Digitone as MIDI controller for Mood Mk2 (total newb)

[Demi_Jon]

Hi –

As titled above, I am an utter MIDI-novice. Electronic musician for over 25 years (modular, analog synths, tabletop devices and pedals) but never MIDI.

I have plugged my Digitone MIDI out into the MIDI in on the Mood Mk2, have set the channel in SYN1 to Channel 2 (Mood Mk2 default channel) and I’m affecting what I think is the Clock on the Mood by playing the Digitone keyboard (changing pitch of the recorded microloop).

But I can’t figure out how to do anything else because it’s an absolute foreign language to me. The Mood Mk2 Midi Manual lists all of the CCs and stuff but I have no clue how to go about implementing them. I don’t have a frickin clue what to do next!

Can I send multiple changes to the Mood simultaneously? Like, I’d like to be able to say, sequence the clock with one MIDI track, play live changes to another parameter on another track for instance, LFO some other stuff. And be able to change what these are doing to the Mood on the fly. Plus figure out the Mood Synth Mode!

Do any MIDI experts feel like taking my hand and painfully slowly explaining everything I need to do here cheers thanks

[Demi_Jon]

OK I think I’m getting it a bit, though still very confusing… such as “CC 18 LSB” is not CC 18, it’s CC 50.

OMG now that I’ve figured that out it’s starting to make sense!

[shigginpit]

I don’t know how much I can help on this but when you say sequence the clock with one track, do you just want to send clock to the mood? You don’t need a midi track for that, what you’ll want to do is in the settings menu under the midi settings you’ll want to enable the clock send and I don’t know if mood requires a transport start/stop signal but if it does you will want to enable that (transport) as well.

If mood automatically can receive clock and transport then it should just work, otherwise you’ll have to enable clock receive and transport receive on the mood. If you can’t figure it out I’ll look at your manual, but it should be pretty straight forward.

You also should be able to set up midi tracks to control the CC’s which moods midi implementation chart shows as compatible by assigning those values to the digitone encoders.

Also, I think MSB and LSB are for NRPN which is a little different than CC, Most significant byte and Least significant byte would be like, 2 values that need to be sent in succession and would be received and processed as one command. If it’s only giving one in your midi implementation chart, maybe it only needs that one, but I would assume it’s not CC (although the control function may have a CC equivalent).

[Demi_Jon]

Thanks for responding. Say I want the note value of trigs in a sequence on MIDI track 2 to change the VAL3 for instance. Is that something that I can do? Or can only LFOs affect the VALs?

[shigginpit]

No worries. So, you mean can notes effect changes in one of the mood’s parameters? Probably not, I mean you can set trigs with specific cc values and possibly use that to sequence changes in mood, I assume that’s possible, but using notes specifically I don’t think so.

LFO will affect modulation of values, or conversely physical movement of an encoder which you have set to the corresponding CC value that mood requires, then recording (automating/motion recording) the values on the digitone sequencer should automatically repeat your modulation over the span of your sequence repeatedly after you do the real time recording.

I guess it depends on in which way you want to use it, because an lfo will modulate the parameter according to the lfo’s rate and depth settings, vs the controlled act of motion recording should at least theoretically follow the sweep you’ve manipulated manually across the grid (IE yellow trigs). I think they’re yellow on the digitone, they’re definitely yellow on digitakt.

[Demi_Jon]

Thanks, it’s hard to explain without you standing next to me, seeing what’s happening!

For some reason, there is no real effect from p-locking CC value changes on Track 1, and also when I play the keyboard, the portamento and ADSR settings from Track 2 affect what I’m doing while working on Track 1. It’s very confusing and I’m going to quit for the day and go make dinner!

[shigginpit]

Ok we can pick this up tomorrow if you want, I’ll try and find some time to take a look at your manual. I assume track 2 is by default sending on midi channel 2, you may have also set midi track 1 to midi channel 2, but my assumption is that the default of track 2 sending on midi channel 2 is (in essence) doubling the information which mood is receiving (now from both tracks), so if you want track 2 to stop sending data, you’ll want to go into the menu and change the midi channel for track 2 or disable it.

That’s something I can help you do as it’s not too complicated, as for the mood responding to what you’re doing with the controller, that’s something I’ll have to reference the manual for.

[Demi_Jon]

Even if Track 2 Midi Channel is turned off (turning off sending to Channel 2) if I make an adjustment to the Portamento on Track 2 it adds the same Portamento change to Track 1 – even though I don’t have Portamento turned on at all on Track 1.

Also, any sequences that I record are not played back, let alone any parameter locks. If I play the keyboard while live recording, Mood will respond and play those notes while I’m playing but not then play back the sequence.

I’m sure there is something simple I’m missing but as I say this is all very new to me.

[shigginpit]

Well, part of it is easy (I think) so one thing at a time. I believe what you’re looking at as audio tracks vs midi tracks are really all transmitting midi, so like this example in the manual for midi settings menu under sub-heading channels:

Showing how track 1-4 of the synth is set up with midi channel 1-4 and then midi track 1 is showing midi channel 5. So what I’m saying is that the synth track 2 which shows midi channel 2 needs to be changed, at this point midi track 2 which is probably assigned with midi channel 6 won’t be relevant, at least not yet.

So verify that synth track 2 doesn’t read midi channel 2, and if it does say 2 in the far right column, either change it to off or change it to another unassigned midi channel number.

Just verify that it’s like what I’m saying. I’m not assuming you’re wrong, but just take a look to confirm ok?

