Midi transposing of sequence

You can probably do this at a basic level with FreEWI.

In cubasis send your track 1 to FreEWI and record onto track 2 from FreEWI.

In FreEWI just use the transpose +/- keys to adjust transposition.

However, from reading your response more carefully, you want to be able to control the transposition interval remotely via the onscreen keyboard in cubasis. Do I have that correct?

I think this could be done with MidiBridge by creating a bunch of scenes (1 for each transposition you want to be able to set) and then rewriting the note events coming from cubasis to scene change commands and switch scenes (and thus transpositions) on the fly whilst recording the resultant output.

It will be quite fiddly setting this up as we have to use scenes and the stream byter but it would only need to be done once. Also need to channelise the sequence notes and the transpose control notes so they don't clash.

If I have interpreted your requirements correctly, maybe you could let me know the transposition range you want to be able to manage and what notes on the keyboard this range would correspond to and I will see if I can come up with a step-by-step set of instructions for setting it all up.

Regards, Nic.

How many semitones up and down would you like?

The problem will be stuck notes when a transpose happens while a note is playing. Let me experiment a little over the coming week and see if I can find a solution. Will report back with findings.

OK, I got it to work reasonably well, so if you want to try setting things up here is what I did.

First, start MidiBridge, go to Preferences>Options and set Scene Channel to 16. Press home button and leave it running in the background.

Start Cubasis. I needed to use three tracks since I did not want my transpose control notes to be recorded with the transposed notes. Here is how I setup each track:

Track 1, 'Source' (original sequence) - MIDI IN = None, MIDI OUT = MidiBridge/Channel 1
Track 2, 'Transpose' (where transposed sequence goes for record) - MIDI IN = MidiBridge/Channel 1, MIDI OUT = None (ARMED for record)
Track 3, 'Control' (used to control transpose) - MIDI IN = None, MIDI Out = MidiBridge/Channel 2 (select this track and bring up onscreen keyboard, but don't arm)

Switch to MidiBridge

Connect MidiBridge in (left) to MidiBridge out (right) so green line runs between them. This is the only routing you need. Remove all others (at least for this test)

Touch the 'beaker icon' on the MidiBridge in (left) port and select the Stream Byter accessory arrow. Press On button and paste the following into the edit box:

# RossF Auto-Transpose
91 = CF +C # switch scenes on note events on channel 2
90 = 8X XX 00 +C +D2000 # prevent hanging notes

Press 'Install Rules' and then 'Done' and 'Done' to return to main window.

Touch Scenes tab bar button to bring up the Scene panel. Hold down on scene 060 until prompted for name. Call it 'Neutral' and save.

Now comes the laborious part. You have to save a new scene for each transpose interval, up and down. Let's do the 1 semitone down:

Touch 'beaker' icon on MidiBridge in (left) and select accessory arrow on 'Note Mapper' and press 'On' button. At the bottom change Note Transpose value to -1 which transposes down one semitone. Press 'Done' and 'Done' to return to main panel.

Hold down on scene 059 until prompted for name and enter 'Transpose -1'

Now you get to repeat the above (in blue, changing the values in red each time) as far as you like (eg. -12 to +12), adjusting the Note Splitter transpose value and saving each interval into the corresponding scene, so something like:

Scene 048 = -12 semitones
Scene 049 = -11 semitones
...
Scene 071 = +11 semitones
Scene 072 = +12 semitones

When you have set up the 25 scenes (assuming -12 - neutral - +12) then you are good to go.

However, I would suggest you just test with the two scenes (neutral/060 and, transpose -1/059) first because if there is an error at this stage it will be replicated another 23 times and a pain to fix later.

Switch back to cubasis, play your project and as you press notes on the cubasis keyboard while track 3 is selected (C3 = neutral) your sequence will transpose (or not).

Here is how it all works:

1. When MidiBridge sees a note coming in on channel 2 (control track 3 from cubasis) it will switch to the corresponding scene with each scene being identical apart from the transpose amount in the Note Mapper.

2. That second mysterious rule is to attempt to prevent the hanging notes. For every incoming note being played from the original sequence an extra note off is cloned so that the maximum note length is 2 seconds. Where notes are short, it should have no effect. Where notes are long and they get transposed while playing, then the maximum note duration will be 2 seconds. I tried this with an organ and guitar sounds and this technique seemed to work with my test sequences. I don't know exactly what your own sequence is. This technique may not work perfectly but maybe well enough. You can adjust the +D2000 (2 seconds) part of the rule if need be.

So there you have it. Let us know how you get on.

Regards, Nic.

Well I gave this setup a fairly good test run tonight and it's pretty bloody good-maybe a little temperamental with when you press a note in relation to the next sequencer note and I had to play around with latency settings in both midi bridge and cubasis and finally seemed to get the most stable setup with midi bridge jitter setting at 100 ms and cubasis midi offset timing at -100 ms! Weird! But all in all you have done a magnificent job to help me get a workable system-haven't experimented with adjusting the rules (+D200)-so that May fine tune things even more.Do you think this could be a dedicated module at a later date to save the setup and maybe get the timing as rock solid as possible? It does strike me as a very useful midi implementation and just don't see it in any DAW. Thanks again for your efforts and I will write a glowing review on iTunes tonight. Regards ross