Hey everyone,
I’m trying to sequence my modular system using my Digitakt (original model) and an Expert Sleepers FH-2. My Digitakt is running the latest firmware.
When I use Ableton Live as a bridge, everything works perfectly – my Digitakt sequences the modular without a hitch. However, I’m having trouble getting this to work when I’m trying to go dawless. For some reason, I just can’t seem to get the Digitakt to sequence my modular directly.
Os from Expert Sleepers initially suggested that my Digitakt might not be sending “Note Off” messages. Crucially, after inspecting the MIDI history on the FH-2, we can now clearly see that the Digitakt is indeed not sending these “Note Off” messages. This definitively confirms the issue he suspected.
Can anyone help me find the specific setting on the Digitakt to ensure it sends “Note Off” messages? Or, if this isn’t a setting I can easily change, would a factory reset be my best option?
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.
This is a bit odd to me, because I have been using my digitakt and digitakt 2 with the FH-2 for years with no issues. I use v/oct and gate and the gate turns off when I release the button on digitakt.
Whatever the issue, it’s probably not this (directly at least.) Many sequencers use note on vel 0 as functionally identical in the MIDI spec and many people use Elektron sequencers for the FH2 which do this with no issue.
Both devices (elektron and fh-2) are bought second hand so theres always possibilities that previous owner have certain setting that might make it not work right now.
I setup my fh-2 with chanel 1-3 for midi/cv and ive set the base output accordingly. Output 7 is clock and 8 is transport. Output 7 & 8 are working as expected. Just the midi/cv are not working.
Os helped me troubleshoot this by checking the midi history in FH-2 and its confirmed that the Digitakt is not sending any note off.
As a note. I use the same setting but using my daw with usb-c in fh-2 and it works flawlessly. The 3 midi/cv channels works as expected and output 7 & 8 works as expected too.
Im away from my digitakt now but ive read where I need to adjust the Vel and Len value to enable note on and off. I hope thats the cause of the issue. Will let you all know how it went.
You said it’s working when you use your daw, so you should use a midi monitor to see what is coming out of the daw when it’s actually doing what it’s supposed to. Perhaps your daw is generating the note off messages based on something you set up for the midi track which is then relaying commands to your modular.
It’s worth identifying the specific difference between what is working, and what isn’t working, so that you aren’t just flying blind.
I’ve done that. In midi monitor, if i have ableton as bridge getween digitakt and fh-2 then I can see note on and off. When i go direct from digitak to fh-2 then i only see note on.
Just did some reading. Looks like Ableton is designed to send note off messages when it receives note on messages, so I think that the behavior makes sense. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to trick the external device to interpret the standalone digitakt messages as note off, I assume you would need some external midi filtering by another, third device, which would remap that velocity 0 into a note off command.
I think it’s probably worth talking to elektron support to see if they have any ideas.
Did you sort this? I use an FH2 to sequence a modular and it works absolutely fine.
Are you using gate or envelope to control the VCA? I really apologise if this is totallly obvious but a modular VCO puts out a continuous signal all the time. You need a VCA to turn it off and on.
Just checked my FH2 and basically whenever I press a key it receives a note on and it makes the voltage go high and when I take my finger off the key the voltage goes low. No note off needed.
I was asking you because you said whenever you press a key it receives note on and when you take your finger off the key the voltage goes low, which is essentially what warpigs said but I think OP was using the sequencer and not pressing trigs. It could have been a controller behavior vs a sequencer behavior so I was hoping that you knew specifically about the sequencer behavior and if it matched the “controller” behavior of manually pressing trigs, and you just confirmed that it does, therefore I think OP needs to go back through their settings or get on the same page with you about how you have it set up.
Same with sequencer or pressing a key. No notes off but not needed to control a VCA. With the sequencer running FH2 Gate output goes high for duration of note then goes low when note ends. I use that output to control VCA…or VCF if I feel like it.
Note that the FH2 has an envelope function which is really useful and means you don’t need an envelope generator module so instead of just off and on it can do a full ADSR and you control the ADSR lengths with CC numbers.
Need the OP to confirm he’s not expecting the VCO output to turn off. It won’t.
