MUTOOLS

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Sat May 13, 2017 11:43 pm

Hi Everyone,

I am trying out MuLab as a scratch pad for some new songs. I have it connected to an old M-Audio Black Box, which has a series of built-in 2-bar drum patterns that can be driven by a DAW's midi clock. When I change the tempo in MuLab, the tempo of the drum pattern changes accordingly, so that is definitely working. However, when I try to go back to the start of the track and press record after trying out a take, the drum pattern does not begin at the start but rather somewhere in the middle of the 2-bar loop. Pressing the start/stop button directly on the M-Audio starts the loop at the beginning every time. I think I need MuLab to send a hard stop to the M-Audio unit, but it seems to be sending a pause, essentially, when I "stop" recording or "stop" playback. Any thoughts or assistance that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

mutools · Post by **mutools** » Sun May 14, 2017 7:58 am

When you go back to the start of the track, MuLab sends out a Song Position Pointer MIDI message. Then when you start playing it sends out a Continue message to continue playing from that new position.

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Sun May 14, 2017 11:39 am

Thank you for the reply. I think that what is needed is for MuLab to send the equivalent of a Note Off message (or maybe a reset) when the stop button is pressed, so that the hardware knows to restart the loop. Is there any way to do that, whether automatically or otherwise?

mutools · Post by **mutools** » Sun May 14, 2017 12:56 pm

I'm afraid i can't follow. What has a note-off message to do with midi clock messages?

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Sun May 14, 2017 1:56 pm

The drum loop on the hardware is two bars long, and it doesn't know/care where the song position is. Rather, it just understands start and stop. When I press play on the MuLab transport the loop starts playing on the hardware, but if I press play again (which seems to pause, rather than actually stop, the track), the loop stops wherever it is within those two bars. Even if I return the play head to start (bar 1, beat 1), when I press play on the MuLab transport the loop starts playing again from wherever it left off - it does not start from the beginning of the loop. Thus, I thought that maybe if I could get MuLab to send a true "stop" message (or maybe note off), it would reset the loop on the hardware to the beginning of the two bar phrase.

Thanks for your help - I am fairly new to both midi and MuLab.

mutools · Post by **mutools** » Sun May 14, 2017 2:10 pm

As far as i understand this is rather about a feature request to M-Audio to properly support the MIDI Song Position Pointer message.

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Sun May 14, 2017 3:12 pm

Is there a way, though, that I can send a note off/reset message to the unit from MuLab in the meantime?

mutools · Post by **mutools** » Sun May 14, 2017 3:19 pm

Yes you can send note messages to MIDI hardware:
http://www.mutools.com/info/docs/mulab/ ... utput.html
Not sure if that answers your question.

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Sun May 14, 2017 3:26 pm

I will try - thanks.

wilcofan · Post by **wilcofan** » Fri May 19, 2017 5:13 pm

START instead of CONTINUE as a play message would solve the problem. If the external device does not understand SPP (song pointer position) then a CONTINUE message will not begin on the bar you rewind to but instead where you last stopped.

You can intercept and convert a CONTINUE message and change it to START with a number of MIDI utilities on Mac and PC.

I've never heard of a note-off message used as a reset for a device's clock.

MUTOOLS

KVR Audio

Re-start external drum loops driven by MuLab midi clock?