I’m thinking about building another app or service based on the music community’s needs and pain points. Here’s some questions I’ve come up with: if anyone would like to chime in, maybe we can solve some problems!

1. If you had a magic wand: What’s the one part of the business side of being a musician that you wish would just disappear?

2. What do you use a spreadsheet or notes app for that you wish was a proper tool?

3. What’s something you do before or after every gig that takes more time than it should?

4. What’s the last thing you Googled that you couldn’t find a good answer to about the business side of gigging?

5. If you had a very organized musician friend you could text anytime, what would you ask them?

I’m hoping to find some unsolved problems to sink my teeth into. Thanks in advance for any input!!

This is *not* a post about MIDI Captain MAX for a change!

Paint Audio has released brand new firmware for the Captains! See here: https://paintaudio.com/pages/surports

I haven’t digested all the info yet, but it’s a capital-M Major release, incompatible with the existing code. I’ve actually talked to them recently and it’s a complete rewrite in a different language: from Python to C.

The new code should be more performant and flexible than the older versions. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m looking forward to it!

Where does this leave MIDI Captain MAX? For the moment, nothing changes. I’m still pushing hard on it and have many unique new features, and OEM parity features, in development. I don’t plan on stopping. In fact, PA has been very supportive and I’m hoping to work closely with them in the future. The challenges will mostly be technical ones that I’m sure will have positive outcomes.

I’m looking forward to where this goes, stay tuned for more. In the meantime, more new MCM features are on the way!

Currently in testing for some big features coming to MCM:

1. Keytimes, Short/Long, Multiple Messages
2. Enhanced MIDI Thru

Parity features (meeting or exceeding OEM functionality)

• Keytimes
• Short & Long Press
• Multiple messages per press

The three parity features are all rolled into the Keytimes functionality. In other words, to utilize short/long press or multiple messages per press, you configure them via the Keytimes setup. It makes sense in the UI.

Existing button modes Toggle, Momentary are not touched, this is purely additive. The exception is if you happened to have Keytimes configured currently, you’ll have to roll it over to the new config. The old Keytimes didn’t really work right anyway.

New feature

• MIDI Thru 2x2 matrix

All permutations of midi-thru are now supported:

5–Pin (DIN) -> 5-pin
DIN -> USB
USB -> USB
USB -> DIN

The GUI Config Editor gets a 2x2 button grid to enable/disable any combination of MIDI Thru you want. All default on except USB->USB which will likely cause feedback, but it’s there if you need it.