PeteTheGreek

Or use a Raspberry Pi. From what I can tell this does everything the Kenton can do, and a lot more. Bottom line: with this, and a USB to midi adapter, you can effectively have standard midi ports. DETAILS: I had a Raspberry Pi 2 so I configured it as a USB MIDI host (instructions below). Once the Pi is configured it runs in "read only" mode (so that you can just unplug from power when you are doing, instead of going through a formal "shutdown". It is, literally, plug and play: 1. Plug in the power to the Raspberry Pi. Give it a minute to finish booting. 2. Plug in your USB midi devices. The Raspberry Pi is configured to automatically recognizes USB MIDI devices. 3. Play I plugged the P-121 into the Pi via USB, and then plugged each of the following USB MIDI devices into the Pi, one by one (ones I happen to have available): 1. Korg MicroKey controller. The keys, pitch bend, and mod wheel all controlled the P-121. 2. Yamaha CP88. Each keyboard controlled the other. So effectively you can connect MIDI instruments "USB to USB" - provided there is a USB MIDI host in between them. 3. ESI MidiMate eX. If you're not familiar, this is really nice USB to MIDI adaptor, with 2 braided cables ~6 feet long each with standard 5-pin MIDI plugs. This is where it got interesting Unlike most other such adaptors, the MidiMate somehow "autosenses" which plug is "MIDI in" and which plug is "MIDI out". They're just labeled "1" and "2". I plugged the MidiMate into the CP88, via its standard MIDI ports: (a) when I plugged "1" into the CP88 midi in and "2" into the CP88 midi out, the P-121 controlled the CP88. Presumably this would also work with a Nord. (b) when I plugged "2" into the CP88 midi in and "1" into the CP88 midi out, the CP88 controlled the P-121. For the Raspberry Pi configuration I followed the instructions at https://neuma.studio/rpi-as-midi-host.html, except I used the corrected Ruby script at https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=19736. It took me about an hour to configure it from scratch.

I recently got a P-121 and just found this thread. This is a wonderful keyboard in it's own right, but also has a lot of features which simply are not well documented. Fortunately, Yamaha XG is very well documented, and the P-121 is an XG instrument. I can confirm that works well as a controller for MainStage, including USB audio. Just turn off local control to disconnect the internal sound engine. I sold my standalone audio interface because now I don't need it! If you need pitch bend or mod wheel, get a Korg MicroKey and daisy chain it (plug the Korg into the laptop and plug the P-121 into the Korg, which has 2-port USB hub). If you need an expression pedal too, I can recommend the Logidy USB midi footswitch, which had an expression pedal jack (and 3 configurable footswitches, which are great for stepping through patches in MainStage). You can plug that into the Korg, or directly into the laptop. Now the XG stuff: The P-121 jazz organ has some tricks up its sleeve. First off you can toggle the rotary speaker speed with the left (una corda) pedal if you have Yamaha's triple pedal unit; this also toggles the rotor on the Vibraphone (this is all documented in the manual). Unfortunately the Yamaha triple pedal only works with a permanent home setup. So I just wired up a cable. The triple pedal jack uses a standard 6 pin mini DIN cable. To activate the left pedal just requires shorting pins 4 and 5 (or 4 and 6, since pins 5 and 6 are internally connected). I can provide more details if necessary. Even better, you can adjust any parameter for the rotary speaker by sending SysEx commands to the USB port (I use Midi Commander on Android). The midi reference for the P-515 has all the information. As a simple example, tweeter acceleration (how long it takes to transition from slow to fast), can be modified (see table 4 in the P-515 midi reference for the available values). By default the jazz organ patch sets this value to 76. To set the acceleration to 50 (32hex), send this SysEx command: F7 43 10 4C 03 01 20 32 F0 You can also increase or decrease the drive; higher values add some nice crunch to the sound. I strongly suspect that you could use SysEx to do things like: - turn off unwanted effects (e.g. tremolo on the Wurlitzer) - add effects to any voice (e.g. chorus or phaser on the Rhodes. All you need is to know what commands to use and have a way to send them.