Need midi help please

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Tufacody

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Sorry to be a noob, but I dont know what I am doing wrong. I have an alesis performance pro drum pad and a korg triton pro keyboard. I am plugging the alesis into the midi in on the triton, and the midi out of the triton into an interface and recording in Cubase. The interface only has one midi in and one midi out. When I pull up a track and load groove agent, the triton triggers the groove agent pads just fine, but for the love of me I cannot get the alesis pad to trigger it. The alesis only has a midi out and appears to send only on channel 10. If I set the triton to channel ten the alesis will trigger the tritons internal sounds but no midi out seems to get sent to cubase. If I plug the alesis directly into the midi in on the interface by unplugging the triton, the alesis works just fine and triggers groove agent. How can I get both the pad and the triton to trigger groove agent at the same time?
 
You're a bit stuck. I don't have a Triton here, but I have a memory that it can do what you want to do. remember there are MIDI in, out and THRU - this is the one that takes the incoming MIDI and sticks it out of the connector, so most units have all three. A few only have in and out. MIDI thru could be hidden away in a menu, and turning it on, mirrors the incoming MIDI data and superimposes it on the output. Thru off would be the default. I just cannot for the life of me remember if the Triton has it - but I would think it pretty certain, because many people do what you are doing,

Incidentally ch 10 is the default for drums, and because MIDI is a sequential dat stream, MIDI sends channel 10 first - because timing wise, and delay is rotten with drums, but probably OK for strings and other stuff, so ch10=drums send first was written into the original spec, and many GM MIDI devices will only respond on ch10 with percussion sounds - they can't do a piano on 10, for example. Music with loads of controller info like expression and wild pitch bends would slow up the drums as the kick and snare were only sent when it was their turn, so ch10 became 'special'. Now we can pretty well send anything on any MIDI channel as our interfaces and plugins are so much quicker than the MIDI in the serial stream. It does matter for external drum machines, but internal sounds don't use MIDI in the original sense.

See if you can find the thru setting in the Triton - if it is there, turn it on.
 
Ther funny thing is, I swear I had this working last night. Then this morning it is gone. If I use the midi thru on the triton to go into the midi in on the interface, the alesis does work fine, but then the triton keyboard doesnt send anything. I am not seeing any thru options in the triton settings. Will the thru send the out data of both the triton and the alesis even though nothing is plugged into the midi out of the triton?
 
it depends on the synth, hence why there is usually a software option. The snag with your system at the moment is the drum machine needs a midi in and a midi out the way it’s wired but so does the triton. One of the reasons I bought a multi channel midi interface, so everything gets supplied midi in and each midi out is addressable by the DAW. For you you might have to accept a compromise. If the drum machine is usually a replay device, run that from the thru of the triton and send the out to your DAW, the play the drum machine from the triton, via the keys? Those pads were not that brilliant anyway.
 
The only purpose of the alesis is to trigger vst's in cubase. I have more experience using sticks than tapping stuff with my fingers. I just don't want to have to plug and unplug every time.
 
^ so on that midiface I'd plug alesis and triton into the two midi ins and either midi out to the interface? Will it transmit sysex too? thanks for suggestion
 
Yep, - your DAW will give you two options MIDI 1 or MIDI 2 as input sources. Just cable each MIDI out to one of the MIDI in ports and bobs your uncle. Depending on your DAW you might even be able to have both live at the same time if you want. The only thing you need to do is watch that the drum input on ch 10 doesn;t get sent to the triton, which will happily play a piano or something with each drum beat if your routing sends it back out again!
 
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