I’m setting up GP to use an RD-2000 as a controller, and I’ve run into a bizarre problem.
The RD-2000 has nine faders, and as far as I’ve been able to tell in my experimentation and reading so far, the 9th fader doesn’t send any MIDI data (which is unfortunate if I want to use the faders as drawbars), whereas faders 1-8 all send CC#7, meaning that I have to configure each one to send on a different MIDI channel if I want to tell them apart. This is because the faders are meant to be used as volume controls for the eight zones of the keyboard.
So far, so good… the Rig Manager can handle that much.
However, those faders only send anything at all if I’ve enabled their respective zones as “external”, and if all eight zones are enabled then when I play notes, each note gets sent out on all eight MIDI channels at once. Now, of course GP has no problem filtering out all the notes from all channels except one, so it’s not the end of the world, but this will mean that my rig is more RD-2000-specific than I would like it to be. I’d like to be able to replace this keyboard with a different one in the future without having to change anything outside of the Rig Manager, but it seems like that won’t be possible because of the necessity of channel filtering.
The only workaround I can think of is to set the zone boundaries within the RD-2000 such that the eight zones don’t overlap. That way, each note will only be sent once (but they’ll be on various channels depending on their pitch). This seems like a silly thing to have to do.
Is this just how it is? Or am I missing something?
Can you give me some hints on how to use this information? If I want to use 9 sliders and 8 knobs and 8 buttons from the RD-2000 as general-purpose controls in GP, is that possible, and if so, how?
Yes, I do understand about widgets and MIDI assignments. I’m asking specifically about how to configure the RD-2000 so that its controls send usable CC messages. If you read my original message, I have eight sliders working fine (each one sending on a different MIDI channel, and only if I set up the eight zones of the RD-2000 all to be “external” and to have non-overlapping keyboard ranges, which feels like a hack). I’ve also got the 8 knobs working, but I haven’t figured out how to access the 9th slider (which will be important for use as a clonewheel drawbar) nor how to access the pushbuttons.
I was specifically directing my question at @pianopaul because he gave the impression of having already solved this problem, but yeah Roland will be my next stop. I have a million things on my to-do list for my GP rig, and this isn’t near the top of the list quite yet, but I’ll get to it when it seems urgent haha.
I apologize in advance if nothing I am saying is helpful or useful, but I went through a similar (but different) process in making my Casio CTK-7200 work as a controller.
I would forget about having your RD_200 send particular midi cc messages.
The first thing I would do is call up the midi monitor in GP and hit each of the 9 faders to see if they all send midi data.
If they do, you should be golden.
Then I might use the rig manager and give each fader a name, maybe F1, F2, F3…F9.
Then in your drawbar organ VST have it learn each fader (you might have to invert it).
The way GP works best, I think, it you don’t have to worry about CC messages,
A benefit of using the Rig Manager, is if you switch keyboards, you just map it to these same controllers (F1, F2, F3, …F9).
[Disclaimer: sorry if you already know everything I am saying and it is not useful to your situation.]
Jeff, what you’re saying makes great sense, and that’s pretty much exactly what I did with my other controller (a Novation Impulse).
As I tried to explain above, it seems that the first eight sliders on the RD-2000 each transmit exactly the same CC message, so I have to assign each of the eight RD-2000 keyboard zones to a different MIDI channel in order to have GP distinguish one slider from another. And it seems that the 9th slider transmits nothing at all, which makes it unusable. Furthermore, once I’ve assigned each of the 8 zones to its own channel, I then need to change the note boundaries of each zone so that they’re not overlapping, or else I’ll get multiple note events coming into GP for each note I play on the RD-2000. So, what I did was to make zone 1 go from A0 to A0, zone 2 go from Bb0 to Bb0, etc., up to zone 7, which goes from Eb1 to Eb1, and then zone 8 goes from E1 to C8. (In other words, the first seven zones are one note each, and the 8th zone has the remaining 81 notes. I could have done this in many other ways but that seemed simplest.) Then when GP receives incoming note messages, I have it ignore their channel, and I’m good to go. Sorry if I wasn’t clear above. And sorry if this is still unclear.
I don’t love this solution because it feels inelegant, and because I can’t figure out how to use the 9th slider, and because I can’t figure out how to use any of the push buttons.
I had to work my way through some idiosyncratic design issues in trying to get my Casio CTK-7200 functioning as a controller.
So, in addition to reviewing the manual and the midi implementation chart (posted above), I would inquire on forums that discuss Roland keyboards. Here is one I found: https://forums.rolandclan.com/viewforum.php?f=62
It sounds like that keyboard has some quirks (mine did!). Hopefully, your find a work around that works for you.
