I have a midi routing question
I have been jamming with a friend in his studio. I bring analog4, octatrack, blofeld, a usb controller connected to kenton usb host
I use octatrack to sequence blofeld. so midi out of octatrack should go into blofeld. blofeld has no midi thru. controller through kenton sends midi cc messages on channels of both a4 and octatrack. kenton has midi in and midi out and can merge controller messages with messages received on midi in
my devices are a smaller chain at the end of a bigger chain of my friend’s that has the master clock
I want to connect the devices so that they get clock and transport from upstream BUT I also want to be able to start transport in this smaller chain with a4 or ot. all that while having controller send midi messages to a4 and ot.
note that whatever device is the master clock, doesn’t send clock and transport to midi thru (but copies them from midi in if it gets them)
I have been using ot’s soft thru feature (set up channels in midi sequencer and enable cc direct connect, then messages received on these channels get copied from OT’s midi in to midi out) and setting transport send on on OT. then the routing goes
upstream -> kenton -> ot -- out --> a4 -- thru -> blofeld
but I don’t want to do this soft thru thing any more because it makes me sacrifice 5 channels of ot midi sequencer (4 tracks of a4 + perf channel) which is limiting if I eventually decide to use some of my friend’s synths or drum machines instead of blofeld,
how do I do it? would a midi merger/splitter box be enough?
can I merge a4’s out and thru and stick it into ot’s in? this way if I initiate transport on a4, it gets to ot, but upstream clock and transport messages get to ot as well. I am not sure if it creates duplicate clock messages as upstream messages are merged with ones generated by a4