Hi:

My son has procured an A50 Roland keyboard which he is using to input to Encore on a PC. We can get midi out of the keyboard (sometimes) but really don't know how to set up the keyboard.

What we are trying to do is understand how to set up say patch A11 to output a piano sound using the whole keyboard on MIDI channel 1.

We have been spending a lot of time in the manual and playing with the A50 and we have determined that some of the patches have sounds.

We can change patches and we can protect and unprotect memory
and we can copy patches and we can even set up key 28 to key 103 to output on midi channel 1 with a transpose of 0. (Page 45)

The thing we can't do yet and it is frustrating us no end, is to assign a sound (any sound) to a patch. When we cycle through the patches there are some patches with sounds, but we haven't figured out how to control this.

Can anyone help us.........

Mike + Paul Montaigne

Hi Mike,

I too have an A-50 Master keyboard. I think what you want to do is to assign a "MIDI Program Change" to one of the zones in the patch on the A-50.

I'm not familiar with "Encore", but it's some kind of notation/sequencer program, isn't it?
Anyway, what I wonder is what sound source you are using. Is it a sound card in the PC, or some external module... Well, it might not matter.

What you need to figure out is what MIDI Program numbers that has piano sounds. If the sound source is General Midi(GM)-compliant, pianos should be on programs 1 - 8. You may also need to pay attention to what MIDI Channel the zone is sending on, but this depends on the setup of your gear (how the sequncer and module behaves)...

Then you set the active Zone to output Program 1. I don't remember exactly in what menu the "program change" parameter is, but it's somewhere in the "Zone" hierachy. I can look it up, if you'd like...

I can also tell you that I'm working on an PC-editor (Windows 95/98/NT) for this unit, though I cannot promise a release date. It will however take much of the agony out of programming the A-50, as it shows all Patch parameters on a single screen. If you are interested in obtaining a beta of this software, please let me know. It should be ready in two weeks or so, but I can make no promises...

Oh, one last comment...I don't know whether your A-50 came with the last owners patches installed, but I suppose it did, so if I was you, I would do a "factory default reset". Beware that all patch settings will be lost, but your programming efforts are likely to be easier by doing this, since you will start from a well defined setup. The default setup is in the manual, towards the end of it...

Anyway, here's the re-initialization procedure:
While holding the first, third, and fourth buttons under the display, press CHANNEL. Then press any cursor button.

Hope this helps
/ Micke

[This message has been edited by Crimson (edited 08-11-1999).]