MIDI Input

Video

MIDI Mapping Video Demo

Advanced MIDI-to-CV For Hemisphere

hMIDIIn screenshot

Phazerville greatly expands on the capabilities of the original MIDI In applet. MIDI messages coming in via USB are parsed and handled at a high level; the applet acts as a configuration UI, and also passes signals to the outputs.

If you switch to a different applet, the configured incoming MIDI messages are rerouted to the inputs of the selected applet and are combined with the physical CV or trigger input. This allows things like modulating parameters via MIDI CC or Pitch Bend, quantizing MIDI Notes to a scale, or triggering sequencer applets with MIDI Note-On. You can use AttenOff to scale and offset MIDI CC values. You can transpose TB-3PO patterns via MIDI Note and modulate Density with the Velocity, or Aftertouch, etc.

MIDI Clock, Start, and Stop messages are also handled automatically by the internal Clock Setup applet. Incoming MIDI Clock is divided from 24 PPQN to 2 PPQN internally.

MIDI Program Change messages can be used to switch among saved HS presets, and the channel on which the O_C listens for PC messages can be selected on the Global tab of the MIDIIn applet. It may be set to a specific channel [1-16], Omni, or Off. When the preset is saved, the PC channel filter is saved globally, so it won’t revert when switching presets.

Channel Settings

By default, all channels are set to “None”. A pair of the MIDI In applets can be saved as a Preset to quickly recall settings.

Each channel filters and translates incoming MIDI messages as output CV from MIDI In applet, or to a corresponding logical input for other applets.

  • MIDI Channel (independent for each CV channel)
  • Mode
  • Voice (only used in polyphonic Modes)

The available “monophonic” modes are:

  • None - disabled
  • Note - semitone-quantized pitch CV
  • LoNote - pitch CV corresponding to lowest held note
  • HiNote - pitch CV corresponding to highest held note
  • PdlNote - pitch CV corresponding to the “pedal note”, or the oldest held note
  • InvNote - pitch CV corresponding to the newest note, but the keyboard is reversed such that high note keys produce low pitches and vice versa
  • Trig - standard trigger pulse from NoteOn
    • generates Clock pulses at corresponding trigger input
  • Trig1st - like Trig, but only triggers once, until all notes are released. Useful for interesting one-shot effects
  • TrigAlws - like Trig, but also triggers when notes are released (always)
  • Gate - held high at NoteOn, respecting polyphony; goes low when all Notes are Off and sustain pedal is not pressed
    • holds trigger input high, but does not generate a Clock pulse
  • GateInv - Same as Gate, but high with no notes held, and low when notes are held.
    • Tip: Try setting 2 outputs as Gate and GateInv respectively, then trigger 2 different voices in stereo for a ping-pong effect
  • Veloc - Positive CV from the Velocity of the most recent NoteOn
  • CC# (auto-learn) - Positive CV from assigned CC#
    • when selected, it will display CC#-1 until a MIDI CC message on the selected MIDI Channel is received, at which point it latches onto the CC# of the message. Basically, select CC mode and wiggle a knob to auto-learn!
  • ChnAft - Positive CV from Channel Aftertouch
  • Bend - Bipolar CV from Pitch Bend

The available “polyphonic” modes are:

  • PolyN - Polyphonic Note, semitone-quantized pitch CV per-Voice
  • PolyG - Polyphonic Gate, held high at NoteOn, per-Voice; goes low when assigned Voice’s note is released
  • PolyV - Polyphonic Velocity, positive CV from the Velocity of the assigned Voice’s NoteOn; goes to 0 when the note is released
  • KeyAft - Polyphonic Aftertouch, positive CV from Key Aftertouch messages by MIDI controllers that support it (some only produce Channel Aftertouch)

Other Modes:

  • Clock - standard trigger pulse from MIDI Clock (divided internally to 2 PPQN)
  • Run - high gate output while MIDI Transport state is “running”
  • Start - standard trigger pulse from MIDI Start

Some notes on Polyphonic Mode configuration:

Each CV output can be assigned a Voice number. The highest assigned Voice number determines the size of the polyphony buffer. (Eg. if the max Voice is 3, MIDI-In will keep track of up to 3 notes at a time, for polyphonic modes.) The way the buffer handles the note messages depends on the selected Poly Config Mode. The available modes are Reset, Rotate, and Reuse. The polyphonic modes were built to behave just like those of the MIDI-to-CV converter module in VCV Rack.

  • Reset is the simplest to understand: each time the first note is played, its selected functions (Pitch, Gate, Vel, AT) are output on Voice 1’s CV channels. The second note uses Voice 2’s channels, and so on. The highest Voice’s outputs are overwritten by any newer played notes if all Voices are in use. Releasing a note frees up the corresponding Voice, which will be used by the next played note.

  • Rotate behaves differently. The last used Voice number is always remembered, and each new note uses the next Voice in the queue, even if that note was recently released. Once the max number of Voices is reached, the “oldest” Voice will be overwritten by the next played note. For example, if the user presses and releases the G3 note over and over, and 4 Voices are allocated, G3 will play on 1, then 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, and so on.
    • It cycles through the assigned voices, and wraps around. Oldest held notes will be overwritten by newer notes as it cycles through.
  • Reuse behaves just like Rotate, except if a played note was recently in the buffer and it has not been overwritten by a different new note yet, that same Voice which it used before is reused, until all Voices are full. If C4 is pressed and released, and it was buffered in Voice 2, each subsequent press of C4 will use Voice 2, until enough new notes are played to overwrite that slot.

Since each CV channel can be assigned a different conversion mode with individual Voice selection for the Polyphonic modes, and each has it’s own MIDI channel filter, the configuration can become complicated, but is extremely flexible.

Each CV channel also has a MIDI Activity indicator icon, which blinks when it processes a message, and the last page of the applet UI is a log console which displays the last 5 received messages not ignored by mode and channel filters.