With ARGON8X firmware v2.0 we introduced MPE support, providing multidimensional control of parameters and more expressive performance opportunities with compatible MPE controllers.
Enabling ARGON8X to respond to MPE involves the following steps:
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Navigate to the 'MIDI Settings' screen page
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Set ‘MPE Mode’ to ‘On’
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Set ‘MPE Master Channel’ to match that of your MPE instrument. Your MPE instrument may refer to this as its ‘MPE Zone’ – ‘Lower Zone’ uses channel 1 and ‘Upper Zone’ uses channel 16. Some MPE instruments may not specify a Master Channel / Zone – in this case the most likely value to use here is ‘1’. Please refer to the MPE instruments settings or documentation for more information.
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Set ‘MPE Number of Channels’ to match that of your MPE instrument. It is recommended to set this value as high as possible (on both your MPE instrument and ARGON8X) to
take full advantage of ARGON8X’s polyphony. Some MPE instruments may not specify a Number of Channels – in this case the most likely value to use here is ‘15’. Please refer to the MPE instruments settings or documentation for more information. -
Set ‘MPE Pitch Bend Range’ to that of your MPE instrument. Your MPE instrument may refer to this as its ‘Pitch Bend Sensitivity’. Some MPE instruments may not specify, or use, a fixed Pitch Bend Range – in this case use this value to set your preferred semitone range of the MPE X-axis. Please refer to the MPE instruments settings or documentation for more information.
This can also be done on Page 2 of the settings page in the MODALapp.
Each MPE dimension is mapped to the ARGON8X sound engine as follows:
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Left-right / X-axis (sent as MIDI Pitch Bend) – This controls the pitch of the note, with the range set using the ‘MPE Pitch Bend Range’ global setting (see above).
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Front-back / Y-axis (sent as MIDI CC 74) – This controls the ARGON8X Y+ modulation assignments.
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Pressure / Z-axis (sent as MIDI Channel Aftertouch) – this controls the ARGON8X Aftertouch modulation assignments.
A couple of extra things to note regarding MPE on ARGON8X:
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If Y+ or Aftertouch is assigned to any global sound parameters (LFO1 or FX parameters) then these parameters will change for all notes / voices and only the latest / newest MPE note will have control of these parameters.
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MPE is not available in Polychain mode
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MPE expression data cannot be recorded into the ARGON8X sequencer, and any MPE notes recorded into the sequencer are converted in ‘master’ notes.
- ARGON8X doesn’t support MPE ‘MIDI Mode 4’ (‘one channel per string’ voice allocation).
Please take a look at our Modal Minute for more information.
We also have a Quick Dive which goes into some more detail.