How to change patches via MIDI in Audiokit Synth One?

[KlaxonLabs]

I know I'm late to the party, but I just discovered Audiokit Synth One, and I'm a fan! I especially like that it was developed to work well with the Korg Nanokey Studio, which is my favorite small controller.

I notice that on the homepage, the developers list this as one of the app's features:

"MIDI Bank (MSB)/Patch Change & Sustain Pedal support"

But I have searched high and low online for information on how exactly to use MIDI to change patches, and can't find it anywhere!

Was this actually ever implemented? What I'd like to do is use my Nanokey Studio's trigger pads to select specific patches. Does anyone know if there is a way to do this?

[Tj Shredder]

Did you try Midi program change?

[KlaxonLabs]

I set the trigger pads set to send program change messages, using the Korg Kontrol Editor (their tool for setting up MIDI on Korg devices).

But there's no obvious way to configure the synth to receive those messages. When the synth is in MIDI learn mode, there are no "hooks" visible that are associated with particular patches.

[BertKoor]

"MIDI Bank (MSB)/Patch Change & Sustain Pedal support"

But I have searched high and low online for information on how exactly to use MIDI to change patches, and can't find it anywhere!

This is standard midi, nothing for the plugin to learn.
See https://midi.org/summary-of-midi-1-0-messages and plenty other online resources.

> 1100nnnn 0ppppppp

nnnn is the midi channel, ppppppp is the patch nr.

If you have a midi controller with patch up/down buttons, those should just work. Otherwise the documentation lies when it states "supports".
But you need to send it to the right one of the 16 available channels.

[KlaxonLabs]

Thanks! In this case, the Korg Kontrol Editor has a GUI that lets the user specify what each control on the controller does.

I've already specified thru the GUI that I want to assign the trigger pads to use the same MIDI channel that the keyboard and knobs are using. I know the synth is receiving signals from the keyboard and knobs, so this is clearly the right channel to use.

I've also used the GUI to specify that the trigger pads should send program change messages (other choices available in the GUI dropdown menu are notes or control changes).

I can then specify values from 0 to 127 for the program number. I've tried assigning the pads to programs 0 thru 7. (One problem here is that there is nothing in the synth that indicates what MIDI program numbers the different presets use. Also, there are many hundreds of presets available -- far more than 128.)

When I save the assignments to the controller, and then try to use the controller with the synth, the trigger pads are not sending patch change messages to the synth. Instead, they're just playing different notes, using the already selected patch.

[BertKoor]

AudioKit SynthOne is open source. I can see in the source code that responding to MIDI ProgramChange messages is implemented.

I've also used the GUI to specify that the trigger pads should send program change messages
[...]
and then try to use the controller with the synth, the trigger pads are not sending patch change messages to the synth. Instead, they're just playing different notes, using the already selected patch.

My analysis is that the error is on the sending side. The controller seems to send note on/off messages, not program change messages.

You should use a midi message monitor/viewer to look at what messages get received by the other side, eg http://www.midiox.com or https://hautetechnique.com/midi/midiview/

Once you have verified that the controller does what you expect it to do, debugging the issue can continue. There may be some component somewhere in the data flow from controller to synth which filters out these messages. I don't have an iPad/iPhone, so I'm not familiar with what can be done in that regard and where to find those options.

Do you use additional apps like AudioBus or MidiFlow?