I want to control a Korg nts 1 with a midi keyboard connected to zynthian

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I want to use or sync a Korg NTS from a Zynthian, so I can basically record it and play it with a MIDI keyboard from Zynthian. How could I do that?

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Hi @SYNTHFHZ - There are a lot of ways to hook up the three units you indicated. The Midi keyboard could directly connect to and drive the Korg. You could connect the Zynthian between them if you want to modify the MIDI signal. You could hook up the audio from the Korg to Audio In on Zynthian to record it.

The Korg NTS-1 and Zynthian can each send or receive MIDI over either USB or “5 pin MIDI”, (although the NTS-1 uses a mini-TRS plug to implement the MIDI). I don’t know about the capabilities of your MIDI Keyboard but since the other units can handle both you’re ok either way.

Sync might be easy or hard or even un-necessary depending on what you want to do. The NTS-1 has sync in and out and the Zynthian can do some type of sync via audio, for both units they could do midi sync as well.

Can you give us a bit more info on what you want to do and what keyboard you have?

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Zynthian can be synced easily via MIDI clock.

Recently we have expanded the syncing options and now in Vangelis & Oram Stage branches you can also sync using a sync pulse. We call this:

Beat Sync

For using this, you need to configure an input pin (from GPIO or MCP23017) to be used as MIDI CLOCK. You can configure the pin from the webconf’s wiring options tab:

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After having configure this, you have to connect the pin to the syncing signal coming from the Korg NTS, SQ-1 or your favorite module that generates a valid signal. It shouldn’t be above 5 Volts to avoid damaging the GPIO input.

Then, from the Tempo settings in the zynthian UI, set the clock source to “beat sync”. There are options for different beat divisors:

  • Sync Beat => 1 pulse / beat
  • Sync Beat/2 => 2 pulses / beat
  • Sync Beat/3 => 3 pulses / beat
  • Sync Beat/4 => 4 pulses / beat

When set like this, zynthian will auto-adjust the internal tempo and also will try to sync the internal beats with the received ones, but zynthian will keep generating the clock internally because it needs a faster clock to work. Please, keep in mind this has some limitations:

  • Fast changes are difficult to track and sometimes it take some pulses to resync
  • No way to auto-align bars. Obvious. It’s “beat sync”, not “bar sync” :wink:
  • No way to auto-align beats when using /2, /3 or /4 divisors. It must be done by the user’s ears+finger.

And yes … this is very interesting for implementing a beat detection & tracking algorithm. We are just one step from there: Tracking is done, we just need the detection part that generates “pulses”.

Enjoy!

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