I am a music teacher, and I do a lot of sequencing for the lessons I give. Many of my students have Roland products, including their digital pianos, but none of them the same two. When I create MIDI files, to what channels or tracks should I assign the various instruments so that the buttons for the "tracks" correctly function? For those who don't know it, the Roland Digital pianos don't allow you to turn off "track 1" or "channel 1" - they say "Bass" or "Melody".
If I had a Roland Piano at home I could easily figure this out myself, but since I don't, any help I could get would be appreciated.

It has been a while since you asked this question so you might have already figured out an answer or given up. If you are still interested I'll give you what I know about this area. When using a sequencer like Cakewalk, for instance, it maters not what track you assign to what instrument. For the most part it seem that everyone uses track 1 as a control track, and track 10 is used for drum tracks. For a long time track 16 was used for the drum tracks, but now it's track ten. For the sake of less confusion, I always try to make the sequencer track match the midi track. (Seq trak 1 = midi track 1, and so on till seq track 16 = midi track 16. Then if you have a second midi string (B), seq track 17 =(B) midi track 1. etc.)
Assigning the programs to the tracks is simply your choice. You could put the bass part on seq track one if you want, and then put strings, for the melody, on seq track 2.
The bass instrument would be set to receive on midi track one and the string instrument would be set to receive on midi track 2.
Assignments of the voices, (or patches, as they are called) is done with PC commands in the event window for each seq track.
I hope this is the type of information you wanted to receive. I won't go on till I know we are going in the right direction.
Cheers
Majik

Majik-
Your reply is a good start for beginners, but my problem is specific to Roland instruments. I don't know how to explain it any better than I did, so let me give you a hypothetical example.
I have a student with a Roland piano who likes Disney music and is ready to be inroduced to the key of Bb. So, I go into Band-In-A-Box and create a backing sequence for "Under the Sea" using a suitable Calypso rhythm. I then create a MIDI file out of the BIAB file and open it up in a Cakewalk sequencer. BIAB has automatically assigned its various instruments to various channels: typically, melody is on 4, bass on 2, drums on 10 and piano on 3, etc. I use Cakewalk to tweak the file a little and then save it to disk and bring the disk to the student's house. I want to show the student what the various instruments are doing by turning off some channels but not others. I also want her to "turn off" the melody all week and play it herself. However, her Roland piano does not have buttons for the channels labeled by number; instead, the buttons are labeled "Melody" or "Bass" or "Accompaniment." So, I hit the "Melody" button to turn it off, but instead the bass disappears! Or I hit the "Accompaniment" button and the melody disappears! I figure the problem is that I am assigning the instruments to "incorrect" channels. But I don't know which channel is supposed to be what in the Roland scheme of things! Is the "Melody" button in fact a "Channel 1" button? Drums at channel 10 do seem to work on the "Drums" button, but everything else is messed up. Has anyone out there figured this out?
I guess I have 2 other options: 1) Ask a student if I really can come to their house with a MIDI file that I have well documented and spend an hour or so figuring out what disappears when, and then changing the channel assignments back home and then going BACK to the student's house to double-check it, OR 2) going to Roland's website and asking them. Well, I guess there's a 3rd option; buy a Roland product and figure it out at home!
Thanks for any help you can give.