Logic Environment - Midi Instrument can't get rid of GM!

[volovicg]

54 minutes ago, des99 said:

You seem to have misunderstood me. I included in my example to Atlas, sending sysex messages in almost the exact way you describe, so I obviously understand that.

See my post above:

Atlas then suggested that (paraphrasing) "as you mentioned sysex events, can I use that to put complete sysex dumps for patches in", at which point I said no - a bank change message is not designed to send a 5K voice dump, but *is* designed for you to put custom messages in, including things like *small* sysex messages, for devices that need instruction in that manner.

So you are in actual fact entirely in agreement with my understanding of how to use this function, and are in fact demonstrating the exact use case I was describing.

I think you just missed that Atlas was asking to put complete voice dumps in custom bank messages, and I said "that's not what it's for" (I didn't really want to go into the full complexities of that at that point). You seem to think I was saying you can't put sysex events in here, but as I already gave that as a use case in my example, it's clearly not the case.

I don't even know offhand if there is a limit to the length of sysex events in the custom bank message editor.

Des - you are 100% right, I did miss some portions of the thread and obviously wasn't in any way being critical - just providing information as I know that I many times I understand an advanced concept and then have a lightbulb moment about some simplistic fact I did not know. Happens certainly to me all the time - Just wanted to be sure It was the case here.  I do wish they would allow for more than 16 banks as midi as evolved so much since the early days this was defined.

[des99]

No problem! It's just weird when someone says "I disagree with you, here's the way I see it" and then they describe exactly what you just said...

Anyway, a bit of extra clarification is no bad thing for everybody, you're right some of these concepts are complex. When you know how they work it's easy enough to see what's going on through a description (and where that description might be incorrect), but for people less familiar that don't have quite such a grasp on the concepts at work, it can be super confusing for sure.

[volovicg]

Well I disagree with you - I described exactly what you said  don't you agree?

 

[Atlas007]

7 hours ago, des99 said:

…for people less familiar that don't have quite such a grasp on the concepts at work, it can be super confusing for sure.

This is something I realized at times when reading Logic’s documentation…

I guess that may represent quite a challenge balancing conciseness and accessibility when elaborating explanation on abstract or complex matter.

 

[volovicg]

Good conversation on an interesting subject - (thanks Atlas, Des99, David et ail )

[Nunstummy]

On 9/22/2022 at 6:21 PM, David Nahmani said:

When you assign an instrument to a track and choose a bank in the Track inspector or in the patch name window, the messages you've defined as your custom bank messages in that window are sent to the instrument. 

Now I get it.  Thx!

[Nunstummy]

The GM issue I posted was easily solved once I make the XP 30 object assignable and reassigned the track to the XP 30 midi object.  It actually helped me solve a few midi routing issues once I understood how each track has an assignment.  I had also raised the Casio issue and accessing its 255 tones, which lead to more discussion.  As it turns out, the General Midi tones in the Casio are on a separate chip than the main 255 tones and not accessible via midi.  Surprisingly, somebody from Casio responded to me…. I had zero expectations that this old Casio was useful - just cleaning out my closet 😆

Still, this topic is interesting and using old synths and keyboards is popular. Sending custom messages might be necessary in some cases.

Thank you guys for the insight and help!

[Atlas007]

Considering that some old MIDI gear has that SysEx parameter that could be enabled/disabled, does that mean it can be somehow remotely configured/controlled (to a certain extent depending of its MIDI implementation chart) besides patch/bank dump?

Does Logic features some dedicated functions in that regard, besides the custom bank messages? Or similar to those? Or does one has to resort to record SysEx in a MIDI region?

[gacki]

4 minutes ago, Atlas007 said:

Considering that some old MIDI gear has that SysEx parameter that could be enabled/disabled, does that mean it can be somehow remotely configured/controlled (to a certain extent depending of its MIDI implementation chart) besides patch/bank dump?

Yes, indeed. Many devices had "SysEx parameter changes" which could be used to control, well, single parameters.

6 minutes ago, Atlas007 said:

Does Logic features some dedicated functions in that regard, besides the custom bank messages? Or similar to those? Or does one has to resort to record SysEx in a MIDI region?

Various Environment objects can send SysEx. Back in the day there were numerous specific environments that were basically complete editors for synthesizers. Naturally such changes could also be recorded onto tracks and played back.

In general SysEx in a sequencer is rather tricky because a SysEx message blocks the MIDI bus for its duration - and the duration can be rather long. This can throw off the whole timing quite badly.

So a SysEx dump during a song is almost always a recipe for disaster; and SysEx parameter changes (while smaller) are still an issue when it comes to timing-critical parts.

[Atlas007]

@gacki: Thanx for your informative reply!

[Nunstummy]

26 minutes ago, gacki said:

Yes, indeed. Many devices had "SysEx parameter changes" which could be used to control, well, single parameters.

I recall some Windows based library management / editors for popular Roland synths, ROMplers, and workstations that used SysEx in the late 90s, but I had little or no understanding of exactly how.  The net result was that you could dump the patch list from a synth into the editor, rearrange or load different patches, then re-populate the synth.  When I first started using the Logic multi-instrument object, I thought you should be able to populate the bank/patch list from a SysEx dump.

[gacki]

7 minutes ago, Nunstummy said:

When I first started using the Logic multi-instrument object, I thought you should be able to populate the bank/patch list from a SysEx dump.

Back in the day we had something called "Autolink"...

Emagic at this time had a universal SysEx editor called "SoundDiver" (some people might recognize my avatar: it's the icon of the final version) that did the whole librarian/editor thing and then was able to provide those names via "Autolink" to Logic.

Populating the multi instrument names directly from a SysEx dump would probably not a good idea - there are so many (and sometimes quite buggy) SysEx implementations that it was already quite a challenge to make them work in SoundDiver.

 

[des99]

21 minutes ago, Nunstummy said:

When I first started using the Logic multi-instrument object, I thought you should be able to populate the bank/patch list from a SysEx dump.

@gacki has the answer for this.

I still rely on SoundDiver for a bunch of sysex related things, crusty though it is in it's final form...

From it's earlier version, for us old-skoolers:-

[Atlas007]

I still have SD3 (in its box)...

Just reinstalled it on my PC. Works just fine!

Ah, nostalgia...!

Edited September 25, 2022 by Atlas007