Stepped control of rate parameter - ideas and problems

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I’ve created a performance set involving Ableton Live and have created a Maxforlive device that filers CC midi messages from an encoder on my UC4, divides it by 16 and sends out stepped/quantized values to the rate control on the master channel of my Octatrack, so that whatever track I’m focused on, if I move that parameter, the rate/speed transitions during live performance will be smooth.

Unfortunately, the sequencer on the OT is randomly stopping, and I cannot figure out why. It is receiving clock and transport sync from Ableton Live. By process of elimination, I found that removing my maxforlive patch solved the problem. The downside to this is I no longer have the quantized rate control. It’s something I love about the func+delay time, hence why I created something for the rate.

The maxforlive device was place on a midi channel that was exclusively receiving incoming messages from the UC4, and exlusively sending back to Channel 11 via the UC4. I had a dig through my midi controls in Ableton and cannot find any conflict with the master channel on the Octatrack, or anything assigned to A#1 (Note 34), which is the sequencer start/stop mapping. So I’m at a loss to explain this sequencer stop. I did notice that there was a lot of data being received by the UC4, so I’m guessing I need to filter a lot more in the maxforlive patch, but I think also the clock and sync makes up a lot of that.

SETUP:
Apple MacBook Pro 14 inch M2 Pro
Ventura 13.6.4
RMC Fireface UCX (audio only)
Ableton Live 11.3.21
Nektar Pacer (USB to Ableton Live)
Faderfox UC4 (USB to Live > MIDI to OT)
Novation Launch Control (USB to Live)
Octatrack MkII v1.40B (MIDI from UC4, sync from Live)

#2

If sending from MAX and there’s a situation like yours i always try to incorporate the [change] object robustly, to avoid sending duplicates if you are making more data upstream than the OT ‘needs’ to see

Do whatever you can to log the data arriving at the OT in a test where it fails and see what is being sent - don’t forget there’s also a way to talk to the OT via CC equivalents to the Note control method, maybe that’s coming into play somehow?

#3

Have you seen some notes are used to stop the sequencer? I hate it.

#4

Another option is to set scenes that lock that parameter to the value you want and then use the midi message to select scenes. I do this on a beatstep as you can hold a pad down to send a certain value so for example 2 so that scene A is scene 2 and then let go and it goes back to 1