Question (or Task)

Is it really possible to sync up a MIDI sequencer and a Kyma timeline on a beat by beat basis? I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying with little success. I can get MIDI timecode to provide for synchnonized starting ... but I haven’t been successful at beat-to-beat synchronization. As you can probably imagine ... simply starting of the timeline in sync with the sequencer with both having the same BPM tempo is simply not adequate. My timeline has a LOT of stuff triggered by !BPM. What I really need is the ability to send something from the MIDI sequencer (even if I have to create a dummy sequencer track with a timing messages) that will stand in for !BPM in the Kyma timeline. The only thing I can think of at this point is to go in and reprogram all the instances of my !BPM fired control oscillators to be some sort of actual MIDI event. Is this really the only solution? Though it this seems likely to work (eventually), there will be no doubt be other problems ... since I have events timed to subdivisions of the BPM. I assume I’ll have to send steams of 16th and 32nd at q=140 (with a duration of 95% full duration to stand in for the 0.95 duty cycle square wave at multiples of BPM frequency?) in order to really sync everything up with this method. (Yuk!)

It looks like there is a Kyma timeline feature for slaving !BPM to a MIDI channel/event (bottom of timeline window), but it doesn’t seem to work at all ... at least not the way I expected. I made a dummy track in the MIDI sequencer with only the controller data I specified (i.e. controller # with value 127 every quarternote), but absolutely no luck.

-- MarkPhillips - 01 Feb 2004

Solution(s)

One approach would be to retrigger your metronome once per bar, for example:

!Trigger bpm: !BPM

Then have your sequencer send !Trigger at the beginning of each bar.

Another thought is to set the bpm to a multiple of the tempo and to use countTriggersMod: to get the submultiples of that faster beat, for example:

(1 bpm: (128 * !BPM)) countTriggersMod: 128

-- CarlaScaletti - 01 Feb 2004

Why use a single BPM and derive submultiples from it? Let's assume that any BPM is going to have some small numerical error in it that accumulates over time. If you pick one tempo and derive all the other subdivisions from that one tempo then, if there is and error that accumulates, at least it will be the same error over all the synchronized parts. In other words, they will stay synchronized to each other, even if there is a small drift due to numerical error.

-- CarlaScaletti - 19 Apr 2004

Solution(s)

-- MarkPhillips - 02 Feb 2004

Solution(s)

I'm new to this,

so first of all: hello everybody! Please forgive me, if I'm being stupid and newbeish and all that, but the reason I'm here is because I'm willing to learn... so:

Wouldn't Marks technique described above lead to a situation, where each individual sound is synced to the external sequencer, rather than a synced timeline, where all the sounds of the timeline sync to the timeline, and the timeline itself syncs to the external sequencer? I'm asking this, because I tried to do the same thing.

Like Mark I tried the feature at the bottom of the timeline window ( the one that lets you choose a MIDI ch); I tried the pull down menu in the timeline window, where you can set the clock source.. None of them gave me what I was after.

So I was glad when I found this thread and Carlas solutions. I think I understand the scipts, but I can't figure out, what to do with them, in order to sync a timeline. I did suceed in syncing a sound, but a timeline..... Do I need to use the soundToGlobalControl to get things going? And if so, how would I do it? I tried to figure it out, but no avail...

-- FlorianPrestel - 29 Feb 2004

Carla, I'm confused, what would be the point of multiplying and countTriggersMod?

Anyway, I don't know if this helps, but what I do is run my sequencer with a dedicated track which outputs 8th notes (quarters would probably work), and it's formatted so that it is 8 measures long, with Cs always being the downbeat, each measure being its own octave, and so forth. Then i can trigger, sync, or extract whatever I need from there, and always know my location within 8 bars at an 8th note resolution, and create my controllers with logic from that. The MIDI control track drives a locked Kyma Analog Sequencer, and that analog sequencer generates timing messages. It uses alot of midi bandwidth but otherwise functions really well. Dunno if it's applicable to your situation, but there you have it.

-- SarthCalhoun - 17 Apr 2004

I spent many hours yesterday struggling with this same problem, but was never completely successful. I had several Sounds with lots of uses of BPM - it was quite involved trying to find and deal with them all.

It occurs to me now that the simpler solution might be to make a Sound that sends the timing signal, and also makes a Global Controller for the Timeline... let the Timeline control the sequencer rather than the other way around. I'll try that tonight...

Still, it would be really nice if the Timeline could respond to MIDI time clock and MIDI Start/Stop messages as a sequencer does.

-- BillMeadows - 19 Apr 2004

I'm also new to this. Don't get Kyma to recieve MIDI-Clock. Ableton sends MIDI-Clock out of Soundcard 1 and Kyma should recieve it at the input of Soundcard 2, but doesn't. Can somebody help?

-- MarcusHorndt - 30 Nov 2011