Help sought for Midi connections for a Roland AT 80 to a keyboard

[ken horton]

Hallo again, I recently posted for help to obtain some registrations disks for my recently acquired Roland AT 80 and I must express my thanks for all the help I have received, well done The Organ Forum.


But the change to this Roland is a steepish leaning curve and one problem I have is connecting a midi device ( keyboard ), why I am sure some are asking, well I have always used some sort of expander to supplement some of the very poor auto accompaniments I have experienced on previous organs. Now the AT 80 has a very good auto accompaniment section but I had purchased a Technics KN7000 a few years ago and with their SD cards I have a huge library of styles which I had used on two previous organs, so I thought it would be a breeze to hook it up to the Roland as I had done with other makes and have the best of both worlds So I connected it exactly as I had with previous organs but I can’t get these two to talk to one another, the lower keyboard of the organ is not transmitting chord signals or they are not being received by the keyboard.
I checked the manual and all seems to be as it should be and I wondered if there is a member using a Roland organ with a midi device who would be kind enough to tell me how they are connected up as I am sure I have got something wrong. Many thanks in anticipation ! Ken (H)

[KRG]

Some years ago I helped a person with a Roland AT80 or 90 to try to connect to a Roland Fantom XR and the midi out of the organ was so limited that it would not do what he wanted. MidiOX is a free download and with a midi to USB interface you can see what is being output but it is a bit of a steep learning curve to understand what is going on. In a perfect world you would connect the midi out of the Roland to the midi in of the Technics but this will only work if the required midi messages are sent by the Roland and received by the Technics.

[ken horton]

Thanks KRG, i will try that because it would seem to be my only option. The midi world is highly complicated , you used to have to set about 16 channels and a few more odds to marry up units years ago, then for a while it got easier, i would have thought with this obviously high tech organ even though relatively old the midi connection would have been straight forward, ( a bit of wishful thinking)
I have posed this question for my earlier organs over the years and was always surprised by the lack of respondents, either very few used any sort of add on midi device or knew nothing about the subject or perhaps never read the request, but occasionally one member somehow would come up with something of help.
Roland don't want to know telling me that they do not support owners of Roland products if they have discontinued making them .
I have posted on one other organ forum and have only one other worth a try, if no luck I shall try the midiox you mention. Ken

[abacus]

You need the Midi implementation chart for both the Roland and Technics to see what they can and cannot do, if you are not familiar with the Midi implementation chart then read here http://tweakheadz.com/how-to-get-sta...ording-studio/ to understand fully how Midi works, and go from there as you will then be able to understand the chart.

Have fun

Bill

[andyg]

The Roland will send out key on/off, key on velocity, aftertouch, programme changes 1-12 (from the preset pistons only) and expression pedal data (CC11). And that's it. You can assign the channels as you wish and these MIDI settings are then saved in with the contents of a registration bank. I have a bank set to my required channelings, calling it 'MIDI Control'.

That should be enough to at least get sounds out of the Technics, which will have a far more flexible MIDI set-up. With luck, you'll be able to make the Technics respond to switch its eight Panel Memories in tandem with the Roland's first eight pistons.

Read through the implementation charts as Bill suggests, all the info regarding possibilities will be there, but I'd tend to leave the Roland on its default settings and make the Technics match. The MIDI section of its owner's manual will tell you how.

[Momboc]

Of course, make sure you have a copy of the AT80 Operations Manual.

https://www.roland.com/us/products/at-80sl/support/

Make sure that the MIDI out of the Organ is correctly connected to the MIDI in of the Keyboard. (See OM pages 207-208)

Make sure the Organ's 'Computer' switch is set to MIDI (see OM page 206)

Ensure that the Transmit channels of the Organ align with the appropriate Receive channels on the Keyboard. (See OM Ch10 P196). It looks like the AT80 may default to Pedals on Channel 2 and Lower on Channel 3 which is probably not what the Keyboard is expecting.

[ken horton]

Thanks andyg and abacus, I was just about to launch myself into the bewildering world of midi you had outlined and Momboc posted ! But while trying all sorts of ideas and before I received his message I had been to the pages all have mentioned in the manual several times and while climbing back onto the organ stool, ( not much room to spare in my little bungalow ) I stood on an organ pedal in getting onto the stool and the the Technics played an intro . ! ! I then looking at the midi setting and checked again the pedal was on channel 2 and the lower on channel 3 as predicted, which is the default setting I believe .I changed the lower to 2 and to avoid any problems changed the pedal to channel 11, ( I would not be using it anyway I think ). and it is up and running, but I always had other organ's lower manual always set on ch 3, quote [that's how they all work] and never gave a thought to it being different but not this time it seems, I noticed that the moment I selected something else the setting went back to Ch 3, i would have thought this would have been one of those that stayed where it was set but my grateful thanks to all of you for the information I have received which I am sure will be used again Ken (H)

[andyg]

There is no official 'standard' for MIDI channelling on organs but the closest you'll get to one is probably 1) upper 2) lower 3) pedals and 4) solo manual or lower keysplit. Some, like Lowrey, swapped the pedals and solo. Others did some pretty weird things. Most, but not all, will let you change the assignments. So you need to match channels and make sure that they stay matched.

I said earlier that MIDI channelling on the Roland is not a 'global' setting that stays fixed until you change it, but is something that gets locked into registration banks. I have that channelling set into the bank I use for driving Hauptwerk, Miditzer, B4 and my trusty old Kawai K1m expander, but I have also set it into a 'blank' bank, which I can use as a 'starting point' for any new sets of registrations. This blank bank will have some voices selected, those in the 'Others' selected, volume settings and things like touch response, aftertouch and key splits all ready etc.

You might like to consider setting up a similar 'blank bank' for yourself. Mine is too 'me specific' to be of much use to other players - we've tried it! :)