I am trying to use the Digitakt to sequence my Casio PX-5S piano while also allowing me to play the piano normally when not recording or playing sequences. I have configured the piano to not play its own sound engine from the keybed, and instead transmit MIDI to the Digitakt on channel 14, the “Auto channel.” I am expecting the Digitakt to change the MIDI messages to the channel of the selected MIDI track and send them back to the piano, so when not recording I should be playing the piano normally, just with a 2ms delay while the MIDI messages are transmitting. The piano is connected to the Digitakt’s MIDI In and Out, not Thru.
This is working as expected for note messages, but the sustain pedal (CC64) message is not getting through and I don’t see a setting in the Digitakt to specifically enable CC messages being processed this way. I tried turning off “Receive CC/NRPN,” but this didn’t work. Can it be done?
I can see using my DAW that the piano is configured correctly. If I configure MIDI track A to channel 1 on the Digitakt and select it, the note-on messages from the piano going into the Digitakt begin with 0x9D and the messages coming out begin with 0x90 like I want. For note-off messages, they go in beginning with 0x8D and come out as note-on messages with a velocity of zero, beginning 0x90. Sustain pedal messages go in as 0xBD407F (press) or 0xBD4000 (release), but nothing comes out.
I don’t think this works currently. I experienced similar behavior last time I tried. Seems like a bug so hopefully it will be addressed in the next update?
I just tried bombarding the Digitakt with all types of CC messages to see what would happen. It looks like CCs 70-77 (which correspond to the FLTR parameters in an audio channel) can be mapped to output any CC value back to my piano, but I haven’t figured out how to control the mapping. It is not controlled from the AMP page of the MIDI track, but appears to be affected by CC messages. I am going to create an Elektron support ticket to ask for a full MIDI specification, which hopefully they’ll be willing to share with me, because the manual doesn’t describe CC control of MIDI tracks and I don’t want to spend a ton of time reverse-engineering it.
I didn’t think the Select (AMP) page settings had any effect, but actually it does. I was confused because the mapping of CC numbers to encoders isn’t very intuitive. The mapping is:
Encoders --------------- CC numbers
A, B, C, D ----------------76, 74, 75, 77
E, F, G, H ----------------70, 71, 72, 73
Another wrinkle is that encoder A (CC76 in) does not output the same value that is put in. My input value is either 0 or 127 because the sustain pedal is a switch; but the Digitakt’s screen shows the encoder going to either 0 or 2 instead. The other seven output the same value that is put in. This could be because, in an audio channel, CC76 controls the filter mode, which can only take three values from 0 to 2, but it shouldn’t be clamped at 2 on the MIDI tracks!
It also doesn’t always seem to work properly if multiple encoders on the Select (AMP) page are, or have been, set to the same value. I will have to figure out what that’s about next, starting by reading the relevant section of the manual.
