Lost in Pitch Bends

Hey there,

im running into a space of confusion over finding a way to do the following, maybe somebody has the knowledge to help me out a little :slight_smile:

Setup for this problem is Korg R3 → Midihub → Digitakt → Midihub → R3
Im using the r3 as master keyboard (CH10). The DT is set to autochannel 10.
I play the notes in and the sequence is played back to my synths, all fine.
DT won’t record any Pitchbend, Modwheel, Aftertouch by default.

My Idea was to remap Pitchbend, Modwheel, Aftertouch to different CC’s, have it record by the DT and when played back i would have them control the named parameters (converting them back).
The problem I’m running into:
There is no CC for Pitchbend. I kind of understood, that its a different sort of message and I tried to wrap my head around what that means for solving my problem. No real luck with that.
So what kind of messages are send and how do I detect and remap that parameter with midihub?

It seems like anyhow it might be “steppy”? Would not mind to have a little something to start with at least. And maybe its even possible to use rescale to make it smooth?

I tried my luck with the transformer pipe, but again, Im not sure what I’m really looking at.
The Pitchbend seems something else?!

Little add: might it be a problem of the r3 itself?
R3 Midi Chart:

R3 Midi Implementation Chart:

Any help is much appreciated :slight_smile:

All best & stay healthy!

Midi Pitch Bend messages consist of a MIDI channel and 14 bit value while CC consists of a channel, a 7bit id number, and a 7 bit value.

The reason why PB messages are handled in a special way in MIDI is because bending note frequencies required the extra resolution to sound nice.

The only way this could work is if you could convert PB messages to a CC message with number and value set to MSB and LSB of the PB message. They would have to go into a dedicated channel, as such use would conflict with regular CC messages in the same channel. Otherwise, if no other CC controls are used, the same channel could be used as originally played on.

Then converting such CCs from a special channel back to PB would be possible.

By the way, the PB and Aftertouch messages are quite ‘spammy’, that’s a likely reason why Digitakt is not recording them. It is possible that if they’d get converted to CCs, it would overwhelm the device and it’d drop whatever it can’t keep, resulting in a different sound compared to what you were trying to record.

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Thanks so much for the little inside @Giedrius !

DT not recording PB is a firmware thing, they have decided on doing so to seperate from octatrack.
There is accually a dedicaded control in your midi-track menu, but no corresponding message to go in by external devices. So everything appart from the named parameters is recorded and the rest is just dumped, which I guess is really just a marketing thing. On an older firmware of DT it was possible and later to redirect the messages, but they closed these loopholes.

I think it was possible on DT firmware 1.02-1.03, right now its at 1.12. The functionality and added features in the last firmware update is to essential to go back to these earlier ones…

For later readers of this topic, thats some info for reference:

I also tried to patch the pitchwheel of the r3 to something else in the synth, but no luck on that either.
I guess I have to wait for Elektron to feel comfortable with enabling this control, kind of sad to limit this for no reason. There are options to just dial in your controls manually on a trig basis, but its just not the same as playing in your motion on the fly :wink:

Thanks so much for the great support, its always a pleasure to have you response so fast and helping out on improving ones setup and functionality :slight_smile:

Have a great start in your week!

@Giedrius I hope it’s not to much to ask for, but would it be possible to have such a pipe?
Making this translation from pitch bend to a desired cc number?
Could also be a cc value outlet that would be controlled by the midimaping functions in the midihub rather than a dedicated pipe construction for that translation. I noticed, and thats probably also due to this general cc versus pitch bend bit information, that its not possible to use pitch bend information as midi mapping for any kind of parameter in the midihub editor.

It would def solve a big gab in my setup, dont know if anybody else would like such capabilities?

Greetings :slight_smile:

I think we could add Pitch Bend into Transform’s “What” & “Into” types, that should enable you to do thing with it. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

lovely - thank you, that makes me really happy!