Hello everyone! I’m looking for a smallish controller that would be useful to send program change messages to my Gig Performer.
Here’s the scenario. I play keyboards in worship and my current worship rig is made up of a Roland Fantom G7 and a Roland VK-8. The Fantom G7 has 16 dynamic pads, which is currently assigned to favorites mode (i.e. recall internal sounds quickly). I use this during our worship services to change patches as needed. Thankfully, patch remain is something that Roland introduced on this keyboard and it was one of the things that I found revolutionary in connecting worship sets and songs together.
The main limitation of the pads is they do not trigger any external messages, not that I found anyway. I’m still in transition over to Gig Performer, and I’ve built out several basic racks for different soundscapes. It would be nice if I could recall those easily using a midi controller of some kind.
I’m not opposed to a foot controller (there’s room on the platform for sure). I’m investigating OSC, but I’m afraid networking will be an issue (not to mention we don’t really want to surround the keyboard with a bunch of screens).
Any suggestions of pedals that you guys have used. I’m investigating this foot controller, but I’m a little gun shy since it’s not a name brand that I recognize: https://a.co/d/5MpUWQy. It’s in the price range, but just an unknown.
In that price range, it’s still hard to beat the Behringer FCB1010. It’s built like a tank, with up to 100 different potential PC messages available at your feet, 2 built in expression pedals etc.
Basically, I utilize a total of about 15 different sounds for our worship sets in a regular fashion. There are a few oddball sounds that I might use every few weeks – some I haven’t touched in years!
I have these sounds spread over 4 banks in the Fantom G7. I have them organized by sound type (pianos, pads, strings, leads, splits). I would say the most I’ve ever used in a song has been about 4. So if I could easily access 6 sounds quickly then I would imagine 8 pedals would work (with 2 dedicated to a potential bank swap).
Yeah, I’ve looked at that one a few times. I just don’t need the expression pedals since I already have an expression pedal for the VK-8 and the good old sustain pedal. The size is somewhat of a concern – but I could see one of those expression pedals being useful to control my orchestra string library.
(Feels odd for me to say that since I was trained on a pipe organ that had 30 foot presets and 5 volume pedals)
I wonder if they possibly send SysEx message? I don’t have that keyboard so I don’t know. If it does you can use GP script to do this. Those pads don’t send even a midi note?
I play a Hammond Organ and it’s possible for me to use the preset keys or just the patch change knob and send PC messags to Gig Performer to change sounds. The downside to that is it changes the sound on the organ too and I typically just play with the A#/B presets only so I don’t use this capabliity… but most keyboards can send PC messages with their patch change.
I have a SL73 (midi only) which can also send PC changes when I change patch with the rotary encoder, so I could make my patch info the same on say 30 patches and when I switch patches, there is no difference on how the keyboard works but it also sends PC messags.
Just a few ideas that don’t involve another piece of hardware.
Yeah, it doesn’t send anything at all. I brought up the global midi monitor in Gig Performer and put the pads in several different modes. Not one SysEx or CC sent by the pads. That’s unfortunate as the keyboard itself is a great keyboard.
So, now to figure out what foot pedal to add to the rig. Basically, just looking at sending PC messages so I can change racks dynamically. Thanks for the suggestions – any others are appreciated.
Is your G7 not able to send PC messages if you choose the Porgram (Sound)?
I do that with my Roland RD2000.
The RD2000 has Scene bottons with quick access, they are related to a Program/ Sound. In this Program setting I can set the PC number. In GP I give the related Sound in the Setlist the corresponding PC number. To jump the varriation up and down I use the lowest two keys of my RD2000.
Good luck.
Flodder
Edit:
see page 135 in the manual of the Fantom
“External Program Number
(External Program Change Number)
If you want a Program Change number to also be transmitted when
you switch Live/Studio Sets, specify the value that you want to
transmit (0–128) for each part. If you do not want this message to be
transmitted, set this to “—.”
Value: 1–128, —”
Thanks for that information, I’m going to have to investigate this idea further. Looks like I might just need to create a corresponding live set per rack and set the PC that way. At that point, I could still use my favorites mode, I just have to make sure the live set is set to transmit MIDI.
Ok, that was a hint in the right direction, thanks for that.
So, it turns out when I put the keyboard in external mode there are 128 PC send presets already there. I just needed to set those at favorites. When I recall them, it sends the PC for that number.
So, I put together my set list and then hitting the button and I could jump from song to song!
So now I get to basically keep my same workflow! No need to have another controller!