Midi Fighter Twister

I’m looking for a new midi controller for VCV Rack. I really like the look of the Midi Fighter Twister, does anyone have any experience with it controlling the rack?
I don’t really want keyboard or sequencer functionality, I want a minimalist, non linear approach to my music making. The idea of using one encoder to operate two functions is also appealing to me as is a small unit that won’t get In the way.
Any one with any experience with it or insight would be useful. Thanks :slight_smile:

I have a MF Twister and have had some success using it with Rack, but I foresee it becoming much more useful in v1 when it will be possible to assign knobs in Rack to MIDI CCs directly (i.e., not limited to where a cable can be patched).

As for the device itself, I personally think it more than lives up to the hype. It’s very sturdy, the knobs feel great, it has a ton of options, and (most importantly) it’s dead easy to configure.

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Thanks sweetestdestroyer :slight_smile: I ordered one a few days ago, it seemed perfect for what I want to do which is a minimal setup in vcv and for a controller.

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Agreed. Midi-mapping in V1 will be a game-changer. IMO the biggest thing missing from the virtual Eurorack experience is the limited ability to use physical knobs, levels, pads, etc. And that changes with V1.

MF Twister is an excellent choice for adding this physical dimension to Rack. MFT is a high quality product and is very customizable with its software.

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I had one long before I started using VCV Rack, and was pleased at how perfectly it works. Fantastic option for a MIDI controller IMO. It even visually works with VCV - 4x4 grid of knobs = 4x4 grid in the MIDI CC module.

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Well my little box of joy arrived today. Very happy so far with the little time I’ve spent with it. I’m sure with a little practice the mouse is history beyond setting things up initially.
My mission is to stick to a few carefully chosen modules that inspire me and maybe change out one every month or so if I feel so inclined. We’ll see, but bottom line workflow and expression is important to me and the MF is a little step towards that. It’s nice to feel a little more connected to what I’m doing.

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I’m currently trying to conceptualize what two midi mighter twister specific modules might include feature wise. What I would like to eventually do is have a module that sends midi clock to the twister so that the internal drum machine could be used along with cv outputs that would translate all of the drum machine functions into useful parameters so that you could basically have 1:1 feature access to all the internal drum machine features… another module would be a basic 16 step sequencer that used the second page of the twister. You could then have 1 page for drum machine sound sculpting, one for melodic step sequencer editing, one page for mixer and another for effects.

I didnt know my mf had an actual drum machine inside… I thought this was controlled from the DAW (like ableton and control surface mapping)

Nope, It’s actual firmware that sequences midi. It requires a midi clock in order for it to know that its supposed to do something in the first place but all the drum sequencing and sample selection as well as the velocity information is created inside the midi fighter twister. To get into this mode you press the two middle side buttons at the same time.

Cool! Never tried it out. I wonder what more logic could run on it if that firmware were hacked :open_mouth:

I can’t find any info online about the drum machine mode.
Can you point me to any document? It’s not referred to in the djtechtools manual.

trowaSoft Sequencers have an OSC layer that allows them to talk to any MIDI controller through Purr-Data. We have Pd patches for TouchOSC (layout in the “other” folder), Maschine Controllers, Launchpad, and the MIDI Fighter Twister included with the plugins in the “pd” folder.

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Can you inform me which midi fighter you have? Because it’s 1 of the 2 main selling points of the twister model.

It’s not a drum machine… which implies onboard samples or sampling capabilities… it’s simply a midi sequencer… google “midi fighter twister sequencer”

I have the Twister. I picked it up for 16 endless encoders with a small footprint.
I’ll read up on the sequencing capabilities.

I think it would take less effort than hacking… the firmware is available and the utility has an option for uploading your own firmware…

Personally, I would like to see somebody make a melodic sequencer that could be on the same layer as the rest of the encoders.

Thank you 1.0 :smiley: We can now use the midi fighter twister as a sequencer in VCV… The only midi information I found about the midi fighter twister sequencer is that it is on midi Chanel number 8 Knowing that I’ve started to turn knobs and midi learn things. I ended up with this patch: fighter seq.vcv (37.5 KB)

Unfortunately, It’s a bit too heavy for my computer, tell me if it’s working better for you.

There is a few things I found that was not cool like: Couldn’t be able to reset the sequencer from vcv (it’s true you have no access to the sequencer in the midi fighter utility) Also when you put two steps next to each other, it generates a longer gate. So I had to play with the clock… but still… And third row which should be levels and mutes ended to be CC so On and Off only So Guys, if you have some ideas to improve those things, I’ll be happy to ear about it.

SeeU

I have been working on full integration too.

What I’ve found is that I need to research if it’s possible to split out velocities through a module. There is only one Vel out on the midi-cv but each part channel shares one of four.

Sample selection is extremely easy to implement here, but the only challenge is velocity per part. and the gate issue that you mentioned…

As far as I can tell there are two basic options… Continue fiddling about to see if there is a way to route four velocity outs… or… hope that eventually somebody creates a couple of twister specific modules that know what to look for and how to process it internally.

As for the reset issue… Nothing is going to fix that short of somebody going into the firmware and making changes there.

Upon a little digging I found that the velocity information for each part actually comes through on 4 specific ccs

10, 11, 12, and 13

Which are known as

Pan, Expression, Effect Control 1, and Effect Control 2

With this in mind I’m gonna go back to the drawing board. I think I solved what I was trying to figure out.

Round One.vcv (16.9 KB)

Here is possibly the most basic implementation of valid output from the midi fighter sequencer. Torus is included so that in order to add another drum sound all you need to do is add another module, connect the gate and then send the output to torus. The velocity is handled by the drum mixer. I imagine this would probably work decently with any other mixer that had cv in on the volume. This way you can stack drums to get a fatter sound or use a different note input and it’s all on the same routing.

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