XGworks Tutorial 3 - basic program changes

[JohnG]

Hi Jacqui,

As promised a little tutorial to help you to select the "voices" from the Ketron SD2 that you want, and the drum kits too, which I'll do in part 2.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
First some background, which you may already know, if so skip on to the next section.

In virtually all (except the simplest) sound cards, sound modules or soft synths (like VSC), the selection of the voice or instrument that you want is done by by issuing two or sometimes three MIDI commands.

The most important of these is the one known as the "Program Change" message.
It is the upon the receipt of this message, along with its "voice number" from 1 to 128, that the device, hardware or software, will change to the new instrument.

The Program Change message can be modified by including one or two, "Bank Select" messages.
These messages have the effect of calling up different versions of the instrument we're selecting.

These two messages are known as "Bank Select MSB" and "Bank Select LSB" but are also often referred to as "MIDI Controller 0" and "MIDI Controller 32".

In the case of the SD2 it uses the first one of the two available Bank Select messages.
How do we know this?
By looking at pages 37 to 41 of the User Manual (at least of the one I downloaded from Ketron.it).
The pages are called "Technical Tables", and if we look just below the heading at "Voice Bank A", we will notice, in small print, it says: "(Control Change 00, Value = 0)".

Looking at the next page we see, for Voice Bank B, "(Control Change 00, Value = 1)".
Then, for Voice Bank C we see "(Control Change 00, Value = 10)".
For the Presets Bank we see "(Control Change 00, Value = 2)".

Finally, on page 41, we see some data for choosing drum sets.
We'll deal with drum sets in another lesson.

So what we need to know is how to insert these messages within XGworks.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a tutorial written to explain how to insert the necessary "commands" into a MIDI file to change the "instrument" that is played on one of the tracks. The tutorial explains the procedure using the sequencing program XGworks version 3. It assumes little or no prior knowledge of MIDI.

In addition this tutorial will focus upon getting Keytron SD2 instruments correctly selected. The SD2 manual referred to can be downloaded from the Ketron web site.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The voice selected within a sequencer track for a MIDI channel is primarily done using a command known as "Program Change". This Program Change message can be augmented by one or two additional "Bank Select" messages.These commands can appear anywhere several times in a track, but almost always occur just once at the very beginning of each track.

N.B. It is most important that all Bank Select messages in a track occur before the associated Program Change message. We'll look at how we achieve that a little later in the tutorial.

This is what all three messages look like placed at the very start of a track.



The columns L1, L2 and L3 show the exact position where the MIDI message is placed within the song.
L1 is the measure or bar number, L2 is the beat within the bar (with a value of e.g. 1 to 4 for a measure of 4/4/ time), and L3 is known as the "tick", or the fraction of a beat. In XGworks there are always 480 ticks per quarter note, 240 per eighth note, 960 per half note, etc.

Next, in the column headed "Type", we see that we have two "Control" messages followed by a "Program" message, as I described earlier.

In the next column, "Value 1", we see we have the two Bank Select messages "MSB" and "LSB" but note the values in brackets "[ 0]" and "[ 32]". Looking at the Ketron SD2 manual we see that all we need is the Control Change 00 message, NOT the 32 message.

The Program Change message says "Grand Piano" and shows us the value [ 1], which is the General MIDI (GM) number for this voice. (If you look up Voice Bank A in the Ketron SD2 manual you'll find it too says Grand Piano. This is likely to be true for almost every MIDI device on the market today.)

In the column "Value 2" we have "Melody" and "Capital". This is how Yamaha describes its XG voices.
If we are using XGworks to create or modify a MIDI file for a non-Yamaha device then we can ignore these and just concentrate on the two numeric values, in this case both [ 0].

Program Change is a short message and has no Value 2.
Non of these three MIDI messages require a Value 3.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, now that we understand how the Voice or Instrument selection is done in MIDI, how do we get these messages into a MIDI file?

There are several ways to insert or to view these commands within XGworks, some of which are explained in the previous tutorials, but in this case we are going to use the "List View".

There are several ways of displaying the List View:
Double clicking on the track we want displayed (unless we have changed the "Default Window" in the setup menu) will open it up.
Highlighting the track by clicking on it (so it turns red) then selecting "Window" from the menus bar and "List", is another.
Highlighting the track then clicking the second icon (in the block of eight icons including the "XG" one) is a further way.
Highlight the track then right click on it and select "List" from the pop-up is the last way.

So to select a voice on the SD2 we need first to issue a Bank Select (this can also be called a "Control Change 00, for the more technically inclined people) followed by a Program Change message (or "P.Ch" or sometimes "Pr.Ch." as Ketron calls it its manual for the SD2.

It sounds complex, but is actaully very simple to do using XGworks.
Let's say we want to change the instrument in track 1 of a MIDI file to something different.
First we need to open the file in XGworks, then highlight the horizontal bar of data by clicking on it.
It will change colour, probably to red..

Now right click on the track and from the little po-up menu select "List".
Yes, I know, the resulting window looks desperately technical doesn't it? Try not to worry about it.

Look for the Program Change message and also look to see whether or not there is a Control message with Bank Select there too. The two messages may be separated by a number of other MIDI messages like Volume or Pan, etc. That doesn't matter.

If there is already a Bank Select MSB [ 0] in the file, we can simply alter the number in the Value 2 column.
Click in the Value 2 column of the Bank Select message, it'll turn red, then simply type in the bank number you want, from the SD2 manual (pages 37 to 40). Then do the same with the Value 1 column of the Program Change message, changing it to the instrument you require.

Here's one edited to include the Strato El. Guitar from the prests bank (#2).



Don't be concerned that Value 1 of the Program Change message says Silence. It just means that there is no such selection amongst Yamaha XG voices. The value [ 45] is correct according to the SD2 manual and it should work okay.

Give that a try and if you have any questions, fire away.
Sorry it's taken so long!
All the best,
JohnG.

[JohnG]

Now for part two.

How do we enter Bank Select and Program Change messages in the List View?

Simply right click in the place in the List View window where you want the new MIDI message to be entered.
This could be right at the beginning, a little way into the file, or in an otherwise empty screen if we are creating a completely new MIDI file.

A little menu will pop up and we select the "Control Change..." option, as below:



The following Control Change window will open, where we can set the precise position where we wish the message to be entered (Measure, Beat and clock tick).
We will automatically get the first possible Control Change message (message 0, Bank Select MSB) which may well be just what we require.
Then we can change the "Value" (preset at 0) to the bank number we want. We get that by consulting the SD2 manual).
Having set the correct values we can click on the "Enter" button and then "Exit".
We will see the message inserted into the List View window in the place we selected.



Should we require a second Bank Select message (not in the case of the SD2) we can, before we click on "Exit" as above, change the "0 Bank Select MSB" to "32 Bank Select LSB" by scrolling down the drop down list and clicking on the required message. (Notice too that we can input any MIDI Controller message using this menu.)
See below.



Finally we may need to insert a fresh Program Change message.
The procedure is the same but this time we select "Program Change" after right clicking within the List View window.
We change the exact position, if needed, and select the program number we require after first consulting the manual. The next two pictures show the procedure.





And that's it, at least it is for the melody voices.
Drum kits to follow shortly.

[JohnG]

To change the drum kit selected within the SD2 all we need to do is to enter a Program Change message, on MIDI Channel 10, at the beginning of that track. Take a look at the last two pictures above, and the explanation that goes with them.

The SD2 Drum Sets are listed in the left hand column of the listing on page 41 of the manual.

No doubt a little experimentation will be needed to find the most suitable kit.