Beyond that I'd like to be able to trigger drums from my drum machine, but even though my drum machine is set to the propper MIDI channel, it does not respond. Likewise when I wire the drum machine for input into the Amiga, nothing happens when I strike a drum pad.
Don't know which drummachine you have, but in general these machines are not designed to output midi notes. Midi out is basically for sending start/stop/tempo signals and for using midi thru.
On top of all this I'd also like to know how one goes about triggering your Keyboard and Drum Machine to start playing, and playing at the same BPM as the Amiga, when I tell the Amiga to play. I.E. let's say I've defined my patterns and songs on my Drum Machine and I've written up a little song on OctaMED, and I want them to sync and start playing together when I press play on OctaMED.
I think you should put the drummachine in the right sync mode. This to make sure it
a) plays in sync with the amiga
or
b) plays the midi notes
It's normally set one or the other.
Set midi channel on the amiga and drummachine to 10, which is the normal channel for these type of machines.
