Newbie question about MT Pro, MicroKontrol and Guru [ANSWER]

newnumbertwo

2007-11-10 07:49:12

I was wondering if a more experienced user could tell me if the following was possible. I've tried to set this up, but don't seem to be going anywhere....

I'm using MT with a Korg MicroKontrol (my MIDI controller) and FXpansion Guru (a VST drum sequencer).

Guru has 8 drum engines with 16 "pads" each (like an MPC). The MicroKontrol also has 16 pads, and I've configured 8 scenes on the MicroKontrol, one for each of Guru's drum engines.

On the MicroKontrol, to switch between scenes, you hold down the scene button then select one of the pads. While setting up my drum engine mapping, I noticed that each time a scene is selected on the MicroKontrol, a sysex message is sent out. I think the sysex is sent out normally to change the scene in the MicroKontrol editor, but after noticing it, I was hoping to use this sysex message to change engines in Guru. That way, when I switch the scene on the MicroKontrol, it will also change to the proper engine in Guru.

Guru has extensive MIDI mapping functionality, and allows for engine changes by sending a note on on notes 76 - 83 on channel 12.

I set up a translator that takes the sysex string as input, and sends the proper note out on the proper channel to change the engine. I can tell that the incoming action is being detected properly, as I can see the Translating message light up, however, since the engine doesn't switch in Guru, I think I must have something wrong.

Here's my translator:

General: Active, Stop Processing With This Translator
Incoming MIDI Message: F0 42 40 6E 00 5F 4F 00 F7
Rules: None
Outgoing MIDI Message: 9B 40 01 (Note On #12; E4, vel 1)

I know that the engine switching works, as I've tried sending the E4 #12 note on message outside MT Pro, and it switched the engine properly.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong, or can this simply not be done?

TIA for any help...

[UPDATE]: OK, so after a few more hours of hacking, I figured out some things that helped me get this working. Some obvious, some not so.

For one, I needed to set up an output channel. Duh. I though the input translation might happen "in-stream", but this was a silly assumption. I installed MIDIYoke, set up the output to MIDIYoke #1, then made sure Guru could receive input from MIDIYoke #1.

The next problem was that Guru and Bome have differing ideas about what the value of a MIDI note is. Guru sees inputted notes as being one octave below what they really are for some strange reason, so I had to adjust the notes Bome was sending such that instead of sending what Guru thinks is E4, I had to instead send E5, and so on.

It's all working now, though. Once I've exhausted the possibilities of my MicroKontrol in terms of controlling Guru, I'll post a preset.

Amazing software!

FreeBee

2007-11-12 20:57:53

Actually, I know nothing of this stuff, but the first thing I think *I* would try, was using higher velocities than just 1 :) Velocity ranges from 0 to 127, so try 100 for a change... (I'm simply guessing that maybe the Guru is designed to ignore very low values...)

As said, I know nothing about MT, the MicroKontrol or the Guru. So if it doesn't help... please don't shoot me.

Good luck and let us know how things fared...

florian

2007-11-15 10:18:30

Hi NewNumberTwo,

glad you figured it out! A future version of Midi Translator will have a built-in virtual MIDI port, so that it'll be more obvious how to set MT up.

See you,
Florian