Newbie help hooking up a few devices

J

jiffy feet

New member
Hello! I am trying to get my little system all hooked up properly, but I am a MIDI newbie, so I am not quite sure what I am doing. I am hooking up a Yamaha Motif, a Korg Electribe S, and my PC with an Audiophile 2496 sound card.

Here's how it's set up so far. The MIDI out from the PC goes into the Motif in, then Motif out to Electribe in, then the Electribe out to the PC in. Actually right now it's the Electribe thru to PC in. What's the difference between out and thru?

There are two main things I want to know how to accomplish: First I want to have the Motif and Electribe start playing at a specified time in my PC sequencer (Cubasis.) I mean that when I go to record a MIDI track in Cubasis, can I get the devices to start just as the recording starts? Those two devices are already synced.

Secondly, how can I get it so that when I do a MIDI recording where the Electribe is running and I am playing the Motif on top of it, that when I play it back the MIDI information will all be routed to the proper device? Actually, I am sure this will be corrected by some advice I will get here, but so far i haven't been able to get a MIDI recording into the PC that shows the MIDI data from both devices.

Thanks in advance!
 
Actually right now it's the Electribe thru to PC in. What's the difference between out and thru?
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MIDI Thru is a port that sends a copy of whatever is coming into the MIDI In port. MIDI Out sends the MIDI messages originating on the device -- for example, the MIDI Out of the Motif sends the messages created by what you play on its keyboard.

If you have the MIDI out from the PC going to the Motif, then the Motif is the only thing that will respond to MIDI messages from the computer. As described, you could trigger things on the Electribe from the Motif. But as far as I can tell from your description, none of the MIDI information recieved by the Motif from the computer is going out to the Electribe. But everything that you play on the Motif is being echoed out the MIDI Thru to the computer.
 
AlChuck is right. In order to have the electribe recieve from the computer, send out from the "thru" port on the motif. Sorry, but I can't even remember the functionality of cubasis in this situation. Can you output the midi data in different channels? So that say track 1 sends out on channel x for the motif, and track 2 sends out on channel y for the electribe.

I hate to even think about midi without an interface! I suggest upgrading to cubase sx and getting some sort of midi interface to be able to tie everything together and then choose how it all communicates via software. That really IS the way to go. Especially if you throw another midi machine in, it gets exponentially more confusing and cumbersome with each one!
 
Yes, Cubasis can send on different channels. Now I guess I understand, it comes out from the PC into the Motif, then thru from everything else until it gets back to the PC. Then I just set each device up to send& receive on whatever channel. I think I get it.

I have been really trying to get the PC out of the loop all together. I want to figure out how to just do it all live, and I am making some good progress so far. I just wanted to be able to use the PC to make corrections on the Motif parts. You know, take out the mis-keyed notes and fix the areas that weren't quantized properly. But ultimately I want to have all that corrected info stored back into the Motif.

Anyway, I think I get it. Thanks for the help and I will post again if I come into any more trouble.
 
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