MIDI is consistently one of my most frustrating points of production…
I got a new Arturia Keylab Essential 49. Its MIDI channel is set to 11–the auto channel of the Octa. I plug the key lab’s MIDI out into the Octa, and the Octa MIDI out into the MnM. I set the first track to be MIDI track 1 aka track 1 on the MnM. Nothing happens. I have a thru machine set up (and playing, I test it by playing notes on the MnM itself) and the MnM refuses to listen to notes from the Octa. I even laid down trigs on the Octa WITHOUT my arturia keyboard and the MnM isn’t receiving them.
I tried opening up a new project and making sure the MIDI settings all looked good. I looked at the MnM midi settings and they looked good too. I plugged the Arturia directly into the MnM and had no problem playing notes on it.
I have no clue what’s going on. This all worked a few days ago. Now the only MIDI information my Octa accepts is playing the track trigs? But I don’t want it to play track trigs and I’ve never had that happen.
Anyone have any idea? It’s probably staring me right in the face.
I’ve power cycled everything, too but no help.
EDIT: Did some more experiments and for some reason my keyboard is sending midi messages to tell Track 1 to record and stop recording if I press an Eb key (Eb5 maybe?). I don’t want the Octa to receive these messages.
When I changed the channel on the keylab to channel 12 it still sent those messages, even though the Octa base channel is 11.
I got my Monomachine listening to notes from the Octa itself, but the Octa still doesn’t like my keylab 49. Could it be because I have it powered via USB into my computer? That’s the only difference from what I used for my old MIDI controller - - an MS 2000.
So I tried plugging the keylab into the Monomachine and it’s auto track channel is 9, so I set the keylab to 9. But no matter what it only played track 1
Not sure about the power supply from the keylab, check the manual for that.
An easy way would be using Midi thru from OT to MnM. If you need to use the setup as you wrote above then you have to change the midi settings in the octatrack. Set the track channels correct (I think that was in the menu as auto channel, under the auto ch.).
Check menu for send/rec. clock. Set the midi tracks correct. And if you play notes from keylab over OT to MnM you probably have to be in midi mode and selected the assigned midi track.
I can send notes from OT to MnM now no problem. MIDI track 1 on the OT is set to MIDI channel 1 and it sends to track 1 on my MnM.
So apparently my problem is getting the Keylab to talk with either device. For instance, when I go directly into the MnM from the Keylab it ignores the auto channel. It could be because it’s so new and the devices are so old… But idk. That would suck. I would have to return it basically.
Yeah this is one of those weird OT things. There’s a setting in the midi menu to disable it. Those incoming note commands can totally demolish a project so be careful.
It doesn’t has anything to do with old or new devices. It’s only about the settings.
Try the following: set all midi channels to be the same (auto ch., track ch., etc.) on all divices. Don’t forget the trig ch. in the midi channel menu.
The OT reacts only to a small range of MIDI notes (MIDI note values 72-96) by playing a track sound. Many of the other notes trigger features like record start/stop etc.pp.
Check the manual Appendix C / C.1 Note Mapping. You can not turn off this feature of the Octatrack without losing the ability to play “normal” notes.
I use a midipal to filter those notes on the auto channel when I don’t want to inadvertently trigger them, I asked in a feature request some years back for an option in personalise menu to disable them but I guess there is a reason why it could not be implemented, a shame as when using the Octatrack in a midi setup it can be a bit tricky to remember and avoid undesirable triggering. There are plenty of other devices which allow midi notes to be filtered so maybe try that, it works well and saves headaches with lost buffers and whatnot.
I plugged the Keylab directly into the MnM whose auto channel is channel 9. I set the midi channel in the Keylab to channel 9. When I play the Keylab the only track it triggers is track 1, even when I go and select track 2, 3, etc. it’s still playing track 1. The MnM is not in poly mode when I do this.
My previous MIDI controller did not have this problem
Is this while you still have it running through the OT? I may be wrong, but I think if your Keylab is set to the OT’s auto channel, and you’re currently on MIDI track 1 on the OT, it’ll cause the OT to pass the Keylab data to the MnM on whatever channel OT MIDI track 1 is set to, not the auto channel (unless you set that MIDI track to the MnM’s auto channel). Does that make sense?
Edit: oops, I see you were in fact connected directly. Apologies, it’s early here and I am pre-coffee
Edit again: it looks like your Keylab is only sending on Ch1. Check the settings in MIDI Control Center, the individual areas (e.g. keyboard, knobs, pads) should be set to the “User” channel, which means the channel that you select using the keyboard itself. If they’re set to Ch1 in the software, you won’t be able to change them using the keyboard.
So does this mean I want to set the “user” channel to the auto channel on my Octatrack? Maybe I’ll just make it 9 and change the Octa auto channel to 9 too
EDIT: I got it! My problem was I was in Analog Lab Mode instead of User Mode…So even if I switched MIDI channels and all that and it said USER Midi Channel 9, it didn’t change it in the analog lab mode…What a bunch of bollocks.
Just got it running with my Octa into my MnM too–very cool.
I tried plugging in a 9v power and nothing happened. Do I just use the same 9v supply like I use for a guitar pedal? Cause that’s what I did
As for power, you’ll need to make sure the polarity is correct, and that it’s providing enough current. From what I can see, it needs centre positive, and at least 500mA. I think most guitar pedals use centre negative polarity so their supplies won’t work, unless you have one where you can remove the tip and turn it around the other way to change the polarity.
