[PlanetCCRMA] rosegarden -- synth only plays one instrument

[csynan]

Thanks for your feedback, the problem is solved!  

 I am writing the solution here so it can be indexed in case someone else has the same problem.

 The first part of the problem was getting the synth to listen to more than one MIDI channel.  The manual described this and so it was not difficult.  

 What I did not know is that I also had to tell the synthesizer to assign its "tracks" to the midi channels.  I assumed that it automatically did so, but it did not.  Once I figured that out, it was relatively easy to edit "tracks" on the synth and assign them to MIDI channels, and the program change events (or instrument assignments or whatever) now seem to work on the respective tracks.  I am still having some challenges, because the keyboard doesn't seem to use standard MIDI channel mapping, but I am confident that as I continue to learn and experiment that I will be able to figure that out.  If I figure it out I will submit the .rgd file to the project.

 The fact that I can now have different instruments (sounds) on different midi channels I consider huge progress.  Now I can actually have DRUM sounds on the percussion track instead of acoustic grand playing the drum track!

 Thanks again!

----------------------------------------
From: Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando at ccrma.Stanford.EDU>
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:12 PM
To: csynan at dataworlds.com
Subject: Re: [PlanetCCRMA] rosegarden -- synth only plays one instrument 

On Sun, 2005-10-09 at 15:24 -0400, csynan wrote:
> In rosegarden, I create two tracks and MIDI events (notes) information
> on them. Track 1 is assigned to MIDI channel 1, and is assigned (in
> RG) to Acoustic Grand. Track 2 is assigned to midi channel 2, and is
> a different instrument, say slap bass. This all appears OK, but I am
> having trouble getting my synth to do the right thing (so technically
> i don't think it is a problem with rosegarden, it's user error)
> 
> my synth (ensoniq e-prime) supposedly has plenty of tracks, channels,
> multi timbral etc. all things I dont fully understand but I assume
> that it should be able to play the acoustic grand track and the slap
> bass track simultaneously. But I cannot get it to do so. 
> 
> I can get it to ignore the channel 2 (by default it wants to recieve
> all MIDI info over channel 1???) or I can set it to read from all
> tracks, but it plays it back using the current instrument on the
> synth, rather than taking the instruments from RG. So in effect it
> ignores the instrument definitions from RG and just plays whatever
> instrument on the synth, say alto sax, for both channels. I have
> tried all combinations and no success.

It looks like this is something you have to solve on the synth side.
There must be a mode in the keyboard (look for "multitimbral" or
something like that in the manual) so that it will listen on multiple
MIDI channels at the same time. Once you enable that you will need to
set up which instrument is triggered by each channel in the synth
itself. The usual "default" mode on most synths I've seen is to listen
on only one channel, which is what yours is doing. 

-- Fernando


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