Setup: OT(master) + A4(slave) + MIDI keyboard?

I am pretty sure i cant solve this without a MIDI merger. But I thought I´d ask anyway. Maybe there is a secret trick?

I want to run my OT as the master device (slaving the A4 to the OTs midi clock). And I also would like to be able to control the A4 from a MIDI keyboard. I obviously can´t connect the MIDI keyboard directly into the A4 if i want to slave it to the OT. So I need to route the MIDI note information from the keyboard through the OT somehow, to the OTs MIDI out port.

I have tried fiddling with the midi routing settings on the OT but I´m beginning to get pretty sure this isn’t possible. Anyone knows of any secret tricks?

…I need a MIDI merger right?

A midi merger seems the obvious solution to this.

Set one of the midi tracks to trigger the active channel of the a4 and then set the midi controller to trigger that midi track. Unsure of the specific global settings as its been a while since I’ve tried to get this to work. Another option, that I’ve used to succes, is use an iPad with camera connect device to trigger midi via USB on the a4. Works pretty well.

I thought about going through the midi tracks on the OT. But i couldn’t find any info on how to route the incoming midi messages (from the keyboard) to the OTs midi tracks. All the global midi routing settings seemed to only apply to the audio tracks. Maybe i missed something. Will give this another try. Thanks!

This works.

I am not a midi wizard, but I believe you have to specify OT’s midi input channel and separately the OT midi output channels (to the A4).

The midi input channel can be changed in the midi menu. I think you have to chance auto ch. from off to the channel of your midi keyboard, which is normally midi ch. 1.

Then in the midi track you set your midi channels the same as the midi channels in the A4.

Good luck.

I believe you also want to turn off the OT sending Notes and CC. Keep the send transport on so the A4 will start and stop in time. The A4 has a midi channel setting that you want to set to your keyboard setting. This changes the channel of each part as you select each part so you only need one channel on your keyboard.

I’m using a similar setup so I know it’s possible, I just can’t remember the exact particulars. I don’t use a midi merge.

OK, i got it working now and this is what i found out.

The OT seems to pass through all messages received on a specific channel if there is a midi track setup to transmit on the same channel.

But make sure that you don’t have the Auto Channel setup to be the same channel that you just want to pass through, since the messages received on the auto channel will be routed to the currently selected MIDI track. And only passed through to that tracks transmit channel (when the MIDI mode is active).

This works great now! Thanks a lot for the help!

Glad you got it working. Now you can play around with stuff like having 4 midi tracks going to all 4 a4 tracks. If you were to do this and sequence from the OT, you can have different scale multipliers on the a4 tracks. A much needed update to the a4.

Yeah, i realise that there is a lot of clever stuff that can be done when it comes to midi routing on the OT, now that I’ve got my head around how it works. Will experiment with this a bit more when i have some spare time.

But my main goal is achieved at least! Just passing through a midi channel so that i manually can play one track on the A4 from the midi keyboard while tweaking some sample tracks at the OT at the same time. Mission accomplished!