I have recently bought a Digitone and Digitakt because they can be easily synced and made to change patterns at the same time. It works wonderfully. That’s why I have added an Analog Four MK II to the setup, hoping it would be easily made to act the same way. However, A4 won’t change its pattern as expected and after some research on the forum I am wondering if it is even to possible to sync it to the DN and DT as easily as these two machines can be synced.
I have setup my Digitone as Master and Digitakt as slave and pattern changes are synced perfectly on these machines: Whenever I change a pattern on my DN, DT does the same at the exact same time. I have added the A4 as a slave to Digitakt which is connected via Midi Thru (DT) to Midi In (A4). I have set the DT to receive Clock, Transport and Progr Ch (which it receives from the DN) and to send these as well (which should be sent to the A4 then, which is set to receive these three parameters). A4 sequencer start and stop as well as tempo is now perfectly synced to the DN-DT chain. However, the A4 won’t change its pattern when I change it on the DN/DT.
Help anyone? Does the A4 pattern change work differently due to song mode etc.? I have the A4 set to sequential pattern mode, but it also won’t work when it is set to direct start, direct jump or temp jump. Do I have to use the A4 as the master to DN and DT or is it possible to make my setup work?
Because you have connected the MIDI Thru port of the DT to the MIDI In port of the Analog Four (AF), you do not need to set the DT to send clock, transport and Program Change messages. These messages will be passed from the DN, through the DT, to the AF.
You do need to ensure that the AF is set to receive Program Change messages on the same MIDI channel that the DN uses to send them.
Well, that was easy! Forgot that I had set up the DT to receive program change on Channel 15 as well. Thank you very much.
As I am new to the Analog Four and its Song Mode, should I consider using it as my brain? So far I prefer making the main arrangements on the Digitone due to its eight voices and then syncing the other two devices to it. Also seems like a good idea since I use the Audio Out of the Digitone and feed the Analog Four into the Digitakt, which goes into the Digitone. Audio in of the AF also seems less good because it needs to be triggered by the AF’s voices first. Are there any advantages of the AF sequencer that I am missing out on this way? Since I am only starting to arrange songs on these devices I would prefer to establish a standard setup now and program patterns accordingly.
You should consider whether the Song Mode function is useful for you, especially by comparison with the temporary pattern chains provided by the DN and DT. If Song Mode is useful, there may be some advantage in making the AF the clock, transport and Program Change transmitter in your setup.
The AF is much more basic as a MIDI sequencer than the other two. However, since the three instruments have their own sequencers you can use them all and synchronise them with any one of them as the “brain”.
The audio routing is largely a separate matter to the MIDI configuration.