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[OK] WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:22 pm
by saturnin51
I bought for 10€ a WII Rock Band drums with a midi in and a MIDI OUT !
Great i can use it like a midi controller. I powered the drum with à 3V DC. My first try was the drum directly connected to my Yamaha expander. Perfect.
Next step was to use it with MusE. Misi out drum -> Midi in UA-25 and Midi out UA-25 -> Midi in expander. No way ! I don't understand how make the right connections into Jack in order to obtain the result.

Entry drum track: UA-25
Exit drum track : UA-25

The only thing I obtain is the vu-meter twisting on the drum track. The message are not routed to MusE I think and so cannot be routed to the UA-25 output.

I try next with Rosegarden. With no extra action from myself, the setup runs perfectely.

Could you help me ?

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:44 pm
by saturnin51
Works fine also with Ardour.

Here under the jack graph from Rosegarden and MusE. One drum track midi only.

Image

Image

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:00 pm
by spamatica
Check the midi configuration dialog in MusE
midimuse.png
midimuse.png (196 KiB) Viewed 2123 times
In the screenshot I connected a midi keyboard (microKEY), note that there is a checkmark in the lower left box in the "I" column, meaning that MusE can receive midi from this device. It should be the same for your UA-25 device.
In the lower right box note the "Def in ch", which defaults to 1, you can change this to All with the dropdown, incase it the drumkit sends with some other midi channel.
Do send a screenshot of this dialog if you still can't get it to work.

One thing to note. MusE works best if all configuration is done from inside MusE, so making connections in QJackctl or similar is not recommended.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:16 am
by saturnin51
Hi,

I check this dialog box and it is similar to your. I just change the Def Chan Ent to All. No sound !

I reboot MusE. I set up the drum track to channel 10 on UA-25, input and output. I have the sound of each pad, one time and nothing else !
I try to record and only 3 notes were recorded.Reading the track, I have the sound of this note.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:33 pm
by spamatica
saturnin51 wrote:Hi,

I check this dialog box and it is similar to your. I just change the Def Chan Ent to All. No sound !

I reboot MusE. I set up the drum track to channel 10 on UA-25, input and output. I have the sound of each pad, one time and nothing else !
I try to record and only 3 notes were recorded.Reading the track, I have the sound of this note.
Okay, no fun :(

I tried to recreate your setup by using a separate usb-midi-interface and connecting a midi device to this interface (the device actually being a Rockband 3 keyboard!) but unfortunately it seems to work here, both detecting and recording, without any configuration changes.

Possibly the drumkit sends some midi events that we handle badly... it's a long shot...
Anyway, if you could make a test for us that would be great. Starting muse with -m, which will start printing all incoming midi messages in the terminal and hit some drums.
E.g.
1. start "muse3 -m"
2. hit a drum a few times and see that you get an event printed in the terminal each time
3. let us know if the log does not seem to correspond to the hits.
4. send the log here.

Thanks

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 8:01 pm
by saturnin51
I made that you want. In the joined file, the log. I precise that I played each pad several time, but I have sound only on the first hit of each.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 8:29 pm
by spamatica
saturnin51 wrote:I made that you want. In the joined file, the log. I precise that I played each pad several time, but I have sound only on the first hit of each.
Alright, great!
Hmm, there are a few things I'm curious about.
MusE supports midi through two interfaces, Jack and Alsa. Alsa being the older and more mature way of receiving midi in MusE. It is possible we have a problem when a midi device has multiple connections to MusE.

From your log, these lines all are from a single hit.
ALSA MidiIn driver: SND_SEQ_EVENT_NOTEON chan:9 note:45 velocity:83
MidiInput: time:5808415 port:0 chan:10 NoteOn a1(0x2d) 83
MidiIn Jack: <jack-midi-0>: time:5808414 port:2 chan:10 NoteOn a1(0x2d) 83
MidiIn Jack: <jack-midi-2>: time:5809438 port:4 chan:10 NoteOn a1(0x2d) 83

The first two lines shows that Alsa has received a NOTEON event. The other two lines are from Jack. It seems that there are two connections from jack, jack-midi-0 and jack-midi-2. Did you add any connections in Jack?

Secondly I see that the drumkit very rarely seems to send NoteOff which I find a bit curious.

