about the mp-201 and cp-251...
You can use these together to do several kinds of things which are synced to MIDI. Basically the MP-201 can sync to MIDI and put out voltages, and the CP-251 can't sync by itself but it can do stuff with voltages that you send from the MP-201 to the CP-251. Here are a couple of examples:
turn a Gate or square wave LFO from the MP-201 into a simple Attack-Release Envelope by running the output from the MP201 to the "Lag" input of the cp-251 and run the output from the Lag into your analog CV in of whatever you want to control.
The Lag shapes the rise time and fall time of the voltage you feed into it, so let's say for example you want to put a funky accent envelope onto the Little Phatty filter, here's how you can do it:
Set up let's say MP201 channel 1 as a Gate (gate mode = momentary) and set it to MIDI CC 1. Run the MP201 channel 1 output to the Lag input on the CP251. Connect the Lag output to an Attenuator on the CP-251 and the Attenuator output to the Filter CV input on the Little Phatty.
Now, in Cubase, make a MIDI track and on that Midi track drop a CC1=127 message wherever you want your accent envelope to fire.
You control the length of the envelope by how long you draw your automation (any time CC1 is 127 [or any value above 63] the gate is ON, any time CC1 is 0 [or any value less than 64] the gate is OFF).
On the CP251, the Rise knob controls the Attack time of your envelope, the Fall knob controls the Release time, and the Attenuator (after the Lag processor) controls both the amplitude (amount) and polarity of your accent envelope.
So this way you can drop a funky accent envelope exactly on whatever beats of your sequence you want, and then tweak the envelope time and depth in full analog realtime using the knobs on the CP251.
If instead of a Gate channel on the MP-201, you set up this same patch but set the MP201 channel 1 to be a square wave LFO, then you can get an auto-repeating envelope that is synced to MIDI.
Right this second there *is* a sync problem with the LFOs, namely the LFO cycle will always be exactly the right length to sync with your beats but the start point of the LFO cycle - the *phase* of the LFO, does not fall exactly on the downbeat every time you start your sequence.
This is a known bug that we are looking at very closely and will fix in the next firmware update for the multipedal. At the same time we are planning to improve the MIDI LFO sync with a new "phase" parameter, which will let you adjust exactly where relative to your beat the LFO cycle is starting. Once this is in place, the LFO sync will be tight as hell.
OK now another example... modulating the LFO of the CP-251. This one will get you some interesting hybrid action; whether it seems cool or overly squirrelly is up to your personal taste.
The deal is that the actual rate of the CP-251's LFO can't be directly synced to MIDI, because it's all analog. However, you can modulate the rate of this LFO using a CV input, which means that you can use the MP201 to do LFO RATE MODULATION that is in sync with your MIDI clock.
Just run an output of the MP201 to the LFO Rate input jack on the cp251... depending on what kind of voltage you send, it will determine how the rate of the CP251 LFO changes over time. For example you can set up a MIDI synced ramp wave LFO on the MP201... set it for 1 bar, for example... this will make the LFO on the CP251 start slow at the beginning of the bar and steadily get faster and faster until the end of the bar, then the LFO drops back to its slow rate at the start of the next bar.
A Sawtooth LFO would do the opposite, starting fast and decelerating over the course of the bar, then jumping back to its fast rate at the start of the next bar. A sample-and-hold (S&H Random) LFO from the MP-201 would cause the rate of the CP251 LFO to jump around between random LFO speeds, but the jumps from one speed to the next would always happen on the beat. So it's an interesting combination of free-running and MIDI sync, where the actual speed of the LFO isn't tied to the clock but your changes in speed are tied to the clock.
This gives you the additional advantage that you can tweak on the actual rate of the CP251 LFO using its dedicated rate knob on the CP251, and this will have the effect of scaling the range of LFO speeds that you get as a result of your MIDI-synced modulation. Hope that makes sense.
Like, using the example of a MIDI synced ramp wave where the LFO starts slow and gets faster over the course of one bar, you would use the LFO Rate knob on the CP251 to set how slow the LFO is at its slowest... all the way counterclockwise it would be very slow and ramp up to kind of fast, where if you set the LFO Rate knob on the CP251 all the way clockwise, then your modulated LFO would start out fast and ramp up to really fast over the course of each bar.
Hope this gets some wheels turning...
-Amos
