MIDI Support

To use motif.factory MIDI export support, your copy of motif.factory needs to be registered.

Configuring MIDI Support

To configure MIDI support, go to the MIDI Preferences tab in the Preferences Dialog, and set up the following:

You can check that these settings work by pressing the Test Motif MIDI Settings button. When you press this button a test message is sent to the Motif and the subsequent Dialog will tell you if communication was successful or if there was a problem.

The above steps set up the basic communication mechanism for MIDI support, and you then can set up the remaining options according to your preferences:

The Transmit Buffer Size, Transmit Delay Between Buffers and Transmit Delay Between Objects values may require adjustment depending on your MIDI interface. I find that the following parameters work reliably on my system.

 Device 
 Transmit Delay Between Buffers   Transmit Delay Between Objects 
 USB  10ms  50ms
 MIDI  50ms  100ms

motif.factory sends data to the Motif by dividing the data into packets the size of which are specified by the Transmit Buffer Size value. When motif.factory sends a packet it waits for the time period specified by Transmit Delay Between Buffers before sending the next packet, and it waits for the time period specified by Transmit Delay Between Objects after the last packet is sent. The delay parameters are specified in milliseconds. You may need to adjust these values (smaller buffers, longer delays) if communications is not reliable, and you may if you wish adjust these values (larger buffers, smaller delays) to maximise data transfer performance. If you adjust these values, please ensure that you test the transfer to ensure it is reliable, otherwise you may risk losing data. Note: Some MIDI interfaces do not like large packet sizes: I recently upgraded to a MOTU interface and ran into problems with MIDI export until I altered motif.factory to send messages in small chunks defined by the above parameters!

Copying/Moving Data

In operation, using MIDI is quite straightforward.

You can get all the MIDI data into any Child Window (including the Motif Synthesizer Window) by selecting the Import from MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the   button on the Tool Bar.

This imports all the data that you have set in the MIDI Preferences options to be included in bulk transfers.

Similarily you can also export all data using the Export MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the   button on the Tool Bar.

Note if you import or export MIDI data to/from a Child Window which is opened from a data file, then the Motif Synthesizer Window is also updated with the data being imported/exported.

You can also import/export individual Objects or a selection of Objects by selecting the Import/Export memory options upon the Object's Context Sensitive Menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts for doing this.

And you can also move/copy Objects between the Motif Synthesizer Window and Child Window using drag and drop.

You can also import/export a Object to/from the Motif Edit Buffer by selecting a single Object and selecting the import/export to/from Motif Edit Buffer options from the Object's Context Sensitive Menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts for doing this

Exporting Objects from motif.factory to the Motif Edit Buffer is really handy, for example, when trying to find a particular Object in a file and you don't wish to load the file into the Motif.

Finally you can also perform all the operations on Objects in the Motif Synthesizer Window that you can upon Objects in a normal Child Window.

If you have the Automatically Update Motif after Synth Window Edit option active, when you change data the Motif Synthesizer Window then the changes are automatically exported to the Motif. If you are making a lot of changes, you may find yourself waiting quite a lot during the time it takes to do these exports.

So you may wish to turn the  Automatically Update Motif after Synth Window Edit option off during intensive editing sessions. Once you've made all your changes you then select the Export MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the     button on the Tool Bar  Export option to manually export the changes.

If you quit motif.factory with changes still present in the Motif Synthesizer Window that have not been exported, then you will be asked if you wish to export the data or not.

MIDI Keyboard Routing

motif.factory has a facility to allow MIDI data from an additional MIDI input port, defined in the MIDI Preferences options dialog, to be routed to the port you have selected for motif.factory to output MIDI data on. This allows, for example, you to use a master keyboard (which may be closer to your computer) to be used when auditioning Motif sounds that you've sent from motif.factory to the Motif edit buffer.

You access this feature by selecting the Motif MIDI Router ... option in the  MIDI Menu or by pressing the F12 function key whenever you need it, which activates the following dialog.

The name of the menu option will change depending on the selected device.

The router uses the MIDI channel defined in the MIDI Preferences dialog This can either be the channel transmitted by the source device, or the specified channel.

The routing is active until you close the dialog by selecting the Close Channel button or by pressing the ESC key.