Tim, if you happen to read this, does the lack of NoteOff pose any problems? I'm thinking it should be ok but I'm not sure how to verify that..
-
You could try and turn off midi support in Jack and only rely on the device provided by Alsa to eliminate any possible conflict with the midi input.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:04 pm
by saturnin51
In addition lines from log when I use my keyboard to input note on drum track

ALSA MidiIn driver: SND_SEQ_EVENT_NOTEON chan:0 note:38 velocity:0
MidiInput: time:342707852 port:0 chan:1 NoteOff d1(0x26) 0
MidiIn Jack: <jack-midi-0>: time:342707853 port:2 chan:1 NoteOff d1(0x26) 64
ALSA MidiIn driver: SND_SEQ_EVENT_NOTEOFF chan:0 note:38 velocity:64
MidiIn Jack: <jack-midi-0>: time:342708877 port:2 chan:1 NoteOff d1(0x26) 64
MidiIn Jack: <jack-midi-2>: time:342708877 port:4 chan:1 NoteOff d1(0x26) 64

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:11 pm
by Tim E. Real
Yes, his diagram shows he's got the UA25 Jack midi connected to two MusE Jack midi inputs:
Both jack-midi-0 and jack-midi-2 in MusE.
He should remove one of them.

About Note-offs:
Even though his connected device does not send note-offs, MusE should be able to handle it.
Recall a year or two ago I made the whole internals of MusE note-off aware.
That is, anything coming in gets converted to 'note-off style' no matter what.
It is able to do this by our 'stuck notes' mechanisms.

Once the events are in the system as true note-on and note-off events,
then it is finally up to the chosen output MusE Instrument to decide whether to
actually send those events out again as note-on + note-off or no note-off or note-on + zero-velocity note-on.
That choice can be found in the Instrument Editor window.
Therefore choose the output MusE Instrument wisely, you may want to set up a new Instrument
that matches the specifications of the external device being driven. Specifically you may want
to select the Instrument's 'no note-offs' mode in the case of an external drum machine for example.

Well, that's how it's supposed to work anyway...
There could still be problems, I suppose.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:20 pm
by Tim E. Real
About Jack Midi vs. ALSA Midi:
To avoid confusion the poster might want to decide whether he really wants to work with
either Jack Midi or ALSA Midi, or both at the same time. Usually he should just pick one and not use (or turn off) the other.
The ALSA Midi support can be turned off with the button in the 'Midi Ports / Soft Synth' (Midi Configuration ) dialog.
Click the button that says 'Add ALSA' to turn it on or off.

By default MusE enables BOTH Jack midi and ALSA Midi devices so that users can quickly find and connect their devices.
But really most users should pick one method and not use the other, unless they have some device that for example is a Jack Midi
only device and has no ALSA support, or vice-versa.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:50 pm
by saturnin51
OK I turned off the Alsa support and leave only one connection UA-25 -> jack-midi-0_in and jack-midi-0_out -> UA-25. I have no sound.
If I add a connection between UA-25 capture and UA-25 playback, I have sounds, but the record it's anything. I record 8 bars and when I stop it, the segment reduces to 2 bars only and the notes recorded are anything!

We progress !

I am so upset by this issue ! I think MusE ha a better GUI than others sequencers. At this time, I must do my drum track with Rosegarden or Ardour (same issue with Qtractor) and next import it into MusE.

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:39 pm
by saturnin51
I trace the midi event with GMIDImonitor. The only difference between the master midi keyboard and the pad is that the last doesn't send a MIDI OFF.
The first kick of each pad gives a sound but not a second and the next.

Image

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:13 am
by saturnin51
I trace the outpût midi event with muse3 opr1.

MidiDevice::putEvent: ALSA: <UA-25 MIDI 1>: time:375714596 port:0 chan:10 NoteOn a1(0x2d) 101
ALSA MidiOut pre-driver: <UA-25 MIDI 1>: time:375714596 port:0 chan:10 NoteOn a1(0x2d) 101
ALSA MidiOut driver: <UA-25 MIDI 1>: SND_SEQ_EVENT_NOTEON chan:9 note:45 velocity:101
MidiDevice::putEvent: ALSA: <UA-25 MIDI 1>: time:376065498 port:0 chan:10 NoteOn c2(0x30) 67
ALSA MidiOut pre-driver: <UA-25 MIDI 1>: time:376065498 port:0 chan:10 NoteOn c2(0x30) 67
ALSA MidiOut driver: <UA-25 MIDI 1>: SND_SEQ_EVENT_NOTEON chan:9 note:48 velocity:67

What about channel 9 instead of 10 ?

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 5:18 pm
by saturnin51
Is there anybody out there ....

Re: WII rock band drum and MusE

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:22 pm
by Tim E. Real
Yes, hang in there, I got side-tracked. I will be testing later today...
I have a drum machine, I just can't remember if it sends out note-offs (not what I want here.)

For now, if you could quickly check something:
Does your device (the WII) support turning on a setting which enables the note-offs?
That would solve everything. Check the user manual carefully. I will do it as well if I can, later.
Tim.