Help using Cthulhu with hardware synth

[samj83]

Hi all - this is probably a basic question but I'm not very experienced with MIDI setups.

My goal: use the Cthulhu plugin to play arpeggios on my Prophet 5 (modern rev 4 version). I want to be able to do this live and I'm not sure how to set that up. Should I be using MIDI thru on the Prophet 5? In other words, I want to press notes on the physical keyboard and hear arpeggios played back based on whatever I've set it to in the plugin.

Is this possible? I'm pretty that is what is going on in this video, except he's using Ableton so I'm sort of lost on how to set it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_UsAtiHrAg

I have Cthulhu on an instrument track, and I am able to see the meter triggering on the track but the Prophet 5 is not outputting any sound (I have its audio out going through my monitors/interface separately). I tried playing with various I/O configurations in the DAW but bottom line I have no idea what I'm doing. Do I need to set up a separate instrument track and somehow put the Prophet on there as an external MIDI device?

For reference: I have setup the Prophet 5 in my MIDI studio and in the peripherals MIDI controllers tab set up Prophet5 > Cthulhu plugin AND a second Cthulhu plugin > Prophet 5 (I'm assuming this needs to go both ways since I want to trigger notes in real time?)

Sorry this was a jumble of info. Really hoping this is an obvious and easy solution! Thanks in advance!

[epm]

Hey,

The Cthulu manual is not really helpful since it doesn't even MENTION the aax version.

Here's how I set it up:

1 - Instrument track with Cthulu on it. Set the input of this track to however you want to trigger the midi. The output should default to "Cthulu Midi In".
2 - Midi track with input set to "Cthulu Midi Out", and Output set to the midi destination of whatever you want Cthulu to "play".

You'll also need to disable local key control on the Prophet so you are just sending midi notes from the keyboard and not playing the synth directly

[samj83]

Originally Posted by epm

Hey,

The Cthulu manual is not really helpful since it doesn't even MENTION the aax version.

Here's how I set it up:

1 - Instrument track with Cthulu on it. Set the input of this track to however you want to trigger the midi. The output should default to "Cthulu Midi In".
2 - Midi track with input set to "Cthulu Midi Out", and Output set to the midi destination of whatever you want Cthulu to "play".

You'll also need to disable local key control on the Prophet so you are just sending midi notes from the keyboard and not playing the synth directly

Amazing. I'm 90% there. I see the MIDI triggering and the meters going off. Turned off local control on the prophet like you said.

Last part I can't figure out: how do I actually hear/monitor what's getting played?

[epm]

Originally Posted by samj83

Amazing. I'm 90% there. I see the MIDI triggering and the meters going off. Turned off local control on the prophet like you said.

Last part I can't figure out: how do I actually hear/monitor what's getting played?

Make sure the Prophet it set to receive midi notes on the channel you are sending them on. There should be either a setting for "All" or whatever channel 1-16, and just ensure that your midi out matches that setting.

Also, a quirky thing that i've found is that midi tracks don't pass midi unless they are record armed. You'll likely need to record arm BOTH the instrument track with Cthulu and the midi track sending midi from Cthulu to the Synth by holding shift and pressing the record arm button on the tracks.

[samj83]

Originally Posted by epm

Make sure the Prophet it set to receive midi notes on the channel you are sending them on. There should be either a setting for "All" or whatever channel 1-16, and just ensure that your midi out matches that setting.

Also, a quirky thing that i've found is that midi tracks don't pass midi unless they are record armed. You'll likely need to record arm BOTH the instrument track with Cthulu and the midi track sending midi from Cthulu to the Synth by holding shift and pressing the record arm button on the tracks.

Thanks for the quick response and YES I wasn't record arming both tracks.

I hear it all now, and it is working, but I have to say I'm not super impressed by this plugin. I prefer not to record MIDI notes but to just use the software to create the arps and record them live into a track where I want them (I don't do EDM or house, it's more pop, so I don't tend to have arps running for a whole song, it's just accents and things like that). This plugin doesn't really work well when switching chords or notes, for example. I assume I would have to play it out recorded as MIDI, quantize, and go from there. Which i'm not interested in

I probably have to suck it up and just buy a keystep pro or some other hardware sequencer to control the Prophet if I really want this to work well.