Korg Forums

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

Hey, guys.

The Fantom I'm talking to gets easily overwhelmed (I thought of suggesting therapy, but I don't think Roland's insurance would cover it). If I have more than a couple of channels in a combi set to EXT -> Fantom, the pipe gets clogged and there are severe problems with timing.

That's not a big deal since I don't work as a keyboard player. However, I'm a geek, and I'm lazy. If I'm playing the Kronos -> Fantom on channel 1 and want to switch to channel 2, I have to edit the combi, click the dropdown menus for channels 1 and 2, turning 1 OFF and 2 to EXT.

My original plan was to set them all to EXT and just unmute what I wanted, but even when muted, the Kronos still sends data to the channels, causing said overwhelming.

The Kronos is so programmable I'm wondering if there's some clever way of setting one of the hardware controllers to cycle through OFF / INT / EXT / EXT2, or do a direct change between EXT and OFF. I haven't been able to figure it out yet so I thought I'd see if the more experienced amongst you might know how to accomplish this.

Would appreciate any ideas that would enable my laziness.
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Studio: Cubase 13 | Windows 10 | Yamaha TF5 | Mackie MCU | CMC AI, QC
Keyboard Station: Kronos 2 88 | Fantom 7 | JV 2080 | Cubase 13 | Windows 10 | Focusrite 18i20 | CMC TP
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Chris Duncan
Atlanta, GA, USA, Earth

CliveJ · Junior Member Joined: 30 Dec 2020 Posts: 91

Hey Chris! - seems you are a man in a mission recently.

Firstly, have you turned off sysex yet?

Secondly I have no experience in this respect but I would try this: Open an empty sequence and use “copy from combi” to bring the combi into it. Now set a channel to record and change your assignments. If the sequencer can do this you will be able to get the messages from the track. I actually thought this impossible but looking at the MIDI implementation doc there is reference to channel status so there may be hope.

Thinking about it that would be an interesting excercise - being able to play a track on internal and then external, or both, in the same track. But I don’t see what you’d gain if just effectively muting. There’s nothing to transmit until there is data in the track.

I appreciate you’re not using the sequencer so what channel data are you trying to suppress?
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Now let’s think of a reason why it CAN be done...

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

Yeah, I have periods when I go into geek mode, and that's when I try to do all the technical things in the studio. The goal is to get that done when I'm into it, and then when I make music I can keep my head in musician territory without having to stop and be a geek, which is a real buzz kill for me when I'm playing.

I did turn off sysex, thanks for that!

I studiously avoid the sequencer. There's a lot of power there, but the workflow just doesn't gel for me. It's one of the main reasons I bought the Fantom.

I thought the same as you, that there's nothing to transmit until there's data, but we discovered that Kronos transmits all that controller data whether the combi channel is muted or not. I think that's kinda weird from a design perspective, but it is what it is.

What I need to suppress is all that controller data. Even after clearing out most of the three pages in midi filters, I still want, at minimum, to have damper and the joystick +/- y enabled. The idea was to have that enabled on all channels, and just set the ones I'm not using to OFF. And that works, it effectively suppresses the CC data.

The problem is that if I have channel 1 unmuted and set to EXT, then if I want to play on channel 2 then I need to set channel one to OFF, or we start getting into data overload. I haven't done a scientific test yet, but I believe I started getting delay problems after turning the third channel on. And yes, I think it's pretty weak that the Fantom overloads this easily, but it's more important to know how to work within the constraints of the gear.

And like I said, being able to tie a controller / button to EXT / OFF is pure laziness. I can do it on the combi edit screen, but I'm a geek, so I want to see if it can be done. Because it's cooler if I can. Smile

I spent a lot of time poking around the controllers pages and couldn't figure anything out yet, but I haven't dug deep into the reference manual. Like most geeks, RTFM usually comes last, but I think that's what happens next.

Will definitely share stories if I get it sorted.
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Studio: Cubase 13 | Windows 10 | Yamaha TF5 | Mackie MCU | CMC AI, QC
Keyboard Station: Kronos 2 88 | Fantom 7 | JV 2080 | Cubase 13 | Windows 10 | Focusrite 18i20 | CMC TP
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Duncan
Atlanta, GA, USA, Earth

CliveJ · Junior Member Joined: 30 Dec 2020 Posts: 91

Ok - perhaps an easier way: I see you’re on Windows. Why not grab a copy of MIDIox and look at the data stream? It’s easy to filter and drill down.

On the other hand you’re in Catch 22 - you would have to enable sysex to use an external controller.

I think the only way you’re going to deal with this is to use MIDIox, or an external box, to filter the data down to the Fantom MiDI channel after it leaves Kronos.
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Now let’s think of a reason why it CAN be done...

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

I think we may be talking about two different things. I'm not actually trying to manipulate any of the MIDI data.

Let's say that you wanted to may the joystick +/- X control to something like the LFO rate. I'm just making up an example here but I'm pretty sure you can map the hardware controllers to various Kronos functions like most other synths.

So, what I'm trying to figure out is if I can map maybe one of the knobs at the top to the channel output destination, so that turning it would scroll through OFF / INT / EXT / EXT2.

It seems unlikely, honestly, but that's the cat I'm trying to skin.
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Studio: Cubase 13 | Windows 10 | Yamaha TF5 | Mackie MCU | CMC AI, QC
Keyboard Station: Kronos 2 88 | Fantom 7 | JV 2080 | Cubase 13 | Windows 10 | Focusrite 18i20 | CMC TP
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Duncan
Atlanta, GA, USA, Earth

CliveJ · Junior Member Joined: 30 Dec 2020 Posts: 91

That’ll learn me - I thought you were talking about external hardware controllers 😂
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Now let’s think of a reason why it CAN be done...

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

CliveJ · Junior Member Joined: 30 Dec 2020 Posts: 91

Parameters manual, page 1122, says Kronos knobs can send predefined CC. Doesn’t mention sysex so I think your idea is a bust.
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Now let’s think of a reason why it CAN be done...

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

KK · Platinum Member Joined: 13 Oct 2016 Posts: 1422

Hi there,

I often use MIDI-OX for such things. With its MIDI mapping, you can tell the freeware to transmit custom SYSEX things when it receives anything. So you could definitely achieve what you want and much more.

For example, with MIDI-OX I can create custom velocity maps for the Kronos (I wrote something about this years ago here) or you can decide that when you press the C8 key or push on the soft pedal, then whatever SYSEX is transmitted or then it switches to any other program, combi or start the hidden pong game on the Kronos LCD (OK this last one is a joke, but all the rest is true). Cool

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

KK · Platinum Member Joined: 13 Oct 2016 Posts: 1422

There was actually such an Easter egg in the Kurzweil 2000. Laughing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD5UsofF1QE

ChrisDuncan · Senior Member Joined: 17 May 2018 Posts: 389

CliveJ · Junior Member Joined: 30 Dec 2020 Posts: 91

Gives you something to do during the drum solo Laughing

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Now let’s think of a reason why it CAN be done...