One of my synths sends its notes as midi to its sound generators AND to the outside world via midi-out. Often if you use a sequencer this is not what you want. I’ve always been able to set my synths (the ones with a keyboard) in the ‘midi’ mode, which meant that they only send midi to the sequencer which would then sent it either back to the synth or to some other synth. In this way any of my keyboards can be used as a master keyboard to play any of my synths as long as the sequencer sends the incoming midi data to that synth. This is a standard way of working with sequencers. Well, I recently got a synth that does not know such a mode. So what happens is that it plays a note, sends the midi data to the sequencer, gets this echoed by the sequencer and plays the note again. A perfect little feedback loop!? Because of the small time delay this results in a flanging effect which can be nice but it also means that your synth uses twice the number of voices it normally would.
So this can be solved by either having the sequencer not echo the midi data OR getting the synth to ignore the echoed midi. The prior is cumbersome if you are playing and recording and replaying and disturbs the ‘creative process’. The synth does allow to shut off the midi input, but that is also cumbersome because it means diving into a few menus and changing the settings for all midi-in channels. So … I made a little foot pedal that is set between the sequencer and the midi-in of the synth and can stop or pass thru the midi-in data. Doing this with one foot I hope is a much more convenient solution to the problem.
Phew, a long introduction for such a simple device!
If only Moog would update the firmware so that I would not need this switch. Why does a modern keyboard NOT have a “midi mode”. All my +20 year old keyboards do have this !
One afterthought:
There is something you have to pay attention to if you use a switch like this. If you break the connection after a note was started and before the note off event is received by the synth, that note will keep playing. So you need to press the switch between note events coming from the sequencer.
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