Program Change from Octatrack

Pyramid
1

Hi,

Has anyone had a setup where an Octatrack is master and Pyramid receives start/stop, clock and program changes?

I jam with a couple of friends from time to time. They are both heavily invested in the Elektron world while I am more spread out over different brands. Currently we are using an Octatrack as master for the setup. This has worked fine when I had my Digitakt as my main sequencer, but now I have a Pyramid and want to include it in these jamsessions.

Last time we jammed we got the transport (start/stop) and clock to work just fine from OT to Pyramid, but we couldn’t quite figure out how to receive program changes. Program Changes were forwarded from OT via my Pyramid to my Digitakt with no problem and no lagging one pattern length behind. Program Change receive is of course on in my midi in settings. Is there any specific track settings or sequence settings I am missing here?

2

PgmChg is received fine on my Pyramid from the OT.

I think the issue might be: there isnt really anything on the Pyramid that responds to PgmChg. PgmChg is just a MIDI message.

What do you want PgmChg to do on the Pyramid?

Pls reference:

3

Ok, I think I get it.
So if I want to change sequences for example, my buddy has to send cc69 value 2 on a trigless trig for my pyramid to switch to sequence 2?

I’ve only used program change between elektron boxes before, and there is no need to specify what cc or anything, you just set «prgchg receive = on» in settings and the rest goes automatically. As in if my buddy switches from bank 1 ptn 3 to bank 2 ptn 5 on his Octatrack, my digitakt just follows. But for the pyramid to change sequences it must receive a cc message on cc69 from the OT?

4

Yes, that’s the best way AFAIK.

5

Just bear in mind that the OT will not send the CC message if it’s not different form the last one. Remembering this will shorten your WTF moment when “it worked a minute ago and now it doesn’t anymore”.

A typical case of WTF is if you send a CC from the Octatrack to cue a sequence (or a program change, whatever) at the beginning of a song, then you change manually your sequences during the live performance, and then when you start all over again, the sequence will not be cued because the OT considers that the CC has already been sent. You can force the OT to send it’s programmed CC’s by doing a double stop.

2 Likes
6

Thanks for the input! I’ll test these things next time we jam and if I remember, I’ll update the thread with what I find out.