 4 devices?

Isn't it great to have 4 independent USB ports that give you access to up to 64 MIDI channels? ;)

Use models: you want to generalize/improve the routing inside your DAW, or you are using a Windows PC and want to send MIDI data to different programs w/o using virtual MIDI ports to split the streams.

If you don't see any use for 4 USB MIDI ports, always use USB1 and ignore the others.

I also had a whole track group somehow switch midi channels to the def channels on track group #2. So my track group #3 went from being midi ch 9-12 to being the same as track group #2 which is midi ch 5-8. How did I do this?

Probably you selected a pattern for group #3 that was previously pre-initialized for group #2

The MIDI channels can be configured in the EVENT page - they are not strictly tied to the group or track number, but free configurable and stored in the pattern itself.

This gives you highest flexibility (e.g. different patterns can send to different ports and MIDI channels)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[TK.]

Was this solved? Have this issue too...

Finally I was able to reproduce this - the MIDI clock was sent to the non-existent USB5..USB8 ports, and Live mapped these ports to USB4

It will be fixed in Beta21.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[gjvti]

Continuing about led bug.

I don't know is this a problem or not, but once I accidentally

connected inappropriate midi cable to sequencer midi

in or out (I don't remember) - in other words mixed in

with out and was pretty surprised that LED for stop

button, if I remember correctly, glow also with power

cable unplugged. Could it be that I have soldered

something incorrectly? As far as I have checked

I haven't had any really obvious hardware problems.

Gunars

[gjvti]

I'm sorry that I posted question about arpeggio/transpose split in wrong place in BLM section, so I'm trying to move that discussion here (I hope this will be ok):

I played with my not yet completely finished sequencer this weekend a

few hours. And found one more thing I want to ask. It looks like split

for arpeggio/transpose modes is done only globally in Midi transpose

and arp page. Actually since I played from 49 key RemoteSL live I felt

this bit limiting. I thought that it probably would be nice to

consider this split option for each track separately so that you

can set split for each track this way:

LOWER ZONE | SPLIT KEY | UPPER ZONE

{silent;play-through;arpeggio/transpose} | Key # | {silent;play-through;arpeggio/transpose}

On the Korg M3 it is also possible to adjust the velocity slope for the

split zones so that zone doesn't stop hard at split point, but fades out gradually

over some notes/octaves. What others think about this, do you find this could

be useful? I understand that this needs quite a lot of programming and is

certainly not to do priority.

Replay from Thorsten:

I already considered to provide 4 transpose/arpeggiator busses routed to Bus1..Bus4, that can be loopbacked or controlled from keyboard splitzones (and now also from BLM16x16+X). And a "play through" function is planned as well.

This concept is similar to your proposal, as each track can select the desired transpose or arpeggiator zone individually.

Advantage compared to your idea: it fits better with the loopback mechanisms!

I don't like the velocity option - it makes the configuration more and more complicated and especially intransparent!

I mean: you would probably know how to use it, but the next guys would think that transpose seems to be buggy if they don't remember that they activated such a strange option by fault.

Great to hear about your idea about 4 transpose/arpeggiator busses! This definitely looks more flexible than my proposal and for me 4 splits/busses seem absolutely fine. In fact my standard use on my M3 rack is one arpeggio on all keys + transposed sequence for bass + some arpeggio for melody, which is played also through on different channel. In my setup I have midi merger matrix so I can achieve zone through effect in other way, but maybe it can be useful for others.

Velocity option (slope for split zone) perhaps could be useful on small keyboard, but, of course, there is always an alternative to buy a bigger keyboard :) 61 keys is smallest comfortable size for playing split zones, but at the moment I have no space for 61 keys so I use smaller keyboard and use slope functionality on M3 quite often. Actually I don't know how many midiboxers use midi keyboard to play live arpeggios and transpose sequences, but this is the way how I prefer to use midibox sequencer :)

Best regards

Gunars

[TK.]

Beta21 is available now:

MIDIboxSEQ V4.0beta21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


  o ongoing preparation work for BLM16x16

    Features will be described under http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_seq_manual_blm.html


  o the simple Transpose/Arpeggiator MIDI split function has been replaced by 

    a new bus routing concept.


    There are 4 busses that can be configured in the MIDI page.

    Each bus provides a dedicated MIDI port, channel and lower/upper MIDI note

    to define a keyboard range.


  o the bus can either be routed to the transpose/arpeggiator function ("T&A Mode"),

    or it can be used to play the currently selected track "live" ("Play Mode")


  o Track Mode page: now allows to select the bus over that the transpose/arpeggiator

    function should be controlled


  o Record function: whenever active, the MIDI port and channel used for recording

    won't be routed to Transpose/Arpeggiator/Play bus.


  o the "Roll" trigger now selects a 2D10 roll instead of 3D08 since it's more

    useful in most cases.

    In order to apply customized roll values, please use the roll function of

    the parameter layer instead of the Roll trigger.


  o implemented "Roll2" parameter layer function.

    This alternative solution to "Roll" allows to define the number of step repeats,

    and the distance between them.


  o added optional button/LED function for UNDO


  o fixed MIDI clock issue sent to USB5..USB8 (resulted into multiplied tempo 

    values in some DAWs)


  o CC assignment displayed correctly in mixer page


  o LFO CC not sent anymore if track is muted


  o fixed crash if preset name is longer than 7 characters


  o fixed step selection of copy function


  o inverted encoder behaviour in mute page: moving clockwise will unmute,

    moving counter clockwise will activate mute


  o if a previously "empty" pattern/map/song is stored without name, it will be

    labled with "unnamed" now.


  o LFO effect now works on CC parameters as intended


  o If a track is in CC mode, a CC/Pitchbender value will only be sent if

    the gate trigger is set.

