Octatrack and MPE?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I have an octatrack, two mono synths, an A4 and a Parva coming. I am trying to figure out if there is a reasonable way to use MPE without consuming the 8 MIDI tracks. I have a mio10 to route MIDI but I am starting to question how helpful that will be for this particular concern. My goal, initially, was to use the Octatrack as the main sequencer and not involve. computer at all. 8 tracks on the Octatrack and MPE might make that a difficult arrangement.

Anyone have some insight on this? I feel like a lot of my concern is because I haven’t managed to arrive at a nice MIDI setup even before considering MPE. Auto track targeting has never worked for me.

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#2

You could sequence the two mono synths and then use 6 voices on the Parva in MPE or multitimbral mode. With the A4 I think it’s much better to use the internal sequencer anyway. Then you have 8 tracks for samples. Sounds like plenty of tracks to me:) as far as I can remember on the Parva you just set up each voice and the channel range (mpe) or each voice and the channel (multitimbral). Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve only used it with linnstrument thought

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#3

I don’t have an MPE controller but I made some tests with OT and Micromonsta.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but as MPE uses several midi channels, so you can’t record all channels at the same time with OT.

Sampling eventually…Possible to record / plock each channel. Multimbral seems simplier.

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#4

Yeah, the saturation of channels is my main concern. It’s looking more and more like I might still involve Logic in the setup and just leave the Linnstrument hooked up to the computer. I was hoping to step away from DAWs for a little while but we’ll see.

#5

I’ll be picking up a Linnstrument in a few weeks and have a similar concern. So far, the best option for handling MPE sequencing for me seems to be pairing the OT with a MidiREX. Use the OT for step sequencing and the MidiREX for polyphonic/MPE sequencing. 4 looping polyphonic tracks with full overdub and bouncing, 16 channels per track - ideal for recording MPE stuff in real time.

Multi-channel MIDI routing question
#6

Midirex seems cool but

MidiREX cannot record on more than one track.

Linnstrument! :heart_eyes:

#7

But it can record on 16 channels simultaneously on a single track, which makes sense for MPE. You would record all your MPE channels on one track, not spread across multiple tracks, and could perform whatever editing, transposition, quantizing, rechanneling you wanted on them as if they were on a single channel, more or less.

I built mine a couple years ago but haven’t sued it that much yet, since the firmware at the time was missing a few key features and I don’t have an enclosure yet. It’s basically like an Electro-Harmonix 2880 except for MIDI, as far as workflow. The tracks don’t correspond to channels at all, they’re four independent 16 channel loops.

It actually seems like it will be a really good companion for the OT, too, although the OT pretty much took my attention off of it (I got my OT a couple months after I built the MidiREX) - the REX fills in a lot of the gaps in the OT’s sequencing (fully polyphonic tracks, multichannel record, realtime transpose via MIDI, bouncing…) and the OT covers a lot of step sequencing territory that the REX can’t touch. Using a track on the OT to sequence transpositions of loops recorded in the REX has a ton of potential, as does sending the output of the REX through the OT’s arpeggiator.

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#8

Huh. Reading the site, it wasn’t clear that tracks were not bound to a single channel. That makes this pretty appealing

#9

Each track has its own MIDI channel assignment that could be set to MIDI channel (1-16) or to OMNI. Track events are stored in memory with the original MIDI channel they were received on and will be played back as is if the track’s MIDI channel is set to OMNI. However, if track’s MIDI channel is set to specific channel number, the track events will be played back on the selected MIDI channel, essentially overriding original MIDI channel on the fly.

Wording is a bit awkward.

#10

:thinking:
Awkward indeed, not my mother tongue, but for me it is still not obvious that you can record several channels on 1 track.

Channel, not channels…

#11

Let us know please how MidiAlf copes with heavy CC streams from Linnstrument.

