Expression pedal over MIDI question

[becoming53]

Hi all,

I just want to get some suggestions on something I'm trying to do...I'm not too familiar with MIDI so please excuse me if the answer is obvious / obviously impossible.

 

I've just acquired a Nord Electro 2 Rack module that I'm triggering from a Roland Juno-stage. On certain songs I have (e.g.) strings coming from the Juno layered with organ from the Electro module. At crucial points I want to drop the strings out and have the organ sounding on its own, then bring the strings back in later.

 

So ideally I want the expression pedal connected to the Juno to affect the volume of Juno sound ONLY, but I can't seem to get it to NOT send its signal to the electro and change the volume there as well. The annoying thing is that before I bought the Electro and had both sounds coming from the Juno, it was easy - I can set which sounds in a combination respond to the expression pedal.

 

Any ideas on if this is possible (either with this specific equipment, or just generally)?

 

Cheers,

Shaun

[AnotherScott]

Any ideas on if this is possible (either with this specific equipment, or just generally)?

In general, it can be done if either the keyboard has the option to enable/disable the sending of MIDI control data separately from whether it is sending key data, OR if the receiving device has an option to selectively respond or not respond to certain incoming data. Depending on the devices in question, some of these things may be available globally, or on a patch-by-patch basis, or not at all.

 

In your case, assuming that the devices indeed do not naturally support this kind of thing, you could get a MIDI filter to filter out the volume pedal data on its way to the Nord. There aren't as many devices around for this kind of thing as there used to be, but at least one would be the event processor from MIDI Solutions: http://www.midisolutions.com/prodevp.htm

 

However, the simplest solution to your specific problem would probably be to put a plain line-level volume pedal on the output of the Roland.

 

No matter what, you'd probably want to make sure you maintained expression pedal functionality for the Nord organ as well, since using that pedal is usually a significant part of organ playing. I think you can plug an expression pedal directly into the Nord rack unit (if not, that would be a reason you would not want to filter it out completely from your controlling keyboard). In the case of the organ, putting a plain volume control on the output is a less desirable solution, since the device is probably designed to alter tone (distortion) as well as volume via the expression pedal, as that would better mimic what happens on a real tonewheel organ.

[Ashville.Guru]

In the Control SW (Perf) screen on the Juno-Stage (p. 137 of the manual), turn off the Ctrl parameter ("Transmission on/off for the control messages from a pedal connected to the CONTROL PEDAL jack").

 

[becoming53]

Thanks for the responses. Ashville.Guru, that doesn't seem to work - this screen controls which patches in a Performance responds to the control messages from the pedal, but there doesn't seem to be any way to stop the messages being sent to an external device, which I think is what I want to do.

 

AnotherScott - thanks for the suggestions. If I can't figure out a way to selectively block sending / recieving the expression data on wither end, I might just get a plain volume pedal (whatever one of those looks like) for the Roland and plug my expression pedal straight into the Electro for organ sections.