MIDI Logger or retrospective recording?

sirCombatWombat · Post by **sirCombatWombat** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:50 am

Hello everyone,

I have looked everywhere for a long time for a MIDI Logger, or a blackbox recorder if you will. Is anyone aware of such product? It needs to be stand alone hardware that records continuously. How the data is transferred out of the box is not important as long as it is relatively easy.

I'm not entirely sure but I have heard that Logic and Cubase have a feature called "Retrospective record" that does something similar, but I'm using Sonar and am not able to switch packages easily.

I have previously requested this feature to OASYS, a half hour buffer of continuously recorded MIDI, or even ten minutes if it matters. I'm sure the benefits do not escape anyone, but I have lost great ideas because I do not have it.

Best regards,

fallingman · Post by **fallingman** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 3:33 pm

Hi :

I don't have an answer but I remember one of the last Ensoniq keyboards had this back in 1998, where it would record everything you played no matter what up to a limit - I thought it was a brilliant idea, and have never seen it since.

I try and keep a Minidisk recorder running most of the time, but obviously that just records sound, not MIDI data.

There must be something out there, like a very rudimentary MIDI sequencer.

Good hunting !

sirCombatWombat · Post by **sirCombatWombat** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:21 pm

Thanks Fallingman.

I just saw an article that the Roland Fantom S has a Skip Back sampling, although only 40 seconds or so which is too little for my purpose and no midi there either.

But certainly the idea then is not new, I hope that Korg has an opportunity to develop something in this direction for the OASYS.

Kontrol49 · Post by **Kontrol49** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:16 am

Great idea,I would like something similar,although I use a slightly different method of keeping the Audio recorder running whilst I'm tinkering about,so I can go back and listen to something that I liked,it would be nice to be able to replicate it with Midi exact cos sometimes that improvisation can never be replayed perfectly and its a luxury to have the Midi data.

I must admit I liked the skip back sampling option on the Fantom,often wondered why Korg never had something similar on their workstations.

Just out of interest what is your need for such a device,so you can capture everything your playing whilst tinkering??is it just for recording the Data played from the Oasys or are you after more a device which could record all the data from several devices so you could capture live midi data??this would be something I'd be interested in.

there are ways around it by keeping the seq recording??

sirCombatWombat · Post by **sirCombatWombat** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:53 pm

Kontrol49 wrote:Just out of interest what is your need for such a device,so you can capture everything your playing whilst tinkering??is it just for recording the Data played from the Oasys or are you after more a device which could record all the data from several devices so you could capture live midi data??this would be something I'd be interested in.

I play and improvise mostly on the OASYS so this feature in OASYS would be enough for me at least for now. But what if the OASYS could log also the midi input?
Of course a device that could record for example 16 MIDI channels at once would be very flexible.

Kontrol49 wrote:there are ways around it by keeping the seq recording??

Yes, but inspiration has a tendency to hit when I completely forget about everything else.

Now that I think of it, a feature in the seq that would automatically load the programs effects with a program change would be great. That would be like a solo sequencer mode. That would enable one to improvise and change programs at will while recording.