Controlling the digitone from usb w/o OB

Elektron Gear Digitone/Digitone Keys
#1

Hi!
I’m new to my Digitone and am having a lot of fun playing around with it. It occurred to me that it might be fun to try to write some music in a DAW or notation software (like musescore) and then pipe it into the 4 tracks on the digitone using MIDI. The manual seems to allude that this is possible, but doesn’t really explain how to do this, and so far my googling has come up short.

Has anyone had experience playing midi through the digitione from a computer over USB (instead of from a keyboard over the MIDI port)?
For outputting to the Digitione without using Overbridge, how do you get the computer to recognize the Digitone as a device and output to it? (I’m on linux, just to make it more(?) complicated)
Are there any settings on the Digitone you need to set to get it to be able to be controlled from an external midi input?
I’m assuming that midi tracks will get routed to one of the 4 instrument tracks on the Digitione - how would you control which midi track goes to which instrument track?

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#3

I want basic digitone sysex load/save working from Linux hopefully with a couple python scripts. But as far as sending notes, plugin your Digitone, select a basic sound (say factory preset A062), and try these commands:

$ amidi -l
Dir Device    Name
IO  hw:2,0,0  Elektron Digitone MIDI 1

$ aplaymidi -l
 Port    Client name                      Port name
 14:0    Midi Through                     Midi Through Port-0
 24:0    Elektron Digitone                Elektron Digitone MIDI 1

$ aplaymidi -p 24:0 mozart_sonata16_cmaj_f0.mid

This played for me even though ALSA/pulseaudio don’t recognize the device. This suggests that generic linux MIDI software will work with the Digitone. Of course there will be some customization involved :grinning:

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#4

Thanks! This was super helpful!

Do you know if there’s any way to use multiple instruments at once?
For example if I send a multi-track midi file, can I route one track to the first instrument on the digitone and another track to the 2nd?
Also, I’ve noticed a few quirks while doing this:

  1. When starting aplaymidi some of the settings on an instrument are returned to default (such as the a, b, c, and d values) but not others (such as the attack and delay adjustments)
  2. Midi files with certain instruments specified won’t play. I’ve been using Musescore3 to compose and output midi, but if I specify that the track is a ‘Bass Guitar’ for example, it seems that the digitone doesn’t know what to do with it, but if I export it as a piano or a generic instrument it plays just fine.

Is there anywhere I can read up more on how the Digitone handles incoming midi signals?

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