HI there,

I've been tinkering with microtonic (demo version) for a week or so now, and MAJOR CONGRATULATONS to you - what a monster piece of software!

I am hoping to ultimately use it with an android tablet as the front end. I've designed the step sequencer page and am now deep into working on an 'engine' page. bi-directional feedback in various DAW hosts (reaper, ableton, cubase) are all working as expected. The drumsynth is amazing to perform with in this way - no mouse, tactile control, it's great :-)

The only real limit i'm hitting at the moment is not being able to change drum patch (as the software calls it) or enable/disable the pattern chains feature via midi notes or cc's

Am I missing something? the elements I want to control don't seem to have configurable midi options for them.

Is there any possibility patch changing and pattern chaining via midi are on the roadmap? perhaps for microtonic 3.5? ;-)

If anyone knows of any workarounds to this limit, i would be happy to hear them.

congratulations again on this fine drum programming environment.

Dan

Glad you like Microtonic. Sounds like you are building a very sophisticated midi setup. I am afraid that the pattern chain buttons are not controllable via MIDI. Probably just an oversight and it ought to be easy to add. Thanks for the suggestion.

Can't think of any reliable workaround either. The chain buttons are not exposed as VST parameters.

With "patch changing", do you mean to load patches from disk like you do with the small arrow buttons around the drum patch name display? If so, that is a little bit trickier. It is not possible today and if I were to implement this in the future it has to be done from the GUI thread. I am not sure I could even make it work when the GUI is closed to be honest.

(Synplant has support for such MIDI events btw, but they only work when the GUI is open.)

Thanks for the response, Magnus.
I use a cheap app called DAWOSC for the Android side of things, i'll post the assets and some images when it's finished so others can benefit.

If I understand you correctly, it will be possible in the future to set pattern chains using midi. That is great news, and I look forward to the update!

Regarding the patch changes - yes, it's the little prev/next arrows by the patch name that I'd like to access. I'd be happy enough to have the microtonic vst open, if that's the only way it can be done. Just to be clear though, do you mean that the microtonic window would have to be 'on screen', or actually 'selected - i.e. the active window?

Thanks again,
Dan

I use a cheap app called DAWOSC for the Android side of things, i'll post the assets and some images when it's finished so others can benefit.

Great! I am not an Android user myself, but I am sure it will be appreciated.

If I understand you correctly, it will be possible in the future to set pattern chains using midi. That is great news, and I look forward to the update!

No promises, but I feel the feature ought to be there. I'll have a look at it to see if there is any technical reason why the feature is absent. Can't think of any from the top of my head.

Just to be clear though, do you mean that the microtonic window would have to be 'on screen', or actually 'selected - i.e. the active window?

If I were to implement this feature (which is a bit more work) it would probably mean that the GUI needs to be left open somewhere. It would not necessarily have to be the active window no.

I've just checked Synplant: the way it allows patch changes is exactly how i would like microtonic to function. I won't hold my breath though to see this implemented... perhaps not having the feature would serve my drumsynth programming skills better... ;-)

I do hope the pattern chain feature gets added though. On a similar topic, is there an option to 'switch' to the active pattern when a chain is active? It seems that if i am editing (for example) pattern 1, but enable the chain to go to pattern 2, the microtonic GUI leaves the pattern on 1, even when it switches.

from a performance point of view, showing the active pattern all the time (or making it an option) would increase useability - enabling me to work on the active pattern as it plays. This could work for those who are GUI based aswell.

Thanks again for the rapid response and transparency. You are making 99 dollars seem really good value for the product and the ecosystem around it!

from a performance point of view, showing the active pattern all the time (or making it an option) would increase useability - enabling me to work on the active pattern as it plays. This could work for those who are GUI based aswell.

Good point. I'll put that up on the wish list too. I wouldn't want that to be always enabled though.

In DAWs, "scroll with play position" is usually an option somewhere.

'I wouldn't want that to be always enabled though'

I agree - perhaps a 'pattern follows chain' toggle button next to the pattern matrix? (midi controllable, of course!)

Thanks again. I shall look forward to these features being implemented (no promises - i'm sure there's a big wish list!) in time.

Dan