Rogers 525 and MIDI

[richreid01]

I use MIDI to play a Rogers 525. It is really a pretty good sounding church organ. This small church was unable to find an organist, if they could afford one. I set them up with a Mac Mini and Digital Performer. According to the operation manual, controller 7 or 11 should control the volume but it only seems to work on the swell manual. The setup is workable but I sure would like to just be able to program volumes. Rogers was not able to help. This was somehow tied to Roland and Roland was not able to help. I believe Roland in Italy did the MIDI. Anyone have any ideas on this? We may be the only people with a Rogers organ using MIDI.
thanks!

[jbird604]

I seem to recall helping a church set up a Rodgers 525 or 535 to play MIDI files directly from a laptop, and I don't know that they had any problem getting it to properly respond to the files they were downloading from the internet.

However, it might be that you cannot RECORD from that organ and get your external sequencer or laptop to record expression data, since the great and pedals aren't tied to the Swell pedal by default. Unless you make some specific setup changes, the great and pedal are not under expression, though their volume is controllable via a little slider above the stop tabs.

I don't know this for a fact, but it MIGHT cure your problem if you went into the setup routine (which I think is spelled out in the owner's manual) and configured the organ for "all swells to swell" (as we would say in pipe organ terms). In other words, configure it so that the great and pedal are under the control of the swell pedal.

How to do this? I don't recall off the cuff. But it has something to do with a particular combination of piston presses, possibly even holding in some pistons while the organ is being powered up. I just can't remember right now. And I'm not certain that this will solve your problem, but it might, since the symptom you describe is that the great and pedal are "not under expression" and you want them to be.

[Momboc]

I downloaded the Rodgers 525 OM from here:

https://www.rodgersinstruments.com/u...fs/1904001.pdf

From the MIDI Implementation Chart on page 38, it states that the Organ will respond to Control Change 7 (volume) and 11 (Expression)

See "Rodgers 525/535 Organ MIDI Feature on Page 36-37 of the OM

GREAT - "MIDI Volume message on Great Master Channel input controls great expression"
SWELL - "MIDI Volume message on Swell Master Channel input controls great expression" - This statement is strange and probably a typo. It should control the Swell expression.
PEDAL - "MIDI Volume message on Pedal Master Channel input controls Pedal expression"

On page 14 the Organ receives MIDI data on Channel 12 for the Great, Channel 13 for the Swell and Channel 14 for the Pedal.
Make sure you are sending the Volume or Expression CCs on the correct channel for each division.

You may want to Reset the MIDI Functions to their defaults - see page 21 of the OM

Also on Page 20, there is a function to assign the Expression Pedal to Only Swell or All. Not sure if this affects received MIDI expression CCs but set it to ALL and see.

[richreid01]

Thanks for this info. I have the OM. I had found most of what you mention. It does clearly say CC7 and CC11 should work. I will have to go back and try again. I had spent a lot of time trying to get correct configuration. As I recall I have never gotten any response to CC7 and CC11 only controls the swell. I did set the expression pedal to control all and that does work. If only I could get that to translate to the MIDI controls!
Again thanks.

- - - Updated - - -

I have been mostly programming the songs not recording them but we did record a few and they work, or don't work, the same way. Either way all of my expression data has been edited in. I did do the all swells to swell and that does work for the pedal but still no go with the MIDI data. Per the manual it clearly should work so I will keep on trying to do this. Thank you for the reply and the help.

I seem to recall helping a church set up a Rodgers 525 or 535 to play MIDI files directly from a laptop, and I don't know that they had any problem getting it to properly respond to the files they were downloading from the internet.

However, it might be that you cannot RECORD from that organ and get your external sequencer or laptop to record expression data, since the great and pedals aren't tied to the Swell pedal by default. Unless you make some specific setup changes, the great and pedal are not under expression, though their volume is controllable via a little slider above the stop tabs.

I don't know this for a fact, but it MIGHT cure your problem if you went into the setup routine (which I think is spelled out in the owner's manual) and configured the organ for "all swells to swell" (as we would say in pipe organ terms). In other words, configure it so that the great and pedal are under the control of the swell pedal.

How to do this? I don't recall off the cuff. But it has something to do with a particular combination of piston presses, possibly even holding in some pistons while the organ is being powered up. I just can't remember right now. And I'm not certain that this will solve your problem, but it might, since the symptom you describe is that the great and pedal are "not under expression" and you want them to be.

- - - Updated - - -

I got some good ideas here. It has been a while since I had started on this. I am going to back to the beginning. Reset, then run through the setup again to see what I can come up with.