The looping possibilities in MIDI Ax goes way beyond the possibilities 
in any sequencer program. It could also be a nice introduction to this 
powerful, but maybe confusing program. Here is what you can do:

Set up a loop length in menu -> MIDI Ax Options -> recording length. 
Also click the bracket to the right of this to "play" or "play/record"

In the toggle switches menu, you can choose No Fingers to get a 
cleaner screen, plus the option to choose patches for 4 MIDI channels.

Now you can start recording, by pressing the return key. Stop the 
recording by pressing delete. You can record with a MIDI instrument. 
In this mode you don't have to use the mouse at all, although MIDI Ax 
obviously is mainly a mouse play program.

So far the program behaves like any sequencer with a loop recording 
mode. Each loop is also recorded to open mode sequences if you use the 
program as an MPE module in KCS. But now the fun can begin, as each 
loop is played back as a "hold". Each loop is displayed in the 
rightmost column on the screen. These holds can be manipulated in a 
number of ways. Here are some:

If you click on a hold and then drag your mouse, it will change pitch 
in the x direction and velocity in the y direction. Control-click 
deletes the hold. Alternate-click mutes/unmutes the hold.

In the row down to the right on the screen you find the letters Q, F 
and N, with brackets to the right of them. The bracket tells how the 
QWERTY-keys, the function keys and the numerical keys will work. Click 
on the right brackets. You will then get Hold Off, Hold Mute, Hold 
Grab and Hold Rev. Hold Grab means that you can drag the hold, and 
Hold Rev will reverse the hold.

If you click further on the Q brackets you will get some more options:  
H shift, H Loop, H Tempo, Hold X, Hold Y and H T Set. The program will 
do nothing unless you first go to menu -> HOLD QWERTY KEYS and set 
some values. The four rows correspond to the QWERTY rows, and allows 
you to control the first 10 holds with 4 keys each. Obviously you 
would want opposite positive and negative values so that you could 
change back. The H Loop will force a new loop point in your hold. 
Values of 127 and -127 in H Tempo will double of half the tempo. 

If you think this is fun, you could go further and explore the sliders 
section. The holds can also be manipulated by sliders. And sliders can  
also be controlled in a number of ways, for example by MIDI messages. 
So there seems to be endless possibilities here. 



Trond Einar Garmo