I have a performance coming up and I’d like to take only a few synths and sound sources, to minimise excess baggage, etc. I’m probably taking a boutique Roland Juno to use in a looping based piece but it would be great if I could also have it as a destination for Kria or ES… Has anyone here had any luck using Kria or other monome sequencers to control midi synths, with or without using a computer? If so, would you care to share the set up?
I don’t own any of the monome modules so no direct experience, but my initial thought would be to use Kria/ES in conjunction with one of the cv to midi modules that are available.
For example:
http://www.schneidersladen.de/en/analogue-solutions-cv-to-midi.html
(Edit: It looks like this particular module may actually be discontinued)
I have a couple of these - you are welcome to borrow one to try it out if you like as they’re not seeing much use at this moment in time.
i’ve been using http://addacsystem.com/product/addac200-series/addac222 for this purpose.
works well for the most part but i do get unexpected notes once in a while - i need to try and calibrate it and see if that helps. also handling note on/off is a little unusual - you can’t feed it a gate and expect it to generate both on and off MIDI messages (at least i haven’t found a way yet), what i do is use teletype, send triggers to the note on inputs and then same triggers delayed through teletype to the note off inputs and that does the trick. something like http://www.steadystatefate.com/propagate would also work well for this.
another alternative is http://www.doepfer.de/a1922.htm - this gives you 2 notes instead of addac’s 4 but you can also translate volume CV into MIDI velocity (addac only has manual knob control over this). check out this thread: Sequencer specific question
Expert Sleepers ES-6/ES-3 or ES-8 with Silent Way are also options.
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just one of the many reasons why i love the op-lab so much (though the cv -> midi function is monophonic)
Thanks for all this! I think I own a 192-2 (I’m away from home right now). Will report when back in a few days.
I’ve got the a-192-2 working. Mostly it seems fine but when using with ES I’m getting occasional wrong notes. I haven’t heard any wrong ones using Kria yet. Could this be ES? I guess I’ll test ES with CV and gate next.
Was just thinking about the CV->MIDI route the other day and had forgotten that this can be done with an ES-6 & SW.
It’s working pretty well for me for triggers. I’ve used it a bit for pitch as well, but haven’t really tested this thoroughly and can’t comment on tracking accuracy, etc.
I’m afraid I have to report that the a-192-2 is not reliable if you, for instance, wanted to double a CV/gate voice with a midi voice. In the lower registers it is playing the wrong note often enough to be easily noticed.
This is very annoying as I had hoped to play some ES patterns playing 2 voices of a midi synth (mini boutique juno). There is a delptronics module coming which I’d like to try in the interim I’m not sure what to do. If the Addac isn’t 100% relaible…
Doubling is going to be tricky. You’ve got tracking accuracy and latency issues to worry about. I’ll try to find some time to see if I can pull this off with an ES-6 this weekend and let you know what I discover.
very interested in this topic! I love the Monome compositional system, but would enjoy using it with my hardware/MIDI synths
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I’m not actually going to be doing any doubling. But I used it as a test to hear if notes were out. What I know is I can’t trust the a-192-2 to play in key. Too bad.
Ah, OK, so it’s really more about tracking accuracy than latency. That makes it a little easier.
Latency didn’t seem bad to my ears. My stuff is all out of time anyway so all that sample accurate stuff doesn’t hold any sway over here 
OK, I set up two tracks in Ableton Live and put a Tuner device on each of them. One is receiving the audio from an ER-301 playing a single cycle sin wave sample. The other is receiving the audio from a Nord Rack 3 set to an init patch (also a sin wave).
Ansible in Kria mode is sending CV and gate to a passive mult each, which are either triggering the ER-301 sample or heading into ES-6 inputs.
Had to fiddle with the Silent Way CV to MIDI “Center” and “Slope” values to get the Nord to track over the same range as the ER-301. Ended up with values of 50 for Center and 56.9 for Slope.
Lowest note (I’m getting a C#) on lowest octave:
- ER-301 varying by 3-10¢, usually sharp
- Nord (via Silent Way CV to MIDI) varying up to 50¢ in either direction.
Same note (except not, I’m getting an F# on both channels??), up an octave.
- ER-301 varying up to 15¢ in both directions
- Nord varying from perfect to 15¢ flat
Up an octave
- ER-301 very stable at halfway between B and C
- Nord varying between C and 10¢ flat
Up an octave
- ER-301 perfect F, totally stable
- Nord F varying about 10¢ in either direction
So, results are kind of strange, and I can’t really explain them. ES-6 seems to be working OK (although the “Slope” setting in Silent Way’s CV to MIDI plugin is hardly intuitive), especially if I add about 30ms of track delay to the ER-301 channel. But it seems like the CV coming out of the Kria is not doing quite what I’d expect for just changing octaves. Maybe I’m not fully understanding Kria’s scales (absolutely possible).
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Tomorrow I might reprise this test, but I’ll try Teletype instead of Kria. A little more direct with regard to setting specific voltages, which should help with the “Slope” confusion I was having as well as the pitch tracking across octaves.
I checked the CV coming out of ES and it was very close to perfect. Certainly close enough for any decent quantizer to have no troubles. I guess I’ll do a test today with Quantimator in line, set to semitones. More to follow.
With Teletype I’m getting more sensible results. Just using a MIDI monitor this time, not messing around with tuners. I’m finding the ES-6 to be very consistent, and it’s really just a matter of knowing what voltages are coming in and setting Center and Slope appropriately.
From the Silent Way manual:
The ‘Centre’ and ‘Slope’ controls relate the incoming CVs to the generated MIDI note numbers. ‘Centre’ sets the note number when the incoming CV is zero; ‘Slope’ controls the rate of change of note number with CV. So for example with the default setting of Centre = 48&Slope=48,aCV of-1givesnotenumber0,aCV of0givesnotenumber48,andaCV of +1 gives note number 96. If we set Centre = 60 & Slope = 40, then CVs of -1, 0 and +1 gives notes numbers of 20, 60 & 100 respectively.
Silent Way CV to MIDI
- Center: 0
- Slope: 128
CV 1 V 0 = C-2 (0)
CV 1 V 1 = B-2 (11)
CV 1 V 2 = B-1 (23)
CV 1 V 3 = B0 (35)
CV 1 V 4 = B1 (47)
CV 1 V 5 = B2 (59)
CV 1 V 6 = C4 (72)
CV 1 V 7 = C5 (84)
CV 1 V 8 = C6 (96)
CV 1 V 9 = C7 (108)
CV 1 V 10 = C8 (120)
If I wanted a range that matched my 88 keys, I’d do this (works out to 10mv/semitone)
- Center: 21
- Slope: 105
CV 1 VV 0 = G#-1 (20)
CV 1 VV 10 = A-1 (21)
CV 1 VV 130 = A0 (33)
CV 1 VV 250 = A1 (45)
CV 1 VV 370 = A2 (57)
CV 1 VV 490 = A3 (69)
CV 1 VV 610 = A4 (81)
CV 1 VV 730 = A5 (93)
CV 1 VV 855 = A6 (105)
CV 1 VV 980 = A7 (117)
CV 1 VV 1000 = B7 (119)
I wasn’t able to get a C7, it jumps to C8 after B7.
Now that I’m getting the hang of it, I’m pretty impressed with the Expert Sleepers stuff.
Update.
I recalibrated the a-192-2. I haven’t done as much testing as I’d like but it seems like I can get every note from C#0 to C5 responding correctly, but not C0. It won’t go there. It just puts out C#0. I can work around that. I can now create a two Earthsea realtime duophonic piece playing the mini Juno. More to follow as I continue to play around with it.
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