MIDI Clock from OnSong to Helix - wireless?

[Rezzy777]

Hello,

 

I want to send the MIDI Clock from my selected song in OnSong to my Helix - wirelessly.

 

After days of experimenting I finally found this page OnSong's website that says
OnSong' s MIDI Clock should never be used wirelessly due to latency problems. 

 

Since I'm a bit stubborn I thought there might be a way around this,
where I can somehow use OnSong to send a MIDI message to the Helix

to just set the BPM of the selected Helix Preset without using MIDI Clock.

 

Any ideas if this is possible?

 

Many thanks in advance!

 

Peter

[Schmalle]

If OnSong can send MIDI CC messages on the count quater notes you could send CC#64 (Tap Tempo).

[Rezzy777]

You are right, I just tried this and it works (thank you)

 

The problem with this solution though is that it takes quite long for the Helix

to come down from let's say 120 BPM (Song #1) to 80 BPM (Song #2).

It takes about 5 seconds which is actually quite long when playing live...

 

Any ideas how to improve the speed?

[DunedinDragon]

The easiest way to do this is to have each song as a preset set to the appropriate BPM of the song.  Change the preset, the BPM changes on OnSong and everything stays in sync, as long as you maintain that strict BPM for the duration of the song.  That's how most people do it, but that means everyone must be in sync via a click track or something similar.

[Rezzy777]

Yes, but I prefer to have OnSong on my iPad (with the BPM stored per song) to be leading.
This way I don’t need to have copies of the same Helix Preset for every little BPM difference ;-)

Thanks anyway!

[DunedinDragon]

On 12/12/2023 at 1:27 AM, Rezzy777 said:

Yes, but I prefer to have OnSong on my iPad (with the BPM stored per song) to be leading.
This way I don’t need to have copies of the same Helix Preset for every little BPM difference ;-)

Thanks anyway!

Then have OnSong send the MIDI command to the Helix to load the preset for that song which has the BPM set correctly.  That change is immediate.  There are literally hundreds of ways to handle this kind of stuff that falls under the category of stage automation.  I do it every week at our church and have for years, but a good resource on the subject is Will Doggett's From Studio To Stage website.  Maybe you can get some ideas from his videos.

[Rezzy777]

Then I would still have multiple copies of a single Helix Preset just for different BPM’s ;-) ;-) 

Thanks anyway!