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Middev and Midnam help for recognizing PA60 in Pro Tools 11

 
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castro4eva



Joined: 15 Aug 2017
Posts: 2
Location: Washington, DC

PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:00 am    Post subject: Middev and Midnam help for recognizing PA60 in Pro Tools 11 Reply with quote

For many years now, I have failed to have my PA60 recognized by Pro Tools. I used Cakewalk Sonar exclusively for any MIDI-related tasks up until more recently and have now started doing everything in Pro Tools. I saw that someone else in these forums started a thread a while back in relation to creating a midnam file for their PA50, which essentially has the same program instruments list. The only helpful advice anyone gave was "read your manual, the CC00, CC32, and PC values are all there." Great, I already knew that.

So let me break what I need help with down into 3 parts. I'm going to get more specific, because I tried writing my own custom midnam file years ago for PT 9 and it ended in disaster. If anyone has a midnam file for the PA50, PA60, and/or PA80 that they're willing to share, by all means, let me know. Otherwise, some advice on any of these 3 parts would be appreciated.

1.) They say the easiest way to go is to pick a similar series or model of keyboard and just modify its code. Reading early reviews of the PA60 shows that it was based on the Triton sound engine, so would modifying the Triton middev statement and Triton midnam file be the way to go, or is there a better Korg device to go off of? Here's a list of PT's natively recognized Korg devices that already have device declaration statements in the middev file and corresponding midnam files:
Korg 01-W, Korg 01-Wfd, Korg 01RW, Korg 01W Pro, Korg 01W ProX, Korg 03R-W, Korg 05R-W, Korg AG-3, Korg AG-10, Korg C-15, Korg C-25, Korg C-303, Korg C-505, Korg CX3, Korg i2, Korg i3, Korg i4s, Korg KARMA, Korg M1, Korg M1R, Korg M3R, Korg MS2000, Korg MS2000R, Korg N264, Korg N364, Korg Prophecy, Korg T-1, Korg TR-Rack, Korg Trinity Plus, Korg Trinity ProX, Korg Trinity, Korg Triton Le, Korg Triton Studio, Korg Triton-Rack, Korg Triton, Korg Wavestation A-D, Korg Wavestation EX, Korg Wavestation SR, Korg Wavestation, Korg X2, Korg X3, Korg X3R, Korg X5, Korg X5D, Korg X5DR, Korg Z1


2.) Before even tackling the midnam file, you need to modify the middev Device List file to add a midi definition statement for the PA60. Problem is, they vary from device to device. It's not as simple as picking one at random and changing the name to match your instrument. For example, the Korg Triton's midi declaration is much longer than other devices (see below). It has to do with things like MMC support, how the MIDI clock works, whether it's an effects unit or drum sampler, etc. Building off of problem 1, is the Triton statement similar enough where I can just change the name of the Korg Model from Triton to PA60, or are there other parameters I'd be missing by doing that? Here is are the device definition statements in the middev file for the Korg Triton vs the Korg Trinity ProX, and notice the Triton's is much longer and has a bunch of other parameters that I just don't understand (or know if they're applicable to the PA60):

<MIDIDeviceType Manufacturer="Korg"
Model="Triton"
SupportsGeneralMIDI="false"
SupportsMMC="false"
CanRoute="false"
IsSampler="false"
IsDrumMachine="false"
IsMixer="false"
IsEffectUnit="false" >
<Receives MaxChannels="16"
MTC="false"
Clock="false"
Notes="false"
ProgramChanges="true"
BankSelectMSB="true"
BankSelectLSB="true"
PanDisruptsStereo="false" />
<Transmits MaxChannels="1"
MTC="false"
Clock="false"
Notes="false"
ProgramChanges="true"
BankSelectMSB="true"
BankSelectLSB="true" />
</MIDIDeviceType>

<MIDIDeviceType Manufacturer="Korg"
Model="Trinity ProX"
CanRoute="false"
SupportsMMC="false"
Image="OMS1048">
<InquiryResponse Manufacturer="42" Family="3B 00" Member="1B 00" />
<DeviceID Min="1" Max="16" Default="1" Base="1" />
<Receives MaxChannels="16"
MTC="false"
Clock="true" />
<Transmits MaxChannels="16"
MTC="false"
Clock="true" />



3.) What is the proper way to organize the program instruments within the midnam (aka patch list) file for the PA60? The manual clearly gives me the data I need to know in order to do this by providing the CC00, CC32, and PC values for each program instrument. Visually, the "banks" on the keyboard are actually types of instrument (e.g. piano, e. piano, organ 1, organ 2, mallet & bell, etc.). But if you look at the data for those "banks," they actually include a mix of CC32 values and PC values. Usually, midnam files define banks as each having a unique CC32 value (e.g. CC32 value of 0 for "Bank A," CC32 value of 1 for "Bank B," etc.), and within each bank you have 128 program instruments each with an increasing value from 0 to 127 that match a particular bank CC32 value. Does this mean that I have to re-organize the way the manual indexes these instruments so that I have these uneven "Lists" that are like banks, but they have a differing number of program instruments within them from one list to another (e.g. List 1 has 128 instruments with PC values from 0 - 127, List 2 has only 105 instruments and their PC values are not all consecutive, List 3 has 98 instruments and their PC values are even more scattered, etc.)?
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phatt
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Joined: 15 May 2014
Posts: 59
Location: Victoria Australia

PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 5:06 am    Post subject: Re: Middev and Midnam help for recognizing PA60 in Pro Tools Reply with quote

castro4eva wrote:


Does this mean that I have to re-organize the way the manual indexes these instruments so that I have these uneven "Lists" that are like banks, but they have a differing number of program instruments within them from one list to another (e.g. List 1 has 128 instruments with PC values from 0 - 127, List 2 has only 105 instruments and their PC values are not all consecutive, List 3 has 98 instruments and their PC values are even more scattered, etc.)?[/size]


I would guess that would be the case,, as you say not easy to do.
I'm not familiar with this Midnam thing you mention but I am familiar with some of the CC and PC formats you ask in Q3.
I can confirm that *Visual* banks on the front panel have little to do with actual midi pc numbers and banks.

AFAIK Each manufacturer only has to adhere to (GM) on bank 1, All the other banks can be any sound they wish to slot in to that bank/PC number. Some of the lower end keyboards do actually have the entire 127 GM patches under bank 1 in obvious *Visual* order, i.e. piano, organ, guitar, bass, strings.

But as you have noted korg pa series adds some of the higher midi banks on the front panel *Visual* bank list simply to add more patch options for easy access. Hence from the point of view of programming midi bank numbers it creates a dogs breakfast. Yamaha calls these other banks XG (Extended GM) while other brands have other names like Roland's GM2.

All this is just using the other banks which you have noted is 128 banks each with 128 patch slots. BUT not all patch slots in the other banks may contain a sound (often a lot are empty), depends on how much money you wish to spend. Shocked

A Roland SC88 has a lot of empty slots as does my pa50.
I use my pa50 to play backing meantime I use a Roland pcr300 controller to access other patch's on unused midi channels of the pa50. Of course you have to setup all the CC and PC numbers in the PCR300 first which is a bit of a pain but I only needed a half dozen sounds. If I had to setup all the patches available it would take a lot of work. Of course I'm running that in real time so no DAW involved.

Regardless remote control is always a trick
Just in case you missed it,,
To get remote access to the pa50 you do need to set the *Global* parameters first otherwise nothing will work. I think there are at least 4 options in Global.

If you are trying to control all the pa60 auto acc stuff via the software then I wish you luck. As the Korg pa series is a lower value unit tiss unlikely to get much help for the stuff you want.
Phil.
_________________
Pa50sd, JV1000, tg100
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castro4eva



Joined: 15 Aug 2017
Posts: 2
Location: Washington, DC

PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 6:14 pm    Post subject: Re: Middev and Midnam help for recognizing PA60 in Pro Tools Reply with quote

Thanks, phatt. Surprisingly, I was able to use google spreadsheets and my extensive knowledge of excel formulas to organize that information after having copied and pasted it from a pdf version of the manual, which had all that PC and CC instruments data organized in a table format. From there, I organized the data under the appropriate header rows and then did a simple sort to arrange all the program instruments by increasing CC32 value first, then increasing PC value second. The manual only had it by increasing PC value or grouped by the visual "bank" on the keyboard, which was a mess for how it's supposed to be within a midnam file.

From there, additional formulas were used to write the corresponding row's data into the proper syntax for entry in the midnam file. Here's how the data looked after I was able to sort it (and you can see the syntax I started to organize it into on the far right).

Here's the coding for Korg Triton's midnam file, which was my source material/model for how I decided to go about making the PA60 midnam file.

Here's the coding for my custom midnam file for the Korg PA60, which puts the syntax coding you saw that I generated from my spreadsheet into use similar to how the Triton midnam file did it successfully.

As you can see, I decided to name these new banks (the 27 different banks of differing CC32 values from 0 to 26) by a corresponding letter of the alphabet. So bank 0 is really bank A, and instrument with PC value 1 within bank 0/bank A is A001, and so on. And as I mentioned, the higher banks have less program instruments in them. The Triton midnam file had 127 program instruments filling out each and every bank of a different CC32 value, so I'm not sure what to do.

So here are two things that I can see that may have caused a problem. First, since there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, for bank 27, I used "AA" as that bank's identifier. So similar to how "A000" was the patch number for program instrument with CC32 = 0 and PC = 0, I did "AA061" as the patch number for program instrument with CC32 = 26 and PC = 61. I don't know if the patch number is only supposed to be 4 digits, and by making it 5 it caused an issue, but that's one thing I'm not sure of. I have yet to look at other midnam files to see if this really is an issue.

The other potential problem is that unlike the Korg Triton's coding, my banks do not fill out to each have all 127. I only included program instruments that are identified in the manual. So maybe I'm supposed to "fill out" the banks with other generic instruments to round out 127 for each bank? And if that's the case, then with what? For example, Bank 26 is the final one for the PA60 and has just 1 active instrument, Brass Fall, which has CC32 value = 26 and PC value = 61. It is identified by this code:

Patch Number="AA061" Name="Brass Fall" ProgramChange="61"

What would program instrument with CC32 value 26 and PC value 0 be? According to my manual, it doesn't exist, but am I supposed to just put something else in there? And if so, what would the respective name and patch number be?
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