Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 04:01 PM, gowman9 wrote:

> Sorry I'm no MIDI expert - can you do more than change program number
> and volume when you control a sound module from the SD-1?
>
> I specifically want to select a patch bank on a JV1010 (it has six
> banks of 128 patches).

You can't, not without a little hardware help. The VFX series are so 
'dumb' that they won't even properly record a bank change (CC#0 or 
CC#32 (or both) depending on the manufacturer), in the sequencer 
(otherwise you could cheat with it)  even if you set XCTL to CC#0 it 
just records '0' on any value, and never transmits it back on playback 
(actually, it does if XCTL is set to CC#32, but it always sends a 0 
after any value in the sequencer, making it somewhat useless). To make 
matters worse, the event insert function in the sequencer 'track edit' 
is broken, and will only really duplicate an event *sigh*.

One thing I haven't tried, that MIGHT work, would be to take a .mid 
file and write it to an ensoniq format disk as a sequence, using the 
gheibler (sp?) tools. But I have a feeling it won't work, the VFX's 
sequences aren't probably even remotely close to MIDI internally.

Now, there MAY be a sneaky workaround using the 'SysEx send' sequence, 
as many Yamaha and Roland devices will change banks via sysex, as well 
as the CC methods. But I don't know the sysex strings offhand for my 
yamaha to test it, and even if it worked, it would be different for 
roland gear...

The best solution is probably to buy a midi footboard that sends 
bank/pgm changes, perhaps the Behringer will.

Another more obscure solution would be a device that could remap PGM 
changes to Bank+PGM, they used to exist (back when most controllers 
didn't support banks, and expanders were just starting to), but I'm not 
sure if any commercial solutions do now, they're fairly simple devices 
and any DIY midi person could knock one together if you ask around the 
'custom midi boxes' people..