Sending midi control change messages with scene changes

chamcham29

chamcham29

Member
I have an axe-fx II XL, MFC-101 III and a JVM H410. The JVM allows for channel selection via midi in control change signals. The way the JVM does it is by going into midi learn mode while a particular tone is set on the amp, and then when it receives a control change midi signal, it remembers that and every time it gets that same midi signal it will recall that tone setting.

I am able to successfully send preset changes midi control change signals to the JVM to switch tones, that works well. However, what I really want to do is send the control change signals specific to a scene within a preset. Is this possible somehow? Perhaps by settings a particular IA to send a control change and then having that IA turn on/off per scene?

Thank you in advance for any advice.
 
I don't there there's any way to make a scene change send a MIDI CC message directly the way you can with preset changes. You can use the IA switch method you mentioned though. You'd need to dedicate an IA for each of the amp's channels as a general use IA. Set it's On value to whatever MIDI CC message is needed to call up that channel and set it's OFF value to OFF so nothing is sent when it switches off. For each scene, then turn the IA for the desired channel on and turn the others off. You can also setup switch links for those IA's as well, so only one from the group can be active at a time. That would let you manually change amp channels on the fly with those IA's as well.
 
So, what I've done so far with some degree of success is setting IA 1 to IA 5 to be General Use switches that set the scenes and send a midi PC (program control) command to the JVM at the same time. Here’s how I did it:

Faslink from MFC to Axe
Midi Out cable from Axe to Midi in on JVM (set the axe to MFC echo to midi out in I/O:Midi)

On the MFC under Edit / Midi…

IA01 Axe-Fx NONE
- Set the switch to be a General Use switch instead of an Axe-Fx switch

IA01 c1 CC#001 Ch01 (default setting)
IA01 c2 CC#034 Ch01 (altered)
- Set the secondary control for the switch to the CC number that relates to a scene change on the Axe

IA01 c1 Off000 On127 (default setting)
IA01 c2 Off000 On000
- Set the value that will be sent to c2 CC#034. In this case, I’m setting the first scene value. If I wanted the second scene, I’d have sent 001, and so on...

IA01 pOF PC#001 Ch02
IA01 pON PC#001 Ch02
- Here I’m sending a unique program control function (PC#001) to the JVM on channel 2. The PC number aligns to the JVM channels 1-6 on the JVM footswitch. The I’m sending on channel 2 is b/c if I kept it at channel 1, the PC commands would run on the axe b/c it’s set to operate on channel 1. In case anyone wants to do this channel hack with a JVM, attach the MFC directly to the JVM, not to the Axe, and set the MFC to channel 2. Then set the JVM to channel 2 by sending a channel 2 signal after turning on the amp and holding the foot switch / midi program switch.

So with this setup, every time I stomp of IA1-5, the axe switches scenes and my JVM switches between the 5 tones I’ve setup to match the scene PC commands. It all happens seamlessly too with no pops, clicks, blanks…. when switching between scenes. Cool :)

The last thing to setup is switch links so that only one switch in the group of IA switches is on at a time. (page 29 of MFC)

So, although this all works now, what we really need is a midi-block on the axe. That would make things a lot easier. A general midi-block that can send both PC and Control midi signals on a particular channel. I can’t imaging a block of this sort would take up much CPU at all as it’s not doing any processing, just sending out a midi signal on a particular channel. If the midi-block is scene aware, we’d likely only need 1 block with different params based on the scene. Otherwise, it’d be necessary to have multiple midi-blocks (I’d hope for at least 5).
 
Last edited:
adewinne said:
So, what I've done so far with some degree of success is setting IA 1 to IA 5 to be General Use switches that set the scenes and send a midi PC (program control) command to the JVM at the same time. Here’s how I did it:

Faslink from MFC to Axe
Midi Out cable from Axe to Midi in on JVM (set the axe to MFC echo to midi out in I/O:Midi)

On the MFC under Edit / Midi…

IA01 Axe-Fx NONE
- Set the switch to be a General Use switch instead of an Axe-Fx switch

IA01 c1 CC#001 Ch01 (default setting)
IA01 c2 CC#034 Ch01 (altered)
- Set the secondary control for the switch to the CC number that relates to a scene change on the Axe

IA01 c1 Off000 On127 (default setting)
IA01 c2 Off000 On000
- Set the value that will be sent to c2 CC#034. In this case, I’m setting the first scene value. If I wanted the second scene, I’d have sent 001, and so on...

IA01 pOF PC#001 Ch02
IA01 pON PC#001 Ch02
- Here I’m sending a unique program control function (PC#001) to the JVM on channel 2. The PC number aligns to the JVM channels 1-6 on the JVM footswitch. The I’m sending on channel 2 is b/c if I kept it at channel 1, the PC commands would run on the axe b/c it’s set to operate on channel 1. In case anyone wants to do this channel hack with a JVM, attach the MFC directly to the JVM, not to the Axe, and set the MFC to channel 2. Then set the JVM to channel 2 by sending a channel 2 signal after turning on the amp and holding the foot switch / midi program switch.

So with this setup, every time I stomp of IA1-5, the axe switches scenes and my JVM switches between the 5 tones I’ve setup to match the scene PC commands. It all happens seamlessly too with no pops, clicks, blanks…. when switching between scenes. Cool :)

The last thing to setup is switch links so that only one switch in the group of IA switches is on at a time. (page 29 of MFC)

So, although this all works now, what we really need is a midi-block on the axe. That would make things a lot easier. A general midi-block that can send both PC and Control midi signals on a particular channel. I can’t imaging a block of this sort would take up much CPU at all as it’s not doing any processing, just sending out a midi signal on a particular channel. If the midi-block is scene aware, we’d likely only need 1 block with different params based on the scene. Otherwise, it’d be necessary to have multiple midi-blocks (I’d hope for at least 5).
Click to expand...
is there any way you could post a description of how you got it so only one ia switch is on at a time?
 
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