Midi trigs[9-16], broken feature?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
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so i’ve got all my midi tracks set up to play a different note of a drum synth. its recently frustrated me how you can record across multiple tracks using the track trigs [1-8] but the same functionality doesn’t work to record midi trigs, you can just use them to trigger the track when pressed. theres another thread about this. but anyway my current problem being that trig button 9 doesn’t trigger a track at all. it should trigger midi track 1. all the other ones work, anyone?

edit: used a midi monitor to check and trig 9 isnt sending a midi note out where every other track is, but i’ve loaded a sample on the audio side track 1 and it triggers that, surely this isnt right? oh and also trigs 1-8 function exactly the same as 9-16 including the track 1 behaviour

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AFAIK it only works when tracks are disconnected from the sequencer (plays free) and you have to be in midi mode. I rarely use midi on my OT though so maybe someone else will chime in.

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Yes, in midi mode trigs 1-8 trig audio tracks 1-8 and trigs 9-16 trig the midi tracks.

When not in midi mode, trigs 1-8 trig audio tracks, 9-16 trig machines in audio tracks 9-16.

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I tried doing what you are suggesting recently. AFAIK It doesnt work quite that easily Im afriad. Things that I found

You have to disconnect the tracks
The quantize start is best set to direct
You are starting the pattern not triggering the midi so put the note you want on step 1 of each pattern

In the end the OT can do this but for me wasnt worth it due to the inconvenience of disconnected midi tracks from the sequences.

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Yeah I’m just confused cause without disconnecting any tracks or anything, in the audio side playing the midi trigs [9-16] all of them work to send a midi note except track 1[trig 9]. Is this the same for others? Definitely feels like a major bodge job in this area, considering they’re labelled midi trigs, next to the sample trigs which work as expected. Feels like they fucked up and didn’t plan ahead then boxed themselves in. But yeah regardless of that I don’t know why trig 9 alone wouldn’t work

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I’m pretty sure @Schnork is right on this. If you’re not in MIDI mode and your trig mode is the default (tracks), buttons 1-8 trig the audio tracks and 9-16 trig the machines on those tracks. That’s also why button 9 plays the sample on your track 1. It doesn’t send a MIDI note because (I’m guessing) you set track 1 MIDI chan to off in the settings. Also what @richtowns is saying makes sense.

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Should be labelled Midi Tracks Trigs.
A mode for midi trigs would be nice.

If an audio track shares its midi channel with a midi track, it can’t send any midi data.

(@JSZ channel off guess is good to remember, the one above is not obvious!)

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I did not know this as I always set the Audio CC and note out to int anyway. In this case this is more likely to be the reason.

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Good to know in wtf moments :

15.2 HOW MIDI IS ROUTED If an audio track and a MIDI track share the same MIDI channel, the MIDI track will block the audio track from sending out data while the audio track will block the MIDI track from receiving data.

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I had some OT time yesterday and indeed @richtowns is correct. The way to play MIDI tracks via the buttons is to have your desired note on step 1 of each track and the tracks should be plays free and quantised “direct” (also one shot tracks is probably a good idea for most use cases). Now when you press buttons 9 through 16 you will start playing that track thus sending the note on step 1. Going from this to a sequenced version of your beat (or whatever) is tedious and would be really nice if there was a way like with audio tracks to tap your stuff into the sequencer :frowning: