Can't Set a Bank to Trigger All Pads On Single Channel

edited August 2017 in Bug reports
@5pinlink in response from your 'collected' bugs thread:

I can't get a BM3 bank to allocate a different MIDI note per pad, to be controlled by a hardware controller.

In theory it looks like it should be possible:
I set all pads to listen to channel 1, set the pad notes to E6-G7, mapped the samples to those respective keys and programmed the controller pads to send those note values. It seems to me like that should just work, but the samples just made clicky attack sounds when the pads were hit and didn't play beyond that. I need to dig deeper because I didn't 'exhaustively' examine every possibility yet, but hit enough dead ends to deter me for now.

In general mapping to channels usually works and it's possible with a lot of instruments to use a single pad - thus channel, but some instruments require pad wide functionality such as choke groups and one bank using up all channels on that MIDI port is really limiting. For example I'm using a MIDI controller with pads and keys. The keys aren't able to be used on another instrument because there are no free MIDI channels on that controller's port.

Comments

  • @mathieugarcia is this expected behaviour or a bug, sounds like it should be possible with the options available ?
    I don't have a controller in front of me right now to test.

  • Yes, I feel your pain @Oscarsouth.
    Here is my dilemna

    I love beatmaker 3 but want to sequence from my beatstep pro.
    Beatstep pro has three sequencers
    (Drum,Monosynth1,Monosynth2)

    I have tried these combinations and in the end went with a midiflow solution.

    No. 1 with focus actions mapped to pads
    Configure focus actions and turn off omni
    Great, the 16 bsp pads trigger each of the beatmaker pads (16 pad mode) I can record a drum sequence on my bsp and it plays in beatmaker.
    I can now make another bank and add synths for my bsp mono1 and mono2
    Flaws with this approach
    If I have the sequence playing and bring a synth bank to the foreground the drum pattern is played on the synth due to the focus actions. Also if I want to make changes to the samples on the drum pattern while the bsp plays the sequence its impossible because the forward actions bring the current triggered pad to the foreground.

    No. 2
    Map a bank to a bsp channel
    Banks one drums channel 10
    Bank two synth 1 channel 11
    Bank three synth 2 channel 12
    Very easy to map on bsp (select sequncer then press CHAN + a number)
    In BeatMaker 3 click on the three dots for the bank and configure device and channel.
    For example drums, device atruria beatsteppro channel 10.
    Flaws in this approach
    Only pad 10 triggers on the bank
    It seems configuring a bank to a device and midi channel only allows you to trigger the pad with the corresponding midi channel number. (Like you have already reported oscar and 5plink)

    No. 3 use midiflow to remap notes from the bsp to differnt midi channels for the drum pads in beatmaker3
    The MidiFlow config,
    maps a pads note to c4 (= c3, it seems bm3 uses the other middle c, this is always contentious)
    Maps pad 1 to midi ch.1, pad 2 to 2 etc
    Sends all midi to a virtual midi port called MidiDrums
    In bm3 I set the bank to listen to midi input from MidiDrums on All ports
    Here is the config if you want to use
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/lrl5txhpa6hese1/preset.mflw?dl=0
    This works for me and Im happy until this gets resolved.

    A good solution for me would be when a banks midi is configured using just one channel then a cc note would trigger each pad. I hope this is the final solution but if not Ill just fudge it back with the blessed MidiFlow (thx Johannes)

  • @OscarSouth this needs fixing pretty urgent.. I'd imagined there was a BM3 midi config option so that switching between pads/keys views on the iPad would change what the midi controller was doing - Playing the bank pads vs Playing a pad chromatically etc. Surprised/bummed to hear it doesn't work like that? Haven't used a controller much with BM3 yet but was planning to grab one soon. Will hold off..
  • It's still awesome with a controller. Ten times more awesome than without. it'd just be a lot more flexible if selecting a single channel in the bank's MIDI settings would cause all the pads in the bank to listen for note numbers on that bank, while leaving it set to defaults or to 'all' would have it functioning exactly as it does now.
  • Cool. I'll prob order a controller from a store that's cool with returns and see how it goes ;)
  • @OscarSouth midi talk on paper hurts my head, normally I have to fiddle around with the hardware/software in front of me to get a grip on it ;)

    Just so I'm straight. Is it possible to go from 'midi controller playing the bank pads' > 'midi controller playing a pad chromatically'... In one bank without realtime adjustment of any BM3/controller midi settings in a live situation?
  • edited August 2017
    The easiest way (I believe) to play bank pads is with focus actions, however that only works if the bank is in the foreground/currently active. For general writing and music making that's fine but not really for live use, a limitation is that things like sus pedal & mod/pitch wheel will only work on the most recently triggered pad and when you hit another pad, the previous pads settings will remain in place.

    If you have pads and keys on one controller, as of today I think the best way to use both together is with focus action. It obviously presents limitations as far as if you hit the focus actions, it's going to change the active pad. You can probably ease this by setting one pad to always listen to the keyboard's channel and mapping the pad samples to keys outside the range of the keyboard controller but not sure what other side effects it'll have.

    It'd be much simpler and more flexible to simply have the pads responding to one channel and the keys responding to another..

    At the moment I'm just using *either* the keys *or* the pads personally, while hoping for a fix.
  • Thanks for elaborating. Makes more sense to me now :) Yeah seems fine for sofa jam/sketch pad controller workflow which would be my main concern for now. Tho after more performance orientated functions appear (global macros, recording scenes to timeline etc) then like you say, by then hopefully things are made a little more flexible if possible.
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