MIDI Kinetics Forum

Using Lemur to control modular synthesizers with Hexapad. Making some Hexapad mods such as notes/octave, octave numbering per key and potentially pitch bend per note. Currently stuck due to IOS lockup in current Lemur version.

hi microtonal.

Sounds interesting this hexapad. What synthesisers do you play with it? One or multiple MIDI channels? Monophonic or polyphonic synths?

I'm currently driving a Serge Modular synthesizer monophonically from hexapad, with plans to multitrack microtonally with a (eurorack format) Orthogonal Devices ER-101 and ER-102.

For polyphony I'd prefer to work with a synth or MIDI converter with a table based tuning rather than deal with single MIDI polyphony to multi MIDI monophony PB conversion. I have a MOTM-650 with MTS support, but it is in a large cabinet many feet from the Serge. It is almost impossible to find another MOTM-650. A simpler solution may be to put the 650 in its own small case than do the note-to-pitch-bend conversion in Lemur.

Just discovered that Mutable Instruments Yarns does MTS. Not sure how I missed that. That's a more compact solution than the MOTM-650.

thanks for the info. I tried once to do note-pitch bend conversion in Lemur. It did not work perfectly, so I put it aside. And there's the ScaleGen app that does this already (last month it was updated with MIDI input). But it would be good to have it in Lemur as well.

Polyphonic microtonality I also do in softsynths that can load .tun or .scl. For monophony (modular) I use Scala's Relayer function. Needs a computer, but works fine.

I have ScaleGen but haven't really used it. I'll check it out before doing anything besides arranging Hexapad keys in non-12 note patterns.

Upon further investigation I see that Mutable Instruments Yarns supports only the misnamed "Octave" MTS, which is really 12 note per octave tables, not the full 128 note definable version. That's disappointing, but the firmware is open source, so it can be rewritten.

I had a look at Yarns' manual the other day, it seems quite capable. But I don't know. I'm using the Endorphin.es Shuttle Control with 16 configurable CV outputs; in between a computer running Scala Relayer if I need microtonality. Yarns is certainly an interesting interface. Both of these digital modules/interfaces may get some updates to make microtonal settings easier.

I also haven't used ScaleGen much so far. Only a simple test, and it worked. Still I think this could be done in Lemur. The problems I had were only note priority, when I press two keys at the same time it kept sending the first key pitch bend, not the second key pitch bend. With more elaborate scripting this could be resolved I guess. But I don't know. And wondering why there are so few people realising this potential. Good to know you are on the board.