I’ve tried multiple different ways to automate recording loops on the Microcosm from the OT.
My goal is to send a midi message to the Microcosm to trigger recording at the start of a pattern and another to trigger play at the end. This is to transition between banks and projects on the OT.
I placed a trig on step 63 mapped to midi cc28 (looper record) and parameter locked to 127, set to 1st so it only happens on the first iteration of the sequencer, and another on step 64 mapped to midi cc29 (looper play) and parameter locked to 127, set it to 2:8 so it doesn’t trigger the first time. I placed the trigs on 63 and 64 because the cosm needs to be triggered slightly before the audio I want to record starts playing. I have quantize set to on on the cosm so that it will snap to the closest beat and loop that.
The problem is that it doesn’t always trigger the recording/playing. Weirdly it only seems to trigger if I change the parameter-locked value between the time that i start the sequence and the trig being played. But even then, it only records a tiny bit before it starts playing it back and looping it. It’s as if it’s ignoring the probability settings for each trig and recording and looping 1 step of audio. I also tried using trigless trigs but no joy.
It’s such a weird thing that I can’t just send a momentary cc message to start recording and another to play that recording.
I know that you can internally loop on the OT and transition that way but it totally shuts down when switching projects.
I’m currently using the cosm pedal buttons to trigger looping and playing, which is fine, but I want the OT to handle that so I can focus on other things while performing.
I don’t know specifically about microcosm but it sounds a bit like what I linked below, which I think is an elektron behavior and there’s a workaround mentioned about using a square LFO in half mode to send a different parameter value and reset. Honestly not sure if this is the same root problem as what you mentioned but it’s the first thing that came to mind for me.
Hope that points you in the right direction, good luck either way.
Don’t know if anyone is still interested in this, but I think I have it working on Tonverk, after 2.5 hours of banging my head against a wall. It’s way more fucking convoluted than it should be. The algorithm that I got working on TV should transfer to the OT, but god only knows if I’m exploiting some weird quirk in the TV operating system that doesn’t apply to OT.
How frustrating has this process been? Well, I was doing dry January before tonight…
I tried again this morning. What appeared to be in synch last night for an 8 step loop was almost a whole step off when I extended the sequence to 32 steps. This resulted in a rotating tape loop that came in and out of the beat.
The TV at least behaved consistently compared to the OT. At some point, the OT and Microcosm decided (without letting me know) that any time I hit stop twice on the OT, that the MC would start recording a loop, and no amount of turning on/off various MIDI settings could get to them to change their minds.
With the TV, I had one channel set to send a record CC, another set to send play, and another I could trigger to activate overdub. They all did what they were supposed to when triggered manually, but when triggered with the sequencer, it was just off. I used a half cycle LFO as an envelope to modulate the CC value just slightly to get around the “no repeated CC” protocol that Elektron uses. This is what got the MIDI channels working manually. I used this video as a guide, although he conveniently hides the screen of the DT exactly when he starts talking about the MIDI communication with the looper
I’m going to accept defeat for now, but I’m sure I’ll come back sometime in the future
