Startup Guide

Get up and running

Everything you need to know to start routing MIDI, managing patches, and adding effects in four easy sections.

1

Welcome to Midivex

When you first open Midivex, you'll see three main areas, the sidebar on the left for Patches and Routes, the central MIDI grid, and the Monitor and FX panel on the right. Start by clicking the Setup icon, the gear icon in the top right, to configure your MIDI devices. Optionally, you can close the Help menu in the bottom left if you prefer.

The main screen, sidebar, MIDI grid, and monitor panel
2

Configure Your Devices

In Setup, first hide any devices you do not need from the MIDI grid by clicking the eye icon for that row. Then give your devices friendly short names, like Hydrasynth, so they are easy to read, and set their default MIDI channel or set to All if they are multi timbral. Midivex is growing a database of synth presets to control things like program changes. Select a preset from the list to match your synth, or select Custom and manually set the parameters if you wish. Your app will update with new presets as we load more.

Give devices friendly names and set their default MIDI channels
3

Create Your Routes

Close Setup to show the Route matrix. There are multiple views of the matrix. We like Tube view for a clear visual layout. Click on the grid intersections to create routes between your input and output devices. Colored lines show your active connections. Those routes are immediately active and can be played. Notice how it shows the MIDI channel you set as default in Setup for that device. You can click and hold to pop up the MIDI channel selector and switch to another channel.

Tube view, colored lines show routes between your devices
4

Save Your Route Profiles

Pro

With Midivex Pro, you can create multiple route profiles and switch between them, perfect for moving from studio to live performance. Lite users get one profile that auto saves, which is often more than enough for most setups.

Save and name your route profiles for different setups
5

Add Effects to Routes

Click on any route to select it, then drag an effect from the effect panel into the effects chain. In this example, we have added an Echo effect to the Prophet 6, perfect for ambient pads and textured leads. Routes with effects show square connection points, routes without effects show round ones.

Tip

Try the Trance Gate on a bass synth. Hold down a note and it creates rhythmic patterns automatically. Or experiment with Orbits for evolving, generative textures.

Echo effect applied to a route
Orbits, a new generative effect that creates evolving MIDI patterns
Trance Gate, hold a note and it plays a rhythmic pattern
6

Play and Have Fun

Start playing. The Monitor panel on the right shows MIDI notes in real time as they flow through your routes. Look at the top toolbar to see chord recognition. It identifies what chord you are playing, which is incredibly helpful when composing or learning new progressions.

Live MIDI monitor with chord recognition