Adding a lower manual to Hammond SK Pro

[AnotherScott]

I want to use another keyboard as a lower manual on the SK Pro. I though just plugging something into the MIDI IN that was transmitting on channel 2 would probably do it, either in the Hammond's default setup, or by changing its loaded MIDI template to "2 Man Lower" but I'm not getting anything. I can get it to send MIDI Out, but can't seem to get it to see MIDI In. Any ideas as to what I might be missing?

 

 

[ludo]

You ask 'us' a question ?? Not allowed !!😂

[CEB]

I never thought this and now I’m curious…

 

How does the SK recognize the trigger point on a satellite keyboard.  Is that a physical function of the second board.  
 

My SKx was not set to high trigger  when I got it and that made it a useless organ. 

[stoken6]

37 minutes ago, CEB said:

How does the SK recognize the trigger point on a satellite keyboard.  Is that a physical function of the second board.

The SK only responds to MIDI. It's down to the satellite board to implement which trigger point causes the MIDI "note on" message.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Delaware Dave]

12 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

I want to use another keyboard as a lower manual on the SK Pro. I though just plugging something into the MIDI IN that was transmitting on channel 2 would probably do it, either in the Hammond's default setup, or by changing its loaded MIDI template to "2 Man Lower" but I'm not getting anything. I can get it to send MIDI Out, but can't seem to get it to see MIDI In. Any ideas as to what I might be missing?

 

 

 

Did you set the lower board to transmit on midi channel 1 and see if the lower board triggers the upper manual?  if it does then at least you know the send/receive relationship is working.

 

did your template actually turn receive off?  confusing midi template shows this:

 

[AnotherScott]

5 hours ago, Delaware Dave said:

 

Did you set the lower board to transmit on midi channel 1 and see if the lower board triggers the upper manual?  if it does then at least you know the send/receive relationship is working.

 

did your template actually turn receive off?  confusing midi template shows this:

 

 

If the lower board is set to transmit on MIDI channel 1, it will trigger the upper manual is using the Basic template. Transmitting on channels 2 through 16 do nothing. (Note that I said in the OP that I had not gotten it to see MIDI in... I didn't do the channel-1-with-basic-template test until after I had posted that.)

 

If I select the 2 Man Lower template, I get no sound when playing from the remote keyboard, no matter which of the 16 channels I put it on.

 

Are you successfully using a lower manual? (I'm hoping someone here has and can guide me through what they did to make it work.)

 

Yes, the MIDI template description in the owner's manual is atrocious. They later came out with a 600 page reference guide to try to help people understand the owner's manual. It's that big because it's loaded with screen shots, but in the end, it's still not very good. A lot of it reminds me of the joke about people speaking a foreign language thinking you'll understand them if they just speak more slowly. The reference guide, to a great extent, is pretty much the owner's manual delivered more slowly. Ultimately, the things that are confusing are still just as confusing. Though at least it sounds like it was written by a native English speaker, which the original definitely does not, so that helps some. But I digress. The point I really wanted to make here was that, in that second manual that's supposed to make things more clear, all they did regarding MIDI templates was reprint that exact same atrocious chart. I figure the english-speaking writers couldn't figure out how to explain it either, so they just copy-and-pasted it and moved on. 😉 

[AnotherScott]

I figured it out. To set up a lower organ manual, you have to enable the "3-part organ" button, and then turn off the "Split" button (which is automatically enabled when you hit the 3-part organ button). I knew you had to hit 3-part organ to split the internal keys for upper/lower, I didn't know it also had to be enabled to trigger the lower manual over MIDI. (As far as I saw, the manuals only talk about it in the context of splitting the keyboard, to create "virtual" upper and lower manuals, i.e. on either side of the split, with  no mention of using the function in conjunction with an external board over MIDI.) I don't see the logic of having the lower manual drawbar settings ignore MIDI input unless you first enable the internal upper-lower manual split function and then disable the actual split, but, there you are.

 

Using the default basic template, and no changes to other settings, you get the behavior I expected... a board transmitting on channel 2 will trigger the lower manual sound. Using the "2 Man Lower" template, any channel selected on the external board will work, but again, nothing will work until you've hit the 3-part organ button. If it were me, I'd have the appropriate lower manual MIDI channel(s) recognized no matter what, I think having to invoke an additional mode is an unintuitive and really unnecessary complication, since I see no offsetting benefit to having it default to not recognizing that MIDI. 

 

I posted my question here and in the facebook group, nobody mentioned this... I don't know if it's just me and this was super obvious to everyone else, or if few of these SK Pro users are connecting lower manuals!

[Delaware Dave]

can you control the lower drawbars from the transmitting keyboard on channel 2?  

[AnotherScott]

51 minutes ago, Delaware Dave said:

can you control the lower drawbars from the transmitting keyboard on channel 2?  

 

The board I'm using for lower manual doesn't have that ability so I can't try it. But since the drawbars on the SK Pro are controllable via standard MIDI CC (unlike on some other boards), it should certainly work as long as you're using a board that has the ability to send user-definable MIDI CCs on a specified channel from its controls. Whether there's any additional hoops to jump through to configure it on the Hammond side (like what I discovered for the lower manual to work at all) would remain to be seen. 😉 

[stoken6]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

it should certainly work

I think this thread is teaching us the difference between "it should work" and "it does work".

 

Regards, Mike

[AnotherScott]

Well, in terms of my original issue, it indeed does work. You've just got to figure out how, which can be a trick, between the board's interface quirks and inadequate (albeit voluminous) documentation. 😉