[Mike]

Yes, you are right. It allows for record ready commands by track. It uses a bitmask to specify particular tracks. That would be a nice feature also

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ripe

[Mike]

Also, it seems that once a track has been chained and armed for realtime record, it is damaged. If you toggle some steps manually, weird things happen to the chained tracks.

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ripe

[Mike]

I was thinking overwrite would overwrite ALL notes, not just the currently recording notes. I don’t think the octo could distinguish between the two?

Also while we are on the subject, ah nevermind I will open a new thread for the next one

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ripe

[Mike]

I was thinking about this some more… what about using Lars idea for assign the tracks and pages combined with the keyboard legending and the rows.

So it would work like this, in the three different modes.

In GRID mode you can assign the master MIDI channel, hold down the GRID button, and the matrix changes to allow MCH selection (on row 0)

In PAGE mode, hold down the PAGE mode button and PROGRAM, then the MATRIX changes to show the MIDI note assignments. Rows 0 through 9 and columns 3 through 14.
Unassigned notes light green, notes assigned to PAGES light red, notes assigned to TRACKS light orange. You select the note to assign to the current PAGE by clicking it. The current PAGE assignment would be blinking. This would still be while holding PAGE and PROGRAM buttons

TRACK assignment would be similar to PAGE assignment, zoom into a track, hold down the TRACK mode button and PROGRAM, then the MATRIX changes to show the MIDI note assignments. The current TRACK assignment would be blinking. Assign a note the same way we assigned a PAGE.

How does that sound?

Would PAGES/TRACKS play through completely at least once with an incoming note, or would they only play as long as a note is held down? Meaning would a note off cause the TRACK/PAGE to stop playback immediately or would it continue for one complete cycle?

Now the question is, can the octopus support this? Does it have enough spare memory to make assignments?

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ripe

[Mike]

ah, understood! Yes this would be a good way to do it if there is memory in the octopus remaining to define a note assignment for a page trigger (and a UI paradigm to fit it).

Actually I just noticed something else, the octopus has a keyboard legend at the top silkscreened, so if the values were hardcoded, it would be easy to determine which keys to use, just look at the row to decide the octave and the keyboard legend at the top to determine the specific key, and this naturally limits you to 120 possible pages to trigger.

Either way though would be cool.

Also, let me say I enjoy the thoughtful and polite discussions everyone seems to have on these forums. Everyone seems to have a good grasp of some of the very technical details of a MIDI sequencer

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ripe

[Mike]

Yes I would definitely think using all notes on a particular channel would be a more elegant solution, but only having access to 127 values makes it a bit ugly. You either need multiple channels, or need to exclude some pages from the triggering scheme. Maybe only allow triggering of pages 1-12 in each row?

My original intent was to trigger tracks to get effects like arpeggiation, stuttering, inter-track craziness. Then the concept of triggering a "page" is just triggering all component tracks of that page.

If you just have page-triggering, it would lend itself more to "outside" song building or live improvisation, the octopus becomes a sort of MIDI sampler. Definitely cool also, just not my direction I don’t think there would be much need to trigger pages from within a page itself because we already have the grid construct for this.

Anyways, I’m sure Gabriel has more words of wisdom in this respect.

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ripe

[Mike]

Maybe we should clarify that "overwrite" means that as the step indicator passes over a step it is erased and overwritten, so that means if you hit stop while the indicator is at step 10, then anything on steps 11-16 is not overwritten.

I would think this is the preferred recording mode (at least for me) because I usually need two or three measures to get ‘in the groove’. As it works now, I just get a bunch of takes stacked on top of each other. In overwrite I can get in the groove, get a good take and hit stop immediately after. This seems more musically possible than hitting start and getting the first take spot on. Again, this may be down to my amateur skills in playing things live (out of time, etc).

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ripe

[Mike]

yes, I would like to see something similar for tracks as well as pages. Maybe a hardcoded map of MIDI note to page or track triggering, then you could use an internal MIDI channel within a track to trigger other tracks.

This could be a real nightmare though, keeping the mapping straight for so many tracks and pages.

What about choosing a master control channel, and then use a specific note that isn’t really used much in practice, like C0. then the velocity of this note is the value used to identify which page to trigger. Maybe restricting the trigger to only the active page in a row (0-9) and then the specific track to trigger would be the 1’s value of the velocity.

So, velocity 09 would to trigger track 9 of active page in row 0.

still complicated

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ripe

[Mike]

Hmm, understandable.

Maybe this could be tackled differently.

What about having a general "trigger start" mode which is engaged by hitting the pause button while playback is stopped. Playback or recording is trigger by the first incoming MIDI note.

So, this would work for both regular playback as well as recording situations.

Then for the recording modes, you just select from three modes, overdub, overwrite, one-shot (always overwrite).

That should clear up some complicated mode selection?

For me I would want overwrite to be the default mode (RED blinking), then overdub is second (ORANGE blinking), then one-shot (RED solid) and you could add one-shot overdub if needed (ORANGE solid)

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ripe

[Mike]

The other way that would work for me is if the MIDI input is *never* echoed (except incoming clock).

Then I could route my controller to the octopus, and also merge the controller with the output of the octopus. Although this would not be as elegant as a nice channelize feature

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ripe

[Mike]

I don’t know if it helps, but on 1.40 the realtime record was doing something different, it seemed like it was playing all the notes about 5 or 6 steps late. I’m note sure though if it was just skipping the first step because it seemed step 1 had a negative STA (?).

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ripe

[Mike]

This was very similar to my rechannelize request from awhile ago, except mine was based on the EDIT/preview mode, rechannelizing the Octopus (echoed) output to the last selected track channel.

Rechannelizing either in record mode (should work when record enabled, but not playing also) or in preview is critical for me because the Octopus has two MIDI outputs and there is not an easy way to route my controller to 32 MIDI channels

I actually implemented this quickly in my own build of the OS, so it is possible, and I’m sure Gabriel has his own well-thought out recommendations and possibilities for an official rechannelize feature.

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ripe

[Mike]

Repeat being an "on/off" parameter. It would repeat the same strum indefinitely, starting immediately after the previous strum completed.

Then whatever chord that gets entered into the track gets the same strum settings and overrides any previous repeating strum… basically arpeggiated. Maybe it is possible now by having a one step track which repeats a strum over and over (?)

Then you would want to choose additional strum patterns, up, up&down, down, random, in order etc.

A lot of work I would think?

Maybe I’m in the minority wanting an arpeggiator instead of strumming?

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ripe

[Mike]

I’d like to see the "strum" get renamed to "arpeggiator" and get a few more arpeggiator friendly features (repeat?)

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ripe

[Mike]

Sounds like a good idea to me if it’s possible!

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ripe

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