Learning Midi at a slow pace, with OT and Jd-Xi

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I have been reading the manual for the OT MKii over and over to wrap my head around MIDI. This may not be the best machine to learn on haha. I have a lot of questions. Any advice, knowledge sources, or help is greatly appreciated.

So far I have been stumbling around I have got my OT set up and it seems to be receiving from the JD-Xi I can play my JD-XI in chromatic mode. That is really as far as I have got.

I have my MIDI outs and ins of the OT routed to the ins and outs of the jdxi. I’m trying to control the LFOs of the jdxi with the LFOs on the OT.

In general I’m just playing around to understand it better. I don’t really understand what all I CAN do with this set up. I thought playing with the LFOs would be fun but I would also like to know about sequencing with the OT.

I have so may questions I don’t really know where to start so I apologies if this is a bit diarrhea but reading the manual it really assumes I know more than I do.

#2

Hi, welcome.

Midi tracks are not the most complicated part of OT, and you can find much more complicated machines concerning midi. :wink:

First, to avoid confusion and (try to) make it simple, I’d plug OT midi out to Jdxi midi in only.

  • New project
  • Choose corresponding midi channels on both, MIDI NOTE SETUP page for OT, validate by pressing the CHAN knob
  • Set some trigs with notes in the MIDI NOTE page, or play with the Chromatic mode (Fn+down arrow, Grid Recording off)

Can you play the Jdxi?
To modulate its parameters with OT lfos :

  • Set CC1 in MIDI CTRL1 SETUP, with the corresponding Control Change number of the Jdxi parameter you want to modulate (Check Jdxi midi part of the manual)
  • Press the knob to validate
  • Activate CC1 in CTRL 1 page with FN+CC1 knob press
  • Choose CC1 as lfo destination

Easy, isn’t it? I hope I forgot some things. :wink:

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#3

kinda working through understanding this, I believe I have got as far as getting it set up and communicating.
Still mulling through some jdxi manuals, apparently there are more than the one it came with.

Also just trying to get a understanding of everything I can do with MIDI. I really hate the jdxi file structure and navigating said files.

Thank you for the little push!

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#4

Aha! It sounds like copious amounts of fun are just around the corner! I think you can do a lot with this set up. I used to have a JDXi (it was my first synth) and I also have an OT.

The first thing I’d do is sequence a beat. The JDXi has 4 midi channels: 1 to control the drums and the other three are for the synths.

You can play the JDXi via OT’s chromatic scale already, right… so… before selecting the chromatic scale you are on the track page (it’s on when you power up the machine by default).

Set the JDXi to a synth… hold down one of the OT’s trig buttons and press any key on the JDXi and let go. The OT is now set to play that same key for the same duration and velocity when you press play on the sequencer. Have a bit of fun with this for a while. Trig a bunch of keys and get a loop going.

Time for drums;

Now select the drum midi channel and enter chromatic mode. Press the trig keys on the OT and maybe you will hear the JDXi’s drum sounds. If you don’t you need to scroll the octaves by holding FUNCTION and hitting the left or right arrows. Go left first and start at F0. Hit every trig until you find a bunch of drums.

You can do two things here;

  1. Do the same as above and hold the trig and press the drum sample.
  2. Hold record and hit play. The sequencer is now ready to record your live finger drumming. Enter in a bunch of beats and play along with the melody you made earlier.

This machine is super fun. I’ve had it for about three years I’d say and I’ve done nothing but sequence midi until last month so don’t worry. Having a slow approach may be the best way to not let this beast get the better of you! I’m using it for samples now and it’s really helping my tracks come along. I always multitracked and added fills and buildups in my DAW but the OT is a gazzilion times better.

I remember wondering what the heck Midi even was when I was in your shoes. Just keep on keeping on and, like I said, copious amounts of fun are just around the corner!

I think this post is on the right level for you? Please let me know if it’s helpful or if I have confused you. In my head I was like yeah… he should do this, this and this but when I started typing I thought ‘oh no, I hope this isn’t confusing???’
Any questions welcome :wink:

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#5

This is awesome! Thank you for taking the time to lay that out for me. I’m going to play with some of these concepts exclusively when next time I sit down for it.