    CCs/Pitchbender events are sent for each step regardless of the gate

    as before if the track is in Note or Chord mode.


  o transpose now works correctly on CC and Pitchbender values, but only if the

    track is configured for CC mode.

    Transpose will be ignored for CC/Pitchbender events if track is in

    Note or Chord mode.


  o AOUT gates now 0V after power-on


  o some minor bugfixes

[/code]


Have fun! :)


Best Regards, Thorsten.

[robotfunk]

amazing work!

especially considering the weather :sweat:

[julienvoirin]

is the ethernet module already an HW option ? (is there code that send OSC ?)

mine is in conflict with the sd card module ( i had to remove the connections to MISO, MOSI of eth module)

[TK.]

No, the MBHP_ETH module isn't supported yet, but it will be soon once I receive the PCBs from Seppoman :)

Instead of disconnecting the serial IOs, you could also clamp the CS line to +3.3V as long as you won't find a notification in the ChangeLog

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[gjvti]

Hi Thorsten,

Your enthusiasm, knowledge and ability

certainly deserve maximum respect!

Midibox has turned out to one of the

best things what happened to me :)

Thanks a lot! Will try this new version

at weekend for sure!

Yours truly,

Gunars Jansons

[vcfool]

This is great. Thank you very much!

Beta21 is available now:

MIDIboxSEQ V4.0beta21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


  o If a track is in CC mode, a CC/Pitchbender value will only be sent if

    the gate trigger is set.

    CCs/Pitchbender events are sent for each step regardless of the gate

    as before if the track is in Note or Chord mode.

Is there any special reason for the CC events on Note tracks to be sent on every Step?

[TK.]

Yes, because it's more useful for sustained and stretched notes.

(if you haven't tried this yet, do it now - it results into great sound effects! :))

It would be annoying if the CC would only be sent when a new note is triggered by the gate - for such purposes it's usually better to use the velocity parameter, and to assign it to the sound destination on your synth.

To your initial request: since each step can only store 128 values (0..127), there is no possibility to disable a CC without reducing the original value range.

You could either set subsequent CCs to the same value, or you could use a dedicated CC track where the gate allows you to disable CC steps.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[Echopraxia]

I was noticing some odd behaviour when trying to use menu-->trigger to set a drum tracks trigger layers. I wanted to to select a different trigger layer for my drum track instead of accent and I was getting stuck. When I hold menu and select trigger GP, I am given the same things as holding trigger layer C. BUT I was able to at some point use menu-->trigger to select the layers such as accent, roll and nofx on the same drum track. Switching through track groups and tracks then switching back produced some results but I am still unsure of what is going on. I haven't dl'd the 21 beta yet.

I was also having issues with a keyboard controller to record notes ect. The same keyboard is controlling the seq menu functions as well and I want to turn this feature off. I am getting notes to my synths no problem but I am also changing the seq buttons with the same keys pressed.

On mixer map I was also confused a little about loading and dumping. I am just trying to figure out how to use mixer maps to do program changes effectively. Dump is used to send the map to your synths correct? And load is used to load the map from the sd card correct? Its just that when I am loading and saving and dumping, my mixer map #1 is the same as mixer map#2 which I want to be different. I try to save mixer map#1 with hold select-->save then select mixer map #2 with data wheel edit that and the go back to hold select-->save and when I try to load mixer map#1 my program change works but map#2 will be the same even if I load map#2.

Regards,

echo

Edited May 24, 2010 by Echopraxia

[TK.]

I was noticing some odd behaviour when trying to use menu-->trigger to set a drum tracks trigger layers. I wanted to to select a different trigger layer for my drum track instead of accent and I was getting stuck. When I hold menu and select trigger GP, I am given the same things as holding trigger layer C. BUT I was able to at some point use menu-->trigger to select the layers such as accent, roll and nofx on the same drum track.

Depending on the track configuration that you selected in the "event" page, either one or two trigger layers are available.

The first trigger layer A should always be assigned to the gate (if not, the gate will be triggered on each step)

The second trigger layer is free assignable. Thats what you noticed.

If your selected track configuration only supports a single trigger layer, the remaining 7 assignments are ignored.

Switching through track groups and tracks then switching back produced some results but I am still unsure of what is going on. I haven't dl'd the 21 beta yet.

So, what should I say to this "issue description"? ;)

I was also having issues with a keyboard controller to record notes ect. The same keyboard is controlling the seq menu functions as well and I want to turn this feature off. I am getting notes to my synths no problem but I am also changing the seq buttons with the same keys pressed.

Long time ago somebody requested this feature - he still wanted to control the sequencer remotely while recording a track.

If you don't like this feature, just disable it in your MBSEQ_HW.V4 file (set MIDI_REMOTE_KEY to 0)

On mixer map I was also confused a little about loading and dumping. I am just trying to figure out how to use mixer maps to do program changes effectively. Dump is used to send the map to your synths correct? And load is used to load the map from the sd card correct?

yes and yes.

Its just that when I am loading and saving and dumping, my mixer map #1 is the same as mixer map#2 which I want to be different. I try to save mixer map#1 with hold select-->save then select mixer map #2 with data wheel edit that and the go back to hold select-->save and when I try to load mixer map#1 my program change works but map#2 will be the same even if I load map#2.

I will try to reproduce this...

Best Regards, Thorsten.