Hi all - new member here. I’ve been an Elektron user for 6-7 years now and use their sequencers a lot, so I’m wondering what Hapax owners experiences are with using this with Elektron sequencers? The question is focused mainly on whether you still use the Elektron sequencer tricks from the Elektron sequencer itself (i.e. have sequences and trigs already programmed on the Elektron boxes), or if you let the Hapax take over completely - or a bit of both?
A few other things I’m not sure about:
can Hapax do midi slides?
If I’m using an iConnectivity MioXL as the centre piece for midi routing (I’m connecting ARmk2, A4mk2, OT, DN, Avalon, LXR-02, Minitaur and Faderfox MX12 into this), is it best to connect the Hapax to the MioXL as another host and manage the routing from there, or is it best sending out all midi from the Hapax directly and chain the midi signals via all the separate synths using midi in/out/thru?
Apreciate that’s quite a few questions, so happy to split into different posts
I might be wrong, but I think midi slides are not a thing?
Rather, it’s something that a synth handles, i.e. if there are overlapping incoming MIDI notes, it triggers a slide with the speed determined by the portamento value on a synth?
The way to go around this in MIDI is by programming pitch bends, but that might get fiddly fast…
As for the iConnectivity, I’d tend to think that if the Mio offers some additional functionality you need, stick it in the chain, and if not, don’t. As a principle, I think simple signal chains always beat complex ones.
I think you’re correct re: slides; having observed my Minitaur, this is how that seems to deals with sliding. I thought there may be some deeper midi trickery involved but what you say makes sense.
Thanks on the chaining. I’m going to experiment with this as it would be a shame to cut out the Mio, as this deals with quite a few complex midi tasks across my studio gear, so wouldn’t know what to do without it. I’m not so slick with midi routing on the hardware machines directly i.e. using thru and specifying midi channels etc. It gets baffling very quickly
synths have portamento… so indeed can be a synth engine thing.
however, it can also be done in midi… so on expressive controllers when we use MPE, and do slides, that’s entirely handled over midi.
(of course, keyboard players have also done this for decades using the pitchbend wheel ;))
slides can also be useful not just for pitchbend, but also if you are doing stepped modulation (which is what Elektron slides are… they are not limited to pitch).
in modular terms, basically we are talking slew!
of course, with the hapax (and daws) you can pretty much just draw automation, the disadvantage of this though , is automation is not attached to the notes/steps… so if you change the sequencer, you need to manually alter the automation…
(though once we get MPE editing this would not be the case… since you have per note expression)
when i program my 303 clones on Pyramid, turning on Legato in the Quantize FX achieves slide effects by overlapping Step note lengths. does Hapax’s Quantize have the legato option as well?
no it does not.
also the pyramid had a feature to add legato steps, which is not on the hapax.
note: both these feature, are used to help program portamento thats on the synth, by just extend note a tiny bit over its step length … its not a ‘midi slide’ i.e. done by pitchbend etc.
on the Hapax, you’d have to extend the notes manually, so they overlap.
the only picky bit about this is… depending on your synth, you might want this overlap to be very short, and that would require zooming in.
so you can see that having some kind of note property for legato could be useful…
or perhaps just a ‘shortcut’ to extend a note, but a very small amount.
or go a bit more musical, allow a group of notes to be selected, and select tie/slur
that stinks (feature request to come). i only discovered the legato quantize trick by accident and had been programming steps the way you describe before. definitely not the same as with legato, in my experience with it, at least for doing authentic 303 acid lines
I second the usefulness of that feature on the Pyramid. Hooked up with TT-303 it was a breeze making basslines. See Double Tab Mode. Expected that to be a Squarp Signature Setting , so surprised it’s not in there (yet). Will double down on that Feature Request.
Hey everyone, I’m using my Hapax connected to an MPC Live, Digitakt and OT at the moment to learn its functionality before then integrating it into the larger studio setup.
I have a few questions in regard to using the Hapax with my Elektron gear, I hope some of you can help me with:
I’m using a Drum track on the Hapax to control the 8 audio tracks of my Digitakt. I’ve got the DT’s tracks set up on ascending Midi channels, so Channel 1 = Track 1, Channel 2 = Track 2 etc…The DT is connected to the Hapax via the Hapax’s Midi C port. So on the Hapax Drum track, I’ve got the lanes set up accordingly, bottom one sending midi to Midi C / Channel 1 (Kick on the DT), second lane from the bottom sending midi to Midi C/Channel 2 (Snare on the DT) and so on. This works well, but now I want to add some midi cc control to the mix. I have an EC4 connected to the Hapax and ideally I’d use either the Hapax’s Assign function with its 8 knobs or my EC4 to control eg Filter Cutoff and Resonance on each of the 8 tracks of the DT.
My first question is, is there any way to assign the mapped CC knobs of the Hapax per track lane/row rather than globally per track? Either choose the output channel per knob or, even better, have 8 assigned knobs per selected track lane? (Maybe this is a feature request?) alternatively, I understand that each Hapax track listens to incoming midi data and then routes that to the specified track — but is there a way to send midi data through without having it processed by the Hapax? My aim is to have fixed controls on/through the Hapax to control each of the DT’s tracks’ cutoff for example…currently the only way I can see a way to do this, is to send the Hapax track’s midi CC output to my DT’s Auto Channel (in my case Midi channel 9) and then switch tracks on the DT when I want to manipulate a track via CC msgs. Equally, in this setup I’d have to record any automation directly to the DT’s sequencer, as otherwise any recorded automation on the Hapax would affect another track every time I switch tracks on the DT…I hope what I’m trying to achieve is somewhat clear lol.
Again using a Drum track, I’d like to control one audio track of my OT per drum track lane/row. I know how to set this up. My question is, is there any way to affect a note’s / trig’s pitch/midi cc on a per note basis on the Hapax (as would be possible on your average Elektron sequencer…hold the trig and change its note)?
I would like to programme steps of different pitches on a single lane (eg lane 1 of the Drum track is routed to Audio Track 1 on the OT…the first trig on the Hapax plays the sample in OT’s track 1 at eg pitch C4, the next trig at eg pitch D#4). Is this at all possible with Drum tracks at the moment?
I know I could set up one Hapax track per OT/DT track instead of messing about with Drum tracks for this, but that would take up an entire Project just for those two samplers (8 tracks + 8 tracks) whereas using drum tracks I get 85% of the functionality so far using only two hapax tracks in a project.
Any ideas / thoughts / experiences on this would be appreciated!
