MIDI-1 + Bass station + all the mysteries (at least to me) of MIDI

Greetings fellow wise men,

first of ll please forgive any offensive ignorance coming out of these lines, I’m a gentle newbie landing on the impervious platform of “music+electronics”.

Anyway: I’ve been exploring VCV Rack for some weeks now and I suddenly tried to discover what could be done by using my Bass Station 2 as MIDI input for Rack, and consequently having another source of sound for, say, the same sequence.

Main things (Gate, CV) work with MIDI-1 but I’m wondering about those CLK1 and CLK2 outputs. My first and (IMO) obvious hope was for those to be subdivisions (with the benefit of choice on top of that!) of the Arpeggiator/Sequencer of the Bass Station but DARN that is not happening …

Those little holes are just as black as my current vision of my future in virtual modular…

So, am I making a rookie mistake in understanding how it works or is there an actual trick (and a consequent lesson) to be learned ? I have scavenged the web for both the MIDI module and the Bass Station and don’t seem to have found peace.

I’m running Linux UbuntuStudio (on both ALSA and JACK)
Bass Station USB direct into the laptop

Thanks for every minute you spend on this
:wink:

N.

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In fact I solved the problem myself, found that there is a MIDI start/stop command by pressing Function+ARP On after having set CLOCK OUT by pressing Function+LATCH

In case someone else was looking for that answer…

It’s ok. MIDI clocks are fairly open to interpretation as to how they work.

well the problem was more about the relationship with the keyboard’s own clock, I didn’t seem to be able to find a way to get that clock out of the bass station and through those outputs into vcv rack

it looks like the problem is solved now, it has to be sent out manually at least once

This should correspond with a MIDI Start message going on the wire. It’s necessary to have one before you send time codes.

It’s exactly as you say, sir

In fact, being the embarrassing newbie that I am, I had no idea it had to be done (and to be honest it was also kinda hard to find an answer to that question on Bass Station related forums/manuals/websites…)

now it all works as I wished for and it’s so much fun…

thx!
N.

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