Root Bass Added to Stop-Accompaniment Mode

[ddmetzger]

I purchased a Korg microARRANGER in July 2012 and although I liked it a lot, I was unable to set it up to get a root bass note added to auto chords in “stop accompaniment mode”. “Stop accompaniment” is a term found in Yamaha owners manuals which describes a mode wherein all voices and features (such as single finger chords and auto harmony) play except that the rhythm is stopped and percussion is silent.
This is especially helpful for using an arranger to accompany Church congregational singing because it then sounds just like a regular electronic organ with a foot pedal keyboard for bass.
During the past year I have gotten around this problem by using an external one-octave foot pedal keyboard attached to the MIDI-in port on the microARRANGER. The MIDI-in on the Korg can be assigned to the accompaniment style bass track and is controlled just as though the style were playing. This works but with my poor eye-foot coordination things were slowed down a lot with frequent errors.
This past summer while researching this on the Internet I ran across a series of MIDI products manufactured by MIDI Solutions Inc. of Vancouver, BC Canada. These product include MIDI expanders, MIDI combiners, etc. Of most interest to me is the MIDI Event Processor. It is a small box about the size of two cigarette packs containing a microprocessor, non-volatile memory, and an operating system optimized for manipulating MIDI events. Programming is accomplished by the use of a user-friendly free PC program for designing a series of settings to manipulate MIDI events from incoming MIDI data in remarkable ways and then sending the modified event out the MIDI-out port.
My microARRANGER outputs left hand chord note data on MIDI channel 4 and the Midisolutions Event Processor analyses the chord to determine the root bass note and sends only that note (transposed down two octaves) to the Event Processor MIDI-out which is in turn connected back to the Korg MIDI-in port on channel 3. The Event Processor is self powered by the MIDI-in source obviating power warts and extra cord hassle.
Delivery of the product was prompt and the product support help was excellent. If you have a desire for this function (probably also works on PA50 but I have not tried it) then here is a great solution requiring only a small box in a MIDI loop from MIDI-out to MIDI-in on your keyboard.