I am hoping that one of our GEM representatives might be able to help me out here!

I am setting up two ways of controlling my Promega3. One is from the built in keyboard plus GEM three pedal unit (with continuous sustain) and the other is via a Kawai action with its own dedicated pedal board.

The Kawai sustain pedal is also continuous but has a crudely stepped output.

The Kawai sustain sends out values 0, 15, 31, 47, 63, 79, 95, 111, 127 whilst the GEM sustain sends out 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc..

However, I know that there is only a small active range in the GEM values when received by the Promega 3. For example, this might be gradual between 40 and 60 but full on or off outside those limits.

What I want to do is to map the controller values from the Kawai to suit the sensitive range of the Promega3. To do that, I need to know the upper and lower limits for the active area of the GEM sustain.

That therefore, is my question.

To summarise:

What are the lower and upper sustain pedal values on the Promega3 which bound the zone where the continuous pedal effects start?

I am sure this can't be confidential information so if any GEM wizard can supply this information, I'll be really grateful!

Thanks in advance,

Mark

Hi Mark,

Why don't you just extend the length of the cables of the GEM pedal unit and use it under the other keyboard?

Hi David,

I'm afraid that can't be done. The Kawai pedals are integral to the piano (Kawai Concert Artist 7) and to remove the Kawai pedals to make space for the GEM pedals would mean removing a key structural part of the Kawai chassis!

My original plan was to move the GEM pedals over to the Kawai but I overlooked the space problem This is why I need to remap the MIDI CC values.

Mark

Hi Mark,

I am assuming that the sustain values from the Kawai were discovered by viewing the MIDI output through a software MIDI monitor like MIDIox or some other program.



I am not sure how remapping the MIDI output is going to make things any better. The Promega is looking for a smooth transition from 0-127 on controller #64 for the damper physical model to function properly.

Unless you have some way of interpolating between the absent 15 steps between each value sent from the Kawai, I don't see how mapping is going to help.

I am not saying it is not possible, I just am unaware of a way to do it. Hopefully someone else out there will jump in and save the day.

Best Regards,

Dave

Hi Dave,

I can't remember who told me this but it was someone from GEM but they said that the sustain pedal only has about 8 "positions" so even though the pedal hardware is transmitting the full range of MIDI CCs, the PM3 software is only acting on 8 of them (of which two are on and off and the rest will be the active gradual range).

This can be shown (to some extent) by operating the pedal and listening how nothing happens until the pedal hits the "hot zone" at about mid travel. The problem is working out the exact start and end values of this hot zone.

The MIDI CC values from the Kawai were indeed read through a sequencing program so I know those values are correct. What I want to try doing is to take the middle 6 values and re map them to spread them over the hot zone of the PM3 sustain pedal. I can do this easily using a host like Cubase or Nuendo.

So Dave, any chance you could have a word with the right people please and see what the pedal limits are?

Thanks and regards,

Mark

Mark and Dave,

The Promega series I do beleave does look at the full travel, and the reason that you don't hear much at first, is because it is acting like a real piano, you have to travel a little ways down on the pedal to start to hear the un-dampered strings. The second reason that I also base this information on, is that we did for a while have a problem with the instrument sending out "ghost" midi messages to other midi devices that did not handle the constant stream of pedal values even on a resting state.

regards,
Paul Davis
Generalmusic Corp.