MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

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Flan_TheDude
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MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by Flan_TheDude »

Hello, everyone.

Does anyone know of a way to reroute MIDI pitch data to CC controls?

I have the Akai MIDIMIX USB MIDI control surface; it has 20 buttons and (all but one of them) when pressed produce a "note on" pitch event with a velocity value of 127, and a corresponding "note off" even again with a velocity value of 127. jack_midi_dump reports these events as so (first mute button is "pitch 1" and second mute button is "pitch 4"):

Code: Select all

  24: 90 01 7f note on  (channel  0): pitch   1, velocity 127
 203: 80 01 7f note off (channel  0): pitch   1, velocity 127
 223: 90 04 7f note on  (channel  0): pitch   4, velocity 127
  66: 80 04 7f note off (channel  0): pitch   4, velocity 127
So far, I have been unable to utilise these when trying to edit a plugin's parameters in Carla; for example, toggling the "activate" parameter of Calf Vintage Delay effect. Interestingly, SooperLooper will learn these buttons and can be used to trigger record events, mute, pause etc. But pressing them whilst the controller is routed to a synth will rather coarsely flip-flop an oscillators pitch (so I guess being able to filter these out would also be a boon).

Does anyone know of a workaround for this?

Thanks for your time :)
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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by raboof »

Flan_TheDude wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:39 pm Does anyone know of a way to reroute MIDI pitch data to CC controls? I guess being able to filter these out would also be a boon
I've used PureData for these kinds of things in the past - but that's probably overkill.

I think mididings should be able to do this (but I don't think I have used it myself)
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Flan_TheDude
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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by Flan_TheDude »

raboof wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:11 pm I've used PureData ... but that's probably overkill.
Thanks for this suggestion. It certainly looks like it's bigger than what I'm looking for.
raboof wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:11 pm I think mididings should be able to do this...
I have encountered mididings in my quest for a solution; I was hoping to avoid "programming"/scripting a solution myself, my skills in this regard are as close to non-existent as one can get without being completely incapable :lol:
...I will go down the mididings route if I really have to...
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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by tavasti »

Flan_TheDude wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:39 pm Does anyone know of a way to reroute MIDI pitch data to CC controls?

I have the Akai MIDIMIX USB MIDI control surface; it has 20 buttons and (all but one of them) when pressed produce a "note on" pitch event with a velocity value of 127, and a corresponding "note off" even again with a velocity value of 127. jack_midi_dump reports these events as so (first mute button is "pitch 1" and second mute button is "pitch 4"):

Code: Select all

  24: 90 01 7f note on  (channel  0): pitch   1, velocity 127
 203: 80 01 7f note off (channel  0): pitch   1, velocity 127
 223: 90 04 7f note on  (channel  0): pitch   4, velocity 127
  66: 80 04 7f note off (channel  0): pitch   4, velocity 127
So far, I have been unable to utilise these when trying to edit a plugin's parameters in Carla; for example, toggling the "activate" parameter of Calf Vintage Delay effect. Interestingly, SooperLooper will learn these buttons and can be used to trigger record events, mute, pause etc. But pressing them whilst the controller is routed to a synth will rather coarsely flip-flop an oscillators pitch (so I guess being able to filter these out would also be a boon).

Does anyone know of a workaround for this?
I think with qmidiroute you most likely can handle these wanted way.

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Flan_TheDude
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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by Flan_TheDude »

tavasti wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:56 pm I think with qmidiroute you most likely can handle these wanted way.
Thanks for this. On your suggestion I have just been trying QMidiRoute and it almost works :)
almost because to trigger the on/off events, I must first manually change Velocity in Input and Values in Output before the button press will trigger the event.

The Event Log in QMidiRoute shows a slightly different report to jack_midi_dump:

Code: Select all

19:03:01.627  Ch  1, Note On   1, Vel 127
19:03:01.812  Ch  1, Note Off   1
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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by gimmeapill »

In case that can help, I scratched my own itch with PD as well:
https://github.com/Gimmeapill/midimix_button_control

This is just to light up the buttons, but should also give you a way to deal with the on/off message in a single press.
I use it with Renoise, but it *might* also work with Carla...
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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

The AKAI product description says those buttons are programmable. Did you try running the editor software, and checking what other midi messages they can generate?

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Re: MIDI pitch to CC - Akai MIDIMIX Button Event Routing

Post by gimmeapill »

I can answer that part: with the editor running on wine you can reprogram the buttons to send midi CC for example, but doing so will basically screw up up the led lighting.
The reason is that the button lights are purely host(software) controlled, so they won't light up unless you enable midi feedback, and it will not react on anything else than the stock settings (midi note).
I see that as a firmware bug, reported it about two-three years ago, but Akai support is pretty much inexistant.
It seems also that the support thread in their forum is gone, and I am not aware of a single firmware update.
That is what you get with a cheap device...

This being said, it works fine once you're aware of the quirks (I also replaced the knobs on mine as the stock ones are just horrible).
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