Using the One as a MIDI recording for jam sessions?

It's taken a bit but I'm slowly building up what something like the One can do for my workflow. I'm wanting to go DAWless and, minimum, all I really need is a way to use my MidiFace 16x16 USB interface so I can use my main synth/keyboard as a controller to my other synths without having to rewire everything when I wanna go dawless.

While there's other solutions to this, I'm heavily leaning towards the One for all of other stuff and one of them is wondering about if I can use it to record jam sessions? Basically me live playing a synth, using my keyboard, but also knobs on the external synth, capture that in One and then later go back and listen to it, copy parts, slice it, etc.? Primarily for MIDI but I might want to do that with audio too (but that's secondary as part of my DAWless journey involves a Portastudio for funzies).

Basically, speaking of, a rough equivalent to the Portastudio but for MIDI, not audio.

So much of what I find relates to smaller loops and I can't find much info about long form recordings, other than it seems like the One can do it, but not what you can do with the recording once you have it.

This is easy to do using MPC’s audio tracks. As for MIDI, I think it should be possible too.

Looks like the latest MPC 3 _might_ have fixed at least some of the MIDI issues?

I did notice that it's somewhat backwards coming from Live. I'm used to the arrangement view in Ableton always having MIDI clips (just like samples) and MPC only seems to do that for samples. So copying a MIDI section requires a few more steps to set the loop points. For using the MPC as a MIDI recorder, this is generally ok as it'd be so I can recall ideas. But for structuring, it'd be nice to turn parts of the recording into clips for moving around. I realize I'm backtracking a bit since I wanted a long record mode and looks like I have it. Just surprised at the lack of clips (unless I'm missing something).

I don't know how that relates to using the...uhh...not arrangement option in MPC 3?

Going off what I'm reading and seeing on the YouTubes and such so trying to piece together info without having my hands on one. I'm leaning towards picking up a used one though. If I don't like it, well, I can resell it.

Another alternative was looking at Polyend Tracker since I'm a tracker kid at heart having grown up with them, and use Renoise in my current workflow for things. But while it can do free-flow recordings, it's not seemingly as capable as a MIDI brain of sorts like the MPC can be (minus the MIDI issues anyway)

EDIT: Aha! This helped: viewtopic.php?t=218087

So if I understand that, I could use arrangement to more easily sequence an...err sequence and then chain them together in song mode. I still don't know how I might take parts of a long sequence into short parts. I assume, again still trying to grok all this without having a One on hand, I can copy a sequence, then clip out what I want to keep and delete the rest.

Sorry haha lots of self replies and aha moments in between. MPC is, I guess as folks know here, quite a lot to take in at first.

Looks like the latest MPC 3 _might_ have fixed at least some of the MIDI issues?

Nothing was fixed.

Ah dang. Referring to the Multichannel Note Off specifically (viewtopic.php?f=48&t=210361) or something else? I saw some vids showing some MIDI things have been improved. As a (possible since I haven't purchased anything yet) newcommer, I'm still trying to sort out what the problem is/are.

based on what I'm reading, I might get nailed by that in some edge cases. All my synths are on their own DIN MIDI In/Out on my Midiface 16x16. The only place I use multiple channels right now is if I'm in multi-mode on my Virus. But that's pretty rare these days. The other case is my Impact is connected to my OB6 (via MIDI Thru) for clock sync. That's to save on a MIDI cable though, so I can just as easily add it to my Midiface and avoid that.

Definitely good to know. I can see how some folks would be super mad given how long it's taken to fix something that seems so simple. I used to use my Virus in multi-mode all the time and in that case, the bug would be a pretty huge deal.

m00dawg wrote:Ah dang. Referring to the Multichannel Note Off specifically (viewtopic.php?f=48&t=210361) or something else? I saw some vids showing some MIDI things have been improved. As a (possible since I haven't purchased anything yet) newcommer, I'm still trying to sort out what the problem is/are.

I they hinted that that bug might get fixed in the next update in May, but we'll have to wait and see.

That's what it sounds like yeah. If that's the main issue, now that I know it's a thing, I can work around it in my setup. Not really a big deal though I would've been super confused if I didn't know about it. I do think some of the ire against AKAI is apt here as it seems pretty fundamental and also shouldn't be hard to fix at least in theory. I have to deal with low-level MIDI messages for some other projects. I'm writing a music tracker for the Commander X16 8-bit computer called DreamTracker. Doing that in assembly but I'm sure MPC's OS and things are written in something like C. But either way, the MIDI channel is baked into the note-off message. It's impossible to miss. Could be whatever layer above the message they are using to process it is where things are gummed up. Wild speculation there, but yeah kind of a big miss especially going on 3-4 years.

Whoa that's pretty neat, thanks for that! Yeah I could see myself using that for some stuff.

I'd love to see a full blown tracker mode but on the other hand, having never done things the "MPC way" I think trying something new (to me, I know the approach dates back to 1988 ) is also a good idea. I do quite like the Polyend Tracker but for what I'm wanting to do, the MPC does make more sense. In an unlimited funds world, of course, i'd get both But I don't live in that world and the band's dawless approach is also meant to be more free flow than I would typically use a tracker for. But if the MPC methodology works, I could see using Polyend in the future in tandem.

Also found this video showing using the MPC as a MIDI hub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVt7cZnFCWk

For our extreme dawless stuff, I wouldn't be doing things in defined sections (tracks? still trying to get used to tracks, sequences, arrangements, and songs ) but yeah what he's doing is very similar to what I would be. I see he almost ran into the MIDI channel bug though haha.

I ended up buying a used One w00t! It's not here yet but I'm excited to take it for a spin when it arrives (Wednesday). Thanks for all the help folks! I know my questions were pretty newb and I do appreciate that folks took the time to answer them.