One request - I love having a global tempo on the Midihub, but I want to make the Midihub itself the tempo for my devices. I have a pad I can send some midi data out from, but I’ve got no way for it to affect any of my clocks.
I need this feature . Tap tempo and midihub as masterclock. I cant perform with a computer, and i play in a band. I need to have the tap tempo to work. Maybe i just bought the wrong gear, but i was expecting midihub to handle this.
@Giedrius what would be the technical issues with this?
Presumably it would involve a Tap Tempo property in Clock (maybe Enable and Source), but then some sort of Number Taps aspect for Clock to listen for?
(Welcome to Midihub forums, btw, Anders!)
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Thank you. I got an axe fx 3. And the big bummer about the unit (its freaking amazing otherwise) is that it does not send clock signals. It can slave to a clock, but no sending. After searching alot on the web, and monitoring the din outputs i found that the axe fx send a sysex on the downbeat. But i have no way of converting this sysex into something that midihub can understand.
As a guitarist i cant not use my hands, and i have to say i dont want to drag along another big pedal. (i got enough things to carry)
What is great about the midihub is its small footprint. Ive secured it in the back of my rack. And it does several things in my rig already, so im not switching it out. (great gear)
I just want the hub to be able to convert the sysex to tap tempo.
EDIT: I am not playing music to a clicktrack or any of that sort, so i need to be able to change the tempo of multiple devices manually and by foot. Its easy to get the Axe fx itself behave on time, but the problem comes with other gear.
my guess is that Axe’s sysex is only saying “Now” every downbeat.
Thus it would be not very different (from Midihub’s POV) to tapping a key at the same tempo; Midihub still has no way† of taking those periodic taps and calculating a BPM from them.
† currently. That’s why I posed the question to Giedrius (he’s one of the Midihub designers who would know the answer)
I wonder how many pedals can take a tap tempo in then send out Clock via MIDI? Pretty sure ZOIA would but unless you’ve already chosen to go down that near-infinite rabbithole…
It would be neat addition to MH - and a step toward making it the core of a live setup!
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Thank you for your reply. The sysex is sent as a stream on every downbeat. (Quarternotes) so it is essentially a beatclock. And if could convert it to a cc (or something Else the Midihub could understand) i could map that to the tap switch in midihub and make midihub the clockmaster.
There are a lot of midi pedals that can send clock. I got one. (solman by source audio)
But it dies not have enough switches, and does not serve a purpose other than clock. So I want to have another solution to this. (Hence I ask the great oracle)
I sorta thought you’d be wanting to send a message from some kind of footswitch to this as yet unimplemented Tap Tempo property in Clock?
btw the Axe manual confirms the downbeat Sysex is just a fixed string
Yes. I got an fc12 (special pedal for the fractal grear) this has built in tap tempo. This pedal controls the axe fx. It’s not midi. But a solution of their own. So the sysex is sent as a stream from the axe fx not the pedalboard
got it.
So your (only?) option without extra gear is
fc12 → Axe → {Sysex} → Midihub.
Hmmm, my sense (just from reading prev posts) is that Sysex isn’t that high on Blokas’ to-do list…
The Tap Tempo is simply not implemented yet. How it could work is to provide a parameter that could be mapped (like “Manual Retrigger” in LFOs) that would react to taps and adjust the tempo.
Btw, is the ‘down beat’ the first beat of a bar?
Using SysEx to signal this is not standard, normally it’s done by sending a Start message or Song Position Pointer, then producing the Clock messages at the required rate. I’d be interested to know which devices make use of the Axe Fx’s SysEx message. 
yes. This is mainly it!
FC12 to remotecontroll the Axe FX. Midihub in axe both in and out
I see. Maybe i need an arduino for this project. I guess i could fit a small box (same size as the midihub) in the back of the rack. Was hoping that i would not need to go that route. (mad bad electronic skills)
And just to elaborate. This way of sending tempo is not normal. I know. But Clocking is not an option in the fractal gear. This is why i need a workaround.
I belive the FC 12 uses this sysex to give a visual confirmation on the tap button. (led flashes and bpm value on screen) They have effectively made you kind of need to buy their footswitch. But if you want to use several pieces of gear (synth/sequencer/vst/other delay units etc) you would need to clock everything.
The axe only sends a steady pulse relative to the tempo in the unit. It is sendt as quarternotes.
It does not have any bars and beats, so i guess you could say the axe says; “now, now, now, now” and so on. Or you could interpret it as meassures of 1/4.
That’s what i was thinking, though the manual suggests it’s more “NOW - two-three-four”, presumably to save sending Sysex 4x as often
(their mention of “no checksum is sent so as to minimize message length” corroborates that)
btw, Blokas’ Midiboy is based on an Arduino.
(I was thinking more Pisound/patchbox - Pure Data. Maybe ask @Giedrius /@Pranciskus directly for their advice about how best to fashion a hand-crafted solution?)
Gotta say, this bothers me in terms of changing tempo; having to wait a whole bar before determining whether the bpm has changed!
I think if I was writing a script for it, I’d prefer to go the route of sending Axe the ‘Tempo Query’ Sysex (as often as practicable) and using the response to convert it a mapped CC value for a Clock pipe.
The axe only send out downbeat tempo. It does not understand meassures/bars. The tempo is changed instantly depending on how many presses one choose to use to set the tempo (twice/average of 10 taps etc)
I am only trying to convert to beatclock. Just for other gear to have a pulse that can be changed at the same time.
I play in a progressive rock band, and we use alot of different time signatures and metric modulation and such, so I am mostly interested in a running clock (at all times), that responds to changes via the sysex.
I´ll check out midiboy
Yeah, I get that, Anders.
My point is this:
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OK, the tap sets Axe BPM just fine
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but then Axe needs to tell the other devices promptly what the tempo now is.
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If I understand “Sent on the tempo down beat” correctly†, and it’s only sending out one the “One” of "one- two-three-four”…
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…then the other devices can’t know “promptly”
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so no matter what or how the converts ‘down beat pulse’ to ‘BPM CC’ it’s not going to allow smooth syncing.
Have I misunderstood something here?
† btw easy to test it by watching how frequently Axe sends “00 01 74 10 10” to MH; at 120BPM it should be once per 2secs
The theory is that you could measure the frequency of the pulse in ms. Then you would have to generate 24 ticks in between them. That way you could end up with a midi beatclock.
It sends a quarter note pulse. So it sends every quarternote. There is no sequenced measure. It’s just like an old analog metronome. It keeps a steady quarternote pulse.
Just to be clear, I don’t want cc values to handle this. I believe the best bet is to measure the time between every beat and trigger the beatclock from an array. Some coding is probably needed.
Yes, I get all that, Anders, but if those Sysexes are only coming in every:
- 1.5s (160BPM)
- 2s (120BPM)
- 3s (80)
- 4s (60)
- etc
then this leaves yawning gaps –in which you guys may have changed tempo (and you’ll have tapped in the new one)– before the next calculation updates the BPM on all the other devices!