Roland FA - 06 MIDI QUESTION

[seratone]

Last fall I got a killer deal on a used Fa-06. ($1050). I"d heard the supernatural sound set and was impressed. I always like buying less expensive boards they eventually put the flagship sounds in.

 

Mapping out the keyboard and creating my own 'Studio Sets" was easy - but slaving the Fa with another controller wasn"t. I could only slave first patch in each studio set I created. I"ve been playing keys for years and never had a midi keyboard behave this way.

 

Is there a simple way to control the Roland with, say, my Nord electro? Have the FA provide a back ground layer of strings to my Nord Piano?

[marczellm]

The Version 2 update added some much needed features when you are using the FA as controller, but I don't know about the other way round.

[EscapeRocks]

Your master keyboard would need the ability send on all Midi channels.

 

OR:

 

You need to go the the settings/edit menu. Then Part, then assign each part to the channel your Nord is sending on.

 

i.e. NORD sends channel 1. You want to control Parts 1, 4, 5, 7. On your FA-06, change the MIDI channel for those parts to 1. Now your Nord will trigger those 4 parts when you play.

The other parts can a be played from the FA-06 as desired.

 

Google Roland FA-06 Reference Manual. Go to the editing section. It's all there

[AnotherScott]

I could only slave first patch in each studio set I created. I"ve been playing keys for years and never had a midi keyboard behave this way.

Does the FA not default to putting sound 1 of a Studio Set on MIDI channel 1, sound 2 on channel 2, and so forth? And you can change those channels (each part has a Rx Channel parameter).

 

Is there a simple way to control the Roland with, say, my Nord electro? Have the FA provide a back ground layer of strings to my Nord Piano?

Depends what you mean by "control" and also which Electro you have. The bigger piece of this problem is almost certainly on the Nord side, not the Roland side.

[EscapeRocks]

I could only slave first patch in each studio set I created. I"ve been playing keys for years and never had a midi keyboard behave this way.

Does the FA not default to putting sound 1 of a Studio Set on MIDI channel 1, sound 2 on channel 2, and so forth? And you can change those channels (each part has a Rx Channel parameter).

 

Is there a simple way to control the Roland with, say, my Nord electro? Have the FA provide a back ground layer of strings to my Nord Piano?

Depends what you mean by "control" and also which Electro you have. The bigger piece of this problem is almost certainly on the Nord side, not the Roland side.

 

did you not read my answer?

 

It's very easy.

 

 

or do ou just like repeating (which you pretty much did here) so you look like you're the one who solved the issue (you do this a lot here on KC)

[AnotherScott]

did you not read my answer?

 

It's very easy.

 

or do ou just like repeating (which you pretty much did here) so you look like you're the one who solved the issue (you do this a lot here on KC)

Sometimes I start typing an answer, then need to do other stuff, then come back and finish and post, and may not see what was posted in between, so that might explain what you've seen in some other cases.

 

In this case, though, to be honest, when I came back, I actually did check for new posts (because it had been hours instead of just a short while), but I felt my answer still had something to offer... it was only partially redundant. I could have taken time to eliminate the part that had been redundant, but I didn't see reason to take the time to re-work it. I expect/hope he will find value (and different points to consider) in each of our posts, despite some redundancy.

[harmonizer]

I was not able to make my FA-07 use MIDI channel 2 for certain parts in a Studio Set, where I wanted to trigger those parts only from my Roland PK-5a footpedal MIDI controller. I had to set my PK-5a to use MIDI channel 1, and put it down into Octave 0 so as to not interfere the keys I press on my FA-07 keyboard for other reasons.

 

This behavior of the FA-07 is a regression compared to what my older Roland XV can do.

[EscapeRocks]

Are you saying if you set your PK5 pedal to channel 2, your FA-07 doesn"t read it?

[Baldwin Funster]

Roland has some midi quirks I am coming across. Unless I am doing things wrong on my ds61 , which is likely, it seems to act like midi on part 1 is almost omni. I can have the rx switch to off on that part and it gets note info from my out board sequencer which is txing on ch 10 only. But if I set the rx channel on part 1 to rx ch 3 which I'm otherwise not using then I functionally get what I want which is a split with part 1 & 2 and my outboard sequencer playing the ds drums on part 10 ch 10.

If I set it up like the manual says I get bizarre piano playing the drum program. I know this is a ramble, I'm feeling stream of consciousness today.

[marczellm]

Jr Deluxe, for your DS problem:

Check out if either of these two settings are on:

- Remote Keyboard Switch (this means whatever channel it receives MIDI on, it plays the keyboard)

- Performance Control Channel (on my JUNO-G it allows received program changes on that channel to change performance, but it might conceivably also trigger sounds on other models)

[harmonizer]

The following thread in the Roland forums covers the details:

https://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=54477

 

The post by the user "Candy" from December 28 2017 has the most important details.

 

The post immediately after by user "Xanadu1209" (and also suggested here by marczellm immediately above) enables a workaround which is usable for me, since my external MIDI controller has only one octave.

 

I don't know that there is a good solution for someone who wants to use an external MIDI controller that has multiple octaves,

if you want splits to be enforced across those multiple octaves coming from the external MIDI controller,

and also not interfere with separate things that would be played while using that same Studio Set

from the keyboard built into the Roland FA-06/FA-07/FA-08.

[seratone]

OP here - still not there - from the responses I take it: A) I either need to have the Nord 4d send on all MIDI channels, or B) individually edit each patch on a Studio set to receive Midi Channel 1?

 

"Google Roland FA-06 Reference Manual. Go to the editing section. It's all there"

 

A GRTFM response, Don't get me wrong I really, really appreciate the help - and I probably deserve the slap for asking such a newbie question - but it's not in the reference manual I'm looking at.

 

Editing a studio set 44

Editing a tone 46

Editing a pattern 50

Editing Effects 52

[AnotherScott]

OP here - still not there - from the responses I take it: A) I either need to have the Nord 4d send on all MIDI channels, or B) individually edit each patch on a Studio set to receive Midi Channel 1?

This gets back to what I said earlier, "Depends what you mean by 'control' and also which Electro you have. The bigger piece of this problem is almost certainly on the Nord side, not the Roland side."

 

Regarding your option A, the 4D can only send on 1 MIDI channel. The default is channel 1, which means it will only play the first sound of your Studio Set. You can go into a menu on the Nord to change which of the 16 channels it is sending on, which would allow you to choose any of the 16 sounds in the Studio Set, but that's awkward to be doing on a regular basis, and is certainly not something you'd do mid-song.

 

As for your option B, sure, you could put all 16 sounds of a Studio Set on channel 1, but then all 16 sounds will play simultaneously. You lose the ability to address the 16 sounds of a Studio Set independently.

 

What you're dealing with is not a Roland limitation, it is a Nord limitation.

 

To play FA sounds from your Electro, you can create Studio Sets that have only one sound in them--or combinations of sounds that you only intend to play layered with each other--always assigned to channel 1. Then change Studio Sets to change sounds.

[seratone]

"Remote Keyboard Switch." - done - thanks harmonizer