Hi! I’ve just joined this forum today and hope I’m in the right company to ask the following question:
I am exploring the possibility of controlling some of the instrument parameters via higher res MIDI on the Digitakt (OG, v1.51), particularly the Tuning/Pitch.
The standard (non midi) tuning param. control breaks each semitone into 100 steps which is nice and smooth - though difficult to control accurately across several octaves.
Using midi to affect the same parameter, the option is either CC (rough semitone per step “zipper” mode across several octaves) or setting up the NRPN “coarse/fine”, which adds the “fine” control of 1 tone per full turn of the knob, which again, is too fine for any smooth sweeps greater than 2 semitones.
Is there a clever way of configuring either the DT midi channel or an external Midi device to smoothly control the DT tuning parameters across a narrow or defined range of say 1 octave but with using the finer resolution (NRPN) etc?
NRPN with the midi tracks is almost impossible to get consistent and it’ll need 4 knobs for 1 parameter. Besides that, it can’t do what you want in this case.
It can be done with an external midi device depending on how programmable it is. If using a controller, it needs to have a range setting for NRPN.
I don’t know which controllers can do that, but you can use any controller if you use a BomeBox. Maybe with MIDIhub you can do something similar but I’m not sure.
I wish Elektron had just used the midi pitch parameter like on the Digitone, that would have been much easier.
Thanks for the suggestion, looks interesting though quite complex for my limited tech. knowledge. Reason I’m trying this in the first place is that I want to find some easy way of getting an external MIDI controller with sliders (rather than knobs) to control the pitch up/down of the Elektron, so the setup behaves a bit like the SP1200, (where each of the 8 voices has an independent and immediate tuning via a dedicated slider that you can just grab live). Again, I realise this is asking a lot… as the two machines are completely different…
One thing you might try is using one of the sound macros, the Mod Wheel (=CC1) or Pitch Bend items in the Setup menu. Adjusting the pitch bend range to what you want might do the trick, or in the Mod Wheel or Breath control (=CC2) parameter control menus, you can define a smaller pitch range over 127 steps.
I have yet to see a MIDI setup that does the NRPN 127 MSB * 127 LSB smoothly in the way it seems like it would be intended to work.
On second thought: using the LFOs, which are very flexible, can be parameter-locked to sequencer steps and have 12700 resolution, might be a better way to accomplish pitch sweeps than using a midi controller.
@bart
What you want can absolutely be done with a BomeBox and any controller you want, I’ll help you set it up if you decide to go this way(you can try the free software version first).
But there’s one catch to this solution.
The sliders won’t be in the right position when you switch patterns, so pitch jumps will happen as soon as you move a slider that’s not lined up with the pitch.
There are ways to prevent this but a BomeBox doen’t have enough memory to do this so that would require custom software.
NRPN works the same way as any 14 bit midi control like mod wheel or pitch, it just has 2 extra messages to define which control to target. I’ve confirmed many times that the Digitakt has no issues with receiving NRPN control messages.
Thanks @humanprogram and @DreamXcape for the valuable suggestions! I’ll try the pitch bend/BCs options, though I’m fairly certain DT tracks don’t respond to PB from external midi (it works the other way round). The Bome Box sounds like a more elaborate solution but there’s the extra cost / time and extra footprint to get this up and running. Does sound interesting though, if it is fully configurable.
The Digitakt does indeed not respond to pitch bend, it can only send it.
The BomeBox certainly has extra cost to it, that’s why I suggested to first try the software version to see if it’s worth the money. I think the trial version is fully functional but it doesn’t save files.
Also the software license for Midi Translator Pro - which you’ll need to program it - does not come with the BomeBox. So that’s extra cost on top of it.
You do get a lot for the price though, that little box can basically run a whole studio of midi hardware through a single network connection. It has WiFi and is completely customizable, it also does more than just midi.
It’s a small box and it requires a USB charger or PoE to power it. It only has a single USB connection for devices but it supports USB hubs and Class Compliant midi devices including multi-port ones.
Don’t worry too much about setting it up, my offer to help you with that stands. Also the Bome community is very helpful.
One thing I forgot to mention is that for smooth and responsive NRPN control you’ll need to sacrifice your USB connection, so no Overbridge. But I’m assuming that’s not an issue cause otherwise you’d have mapped pitch in your DAW.