Hey,
Step aside, fellas, let the MIDI master take care of this...
You will have to program two Bank Change and one Program Change messages into your sequence on the MPC for each sound module patch you want to call up when you play your song.
Example (this is simplified):
Let's say in your song 'My Dizzle is really Smizzle', you have 4 tracks in the MPC sequence:
Track 1 - Drum samples from the MPC
Track 2 - Bass patch on the Triton
Track 3 - String patch on the Proteus
Track 4 - Piano patch on the Proteus
At the moment, whenever you play this song, you have to load the samples into the MPC memory, find the right bass patch on the Triton, and find the right string and guitar patches on the Proteus...it takes a few minutes and can be very annoying.
However, if you look in the back of your manuals for your Triton and Proteus, you will see that there are a series of banks and programs where all the different patches are listed. There will usually be a user bank followed by several other banks...in each bank there will be no more than 128 programs.
Each bank and program has a number associated with it: for example, in the Proteus 2000 manual on page 157 we can see the User Bank 0 followed by a whole bunch of patches. If we look at kb1:Techno Piano, we see that it is next to the number 58.
So, in our song we have to program User Bank 0, Program 58 into the sequence in order for the Proteus to select kb1:Techno Piano by itself.
This is where it gets complicated...sending a Program Change message is pretty easy, but sending a Bank Select message can be complex, because you have to in fact send two messages.
Turn to page 80 in the Proteus manual to the section 'Bank Select Commands'. At the bottom is a small chart which tells you which messages to send in order for the Proteus to load the correct bank into its memory.
Here's how it works: to choose a bank, you have to send two messages: the first message is called the MSB Bank Select, the second message is called the LSB Bank Select (don't worry about what MSB and LSB mean). In our case we want to select our sound from the User Bank 0, so in the sequencer you have to program:
CC#00 value 00 for the first message
CC#32 value 00 for the second message
If we wanted to choose a sound from Composer Bank 6, we'd program:
CC#00 value 04 for the first message
CC#32 value 06 for the second message
Once the bank has been chosen, you can then send a normal Program Change message kwith a value of 58, and the kb1:Techno Piano patrch will load into the synth's memory.
Try this once again...let's select 119. brs:Miles from Composer Bank 7. You can find this on page 160 in the manual.
First we send the correct Bank Select messages:
CC#00 val 04 (this tells the Proteus that you want to select a sound from the Composer soundset...)
CC#32 val 07 (...and this tells the Proteus that you want to select a sound from Bank 7)
then we send the correct Program Change message:
PC val 119
Normally you would program these three messages at the very beginning of your song, it's good practice to never start your song on measure 1 for this reason. It's dead easy to program them into a computer sequencer like Cubase: you simply open the List Editor, draw two CC's and a single PC, then edit their values.
On the MPC and other hardware sequencers, I am certain that there is a way you can manually put these into the sequence, you'll have to read the manual.
You'll have to remember to put these messages on the right tracks as well...if you put a message designed to select a patch on the Proteus onto a track that is transmitting to the Triton, it will select a sound on the Triton!
I can hear you guys now....JESUSTHISISMORECOMPLICATEDTHANIEXPECTED. Yes it is...but remember, 20 years ago when MIDI was invented this was the absolute shizzle...
Synths and sequencers don't know how to talk to each other, you have to tell them what to do. On a computer, however, everything is done from the same interface under the control of the host sequencer, it is very easy for patches to be memorised. I've tried to hammer into everyone's head here that you cannot beat the power of a computer; this is just one example.
Take care,
Nick