[Demi_Jon]

Hey thanks. That’s made no difference, unfortunately. Even turning all four track channels to OFF, it still displays the same behaviour from previous posts (portamento settings from MIDI track 2 even if MIDI track 2 is inactive, for instance).

It’s very strange!

The Mood goes into Synth Mode automatically (that is an expected behaviour), if notes are played. There is a CC which is meant to turn it off, but that also doesn’t seem to work. You can stop Synth Mode by turning the Clock knob on the Mood, and again in that case manually turning the VAL knobs for corresponding CCs will change the behaviour of the Mood in the expected way (exactly as if I had turned the knobs on the Mood itself), but there is no response from the Mood if I record and play back a sequence.

It might be worth asking the Chase Bliss people what’s going on as well.

[shigginpit]

Hey, that’s very strange about the track behavior. I’ll have to take a look at the chase bliss documentation later today because maybe there’s some information in the mood manual, or maybe there’s something I can find on google about similar issues.

If it showed an msb number as you mentioned, it may be expecting nrpn which I think would require it to receive the 2 numbers consecutively (msb and lsb) to receive the one correct command.

If we can’t figure it out, you may be right that you need to ask chase bliss what midi that the pedal is expecting to receive in order to work properly. I think we can at least try and confirm a few more things before you get to that point though.

[shigginpit]

I think this graphic from the manual is accurate as to what you’re supposed to expect after reading the manual without having the frame of reference of the actual pedal on hand.

Ok so, a lot of the functionality does appear to be CC and PC based, changing the receiving midi channel would be accomplished by holding both footswitches down at “power on” and then sending a program change message using the midi channel you want it to be set to. To say: if you don’t want the default of 2, send it a program change message on midi channel (example) 13 and it will now default to midi channel 13. We may need to try something like that to see if that stops it from receiving data from track 2’s portamento or whatever is actually happening.

In synth mode, I’m not clear on whether it’s showing CC’s as pairs or if it’s saying cc 58 with a value of 0 yields open, cc 58 with a value of 1 yields closed, and cc 58 with a value of 2-127 yields adsr mode, but my assumption is the latter and that by sending the correct cc with one of these values you can access the corresponding synth mode.

As you suspected, in ADSR mode and in on/off mode it does appear mood mk2, while receiving the CC and a corresponding value, as well as a note, will respond to the note with sound, however if I’m understanding correctly where it says “start by playing some sounds into the reverb and freeze it, make sure the latch switch is on, now play some notes” this sounds to me like to use the synth engine you need to give it a sound source (or maybe more accurately “sample” a sound source?) to work off before giving it notes to play.

I guess the first thing I’m thinking is to give it the appropriate CC number from digitone amp page

then set the appropriate cc value to the corresponding value number from the filter page

If you’ve already done that and it doesn’t seem to be working, maybe we should shift our focus to one of the other cc controls and see if it works as expected or if nothing is aligning correctly.

Maybe some kind soul who actually owns this pedal can chime in and help out but either way, it’s definitely meant to respond to CC and program change, so we may have to start by changing the midi channel using a program change message. As far as automating the values maybe the digitone sequencer will only send stepped values so it may not work as desired, perhaps we’ll only be able to get it to perform adequately with real time control but I just don’t know yet.

I think since you’re getting the “expected behavior” turning the value knobs, most of this is what you already worked out for yourself so in that case sorry for not bringing anything new to the table, but we can keep trying.

[Demi_Jon]

Thanks for taking your time to help @shigginpit!

@shigginpit

I think this graphic from the manual is accurate as to what you’re supposed to expect after reading the manual without having the frame of reference of the actual pedal on hand.

I’m unlikely to get a chance to play today, but I’ll check this out when I’m back on the machines.

In the meantime I’ve also asked on the Chase Bliss Users Facebook group, so let’s see if anyone there is familiar with this issue!

[shigginpit]

I’ll keep the mood manual link on hand and see if I can be of any more (or less) help when you’re back at the controls. Hopefully it turns out to live up to all the hype!

[Demi_Jon]

OK I’m not sure how exactly I got there but:

I’ve changed Channel to 11, so there are no worries about the wrong Channel being output.

I’ve put a Portamento on Track 1 which is different from Track 2.

I had accidentally left some sequencer info on Track 2 which I’ve now removed (Note: how do I ‘mute’ a Midi Track? Using the Mute function didn’t seem to work? Edit: I figured this out too)

So I’ve got sequenced CCs happening now. I’m sure I did this logically but I can’t remember exactly how!

Thanks for your support @shigginpit! Side note: Weirdly the ‘Chase Bliss Users’ Facebook group has deleted my question five times, immediately after I posted it, and the mods haven’t responded to my message querying as to why

[shigginpit]

buncha pricks is why lol. sounds like you did pretty well on your own there.

if you have hands on it right now, go into the settings menu and under the midi settings go into port config, then scroll down until you see “mute dest” which should set where mutes can take place. it’s probably set to int for internal only and you’ll need to change it to int+ext so it will send midi data, that way mutes should work for internal and external sources.

good work though man, hope you’re set to have some fun with it now and glad it wasn’t too difficult to work through, you really did most of the sleuthing yourself on this one, but sometimes validation or a second opinion is helpful to move past the “am I doing something wrong?” phase of troubleshooting.

if there’s something else that isn’t making sense or working correctly though let me know, and I think it was smart to change to 11 to help make it less confusing.

[Demi_Jon]

You’re awesome @shigginpit