Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

so the staple of my setup has been the roland sh-101. for a while i've been playing the sh-101 triggered by a tr606 between a myriad of projects. recently, i procured an ELECTRIBE ER-1 and thus began my first real foray into MIDI. without a whole lot of upfront research, i decided to purchase a midi-to-cv/gate converter in order to help me learn midi and get the ER-1 synced up with my sh-101, which is ever so important.

I purchased a Doepfer Dark Link and am not experiencing some issues I could use some troubleshooting with.

1) ultimately with the er-1. i would like to be able to communicate with the sh-101 the same way i did with the tr606, in the sense that i can go into a dedicated channel (i.e. the LT or HT's off the tr-606) and use that to program what the sh-101 does and when a note will play. i cannot seem to find anything in the manual nor can i find a previous owner of the ER-1 that seems to know what i'm talking about let alone how to get anywhere close to figuring it out. when i sync up the ER-1 w/ Dark Link to the Sh-101, the 101 just plays every single part i have programmed into the ER-1. is there any way to say, choose just a single one of the PS channels or an audio in or something on the ER-1 to be the ONLY thing that communicates to the 101?

2) being completely new to Midi-CV/Gate conversion and having very very basic knowledge of these processes, I am lost on some connection issues... particularly, why I can no longer appregiate the 101. is there any way to play the pre-programmed 101 appregiated parts thru the CV/Gate w/ the dark link? is this something that occurs in the dark links internal appregiator? if so, how? should i try another CV out into the modulation?

thanks!

The Dark Link seems to only select the Midi Channel to receive on based on its learn mode, so you'll have to read how to get the ER-1 to only transmit in Midi Poly mode, not Midi Omni mode.

The Dark Link appears to just switch on its arpeggiator by receiving a non-zero modwheel(Midi CC 01) value. If the ER-1 sends Midi Clock, the Dark Link automatically switches the arpeggiator on and syncs to it once it also gets a sustained note or chord.

On the SH-101, once you connect the CV and Gate in jacks, the local keyboard no longer functions. The keyboard is needed to operate the arpeggiator. To use the 101's local arpeggiator in sync with something Midi, you'd need a converter that has a Clock output and the converter would have to support syncing Midi Clock to this Clock output, which connects to the 101's Ext Clk In.