#12

Hey, just wanted to clarify that the MidiREX doesn’t in fact record MPE. Even though an individual track can store data on all 16 channels and has omni OUTPUT this is only actually usable if you bounce tracks internally. For live recording, you can only select one source channel at a time and all of the other channels received will be passed through but not recorded. So it could play back MPE easily but can’t record it.

I’m going to contact the developer and suggest adding omni to the record channel list, since it should be relatively straightforward to implement (it’s already nearly there as it is) and with that one change it would be just about the only convenient hardware solutions for live MPE sequencing around.

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#13

FWIW (because the topic was bumped and I am into MPE too), I just sample the audio from my live-playing on my Roli Seaboard. I always consider the OT for what it’s sold as: a live performance sampler, and trying to record and edit MPE is really too much of a hassle.

#14

Thanks for the report! Really appreciated! Please, let us know about developers answer.

#15

I will. I just sent an email but it couldn’t hurt for other people who would be in the market for a sequencer like this if it was MPE compatible to ask about it, too.

EDIT: never mind about this, see my post below.

Right now there’s a “MIDI RX channel” page in the main menu that lets you select any single MIDI channel to record from. All it would take to make the MidiREX fully MPE compatible would be an OMNI option added to that page, that would let it record ALL of the incoming MIDI on ALL channels to the active track, rather than only recording one channel and passing all the other incoming channels to the output as soft-thru.

Even without MPE support it’s a great companion to Elektron boxes, since it handles things like polyphony and transpose-from-MIDI-input that Elektron’s sequencer can’t do, and is every bit as real-time and performance oriented as Elektron’s stuff, and if real polyphonic sequencing is something you miss in the Elektron sequencers I’d absolutely recommend one of these, MPE or not. All of the Midisizer stuff I’ve used has been well thought out and reliable, and pretty easy to build if you want to save a bit of money by going for the kit versions.It took me almost exactly an hour to build the MidiREX, from opening the box to powering it up and testing it, and I’m no expert builder by any means.

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#16

So I already heard back and I won’t be able to confirm it until after work tonight but it sounds like this has already been implemented in v0.97 of the firmware. 0.95 is the current one on the site, but I’ve noticed that there’s always a lag between the actual current version that you can get by email and the latest posted version (presumably because it’s a one-man operation and only handing the newest builds out to people who ask kind of works as a form of informal QA, since they’ll catch serious bugs before it goes live on the site).

So with v0.97, the MidiREX should already be fully MPE capable. I’ll post more when I can update the firmware and give it a try.

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#17

An MPC 1000 with JJOS2XL should be able to record MPC properly, but editing must be nightmarish.

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#18

Yeah, my MPC2000xl will record MPE but I think it records channel-per-track so it’s not much good.

It IS possible to assign more than one input channel to a single track in the multi record setup screen, but I haven’t actually tried it yet and the manual is a little vague - it says all input channels assigned to a single track will be merged, but it doesn’t say whether or not they retain their original channels or are merged onto a single channel as well as a single track. Because of the overall architecture of the 2kxl I’d guess that they are merged to a single channel - if there’s a way to assign a single track to more than one output channel on that thing it’s not something I’ve encountered any sign of in 10 years of using it.

Editing MPE data spread out across multiple tracks would be miserable.

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#19

IIRC, Mpc1000 can’t record several channels with AKAI OS, but it’s possible with JJOS2XL (tested).

#20

CONFIRMED: MidiREX v 0.96 and later is fully MPE compatible.

There’s a new setup option to toggle each track between the original behavior or recording on all channels, and I’ve successfully recorded and played back a bunch of 16 channel MPE stuff from the Linnstrument without any issues.

So you absolutely can now record MPE on a single track and play it back. So depending on how flexible the channel assignment is on your MPE controller and synths you could, say, record MPE on channels 1-8 to track 1, MPE for a different synth on channels 9+11-15 on track 2, bass on channel 16 on track 3 and drums on channel 10 on track 4, all on the fly in real time.

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