After several years of using FastTracker 2 I decided to learn to use Renoise because of its MIDI support. My synth is Roland SCB-55 AKA SCD-15 on a selfmade Waveblaster-to-MIDI converter. MIDI interface used is the SB X-Fi Platinum’s MIDI I/O.
Right now I’m having a problem selecting different drumkit during playback. The 92 00xx program change command works just fine for melodic instruments on other channels but for some reason it doesn’t seem to work with percussion. I can select the drumkit properly from “Instr. settings” but I’d like to do it also while playback, for example from “Power” (PC#17) to “TR-808” (PC#26). This issue is existent with both X-Fi’s internal synth and Roland.
Have you tried a lot of different program changes? Somehow in the back of my mind I just have a feeling that the drum programs on Roland-synths are occupying several program-numbers, like the first kit uses program 0-7 or even more. Tried program 127 or 59 f.ex?
What about bank changes then? Does that work on the drum-channel?
I’m not sure if bank changes are possible to do from the pattern editor or if it just isn’t documented here yet: http://tutorials.renoise.com/?n=Renoise.EffectCommands
Meanwhile you can still try to change the bank from the Midi Properties. As a workaround you could probably use a couple of instruments with different bank-numbers, if this IS the solution to the problem, that is.
Bank changes from Instrument Settings do nothing with drumkits, they are supposed to be selected by program changes with my SC (SC for Sound Canvas).
For melodic instruments in Instrument Settings bank changes work in a weird way involving multiplier of 128 for bank number. If I want variation 8 I’ll have to put something between 1024-1151 (8128) as a bank number or if I want variation 127 (the MT-32 tonemap) I’ll have to put 16256-16383 (127128) respectively.
The synth is actually able to play two drum parts at a time but I believe setting it up involves SysEx messages and I don’t quite understand them. It would be easiest to just change the kit via program change if it worked…
Something weird: The program change on drums worked like charm with Audigy 2 and Roland SC-155. This is obscure especially since SCB-55 and SC-155 synths should be quite much the same. I’m investigating the issue whether it’s because of my DB->MIDI converter, SB X-Fi MIDI I/O, SCB-55 behavior or something wrong with my PC. At this point it is certain that Renoise is NOT causing this issue, at least alone.
Sysex messages are currently not supported by Renoise.
It is one of the wishes amongst MIDI extension wishes of many users.
You can reach a lot by using MIDI CC messages but they are useless in this case if you can’t assign specific scripts or commands to those messsages on your MIDI device.
My knowledge of MIDI in that ground is not deep unfortunately so i hope someone else could supply a few tricks or workarounds if they exist for this problem.