Help with Midi Please.

[HellaRad]

Okay, so right now I have a Roland XP 80 and a Roland Fantom XA. I currently have them hooked together with a midi cable, the out of one going to the in of other and vice versa. My objective is tempo sync and also to sync the the sequencers so I can create songs using the sequencers of both keyboards. This is all I want to do right now, just sync the clocks basically. I do not want any of the musical data going to either keyboard right now and would prefer to keep them isolated in that regard. However, my problem is that no matter what I do I can't seem to manipulate them in this fashion. I can easily get the tempos to sync and have even managed to keep the "slave" keyboard from influencing the sound of the xp80 which I have as my "master" keyboard, or so I think. Anyhow, I can't seem to keep the xp 80 from influencing the sound of the fantom xa. Basically when I strike a key on the xp 80 for say patch 4 in performance mode than patch 4 in performance mode will also play in the fantom xa. I've gone through and turned off all tx and rx options for both keyboards but it still does it. I realize I'm a newb at this stuff but another thing I've found is that the manuals that Roland gives you and even the resources on the internet are rather limited and no one really talks about syncing keyboards for tempo and sequencer purposes only.

Thanks for you Help Guys.

[Zamise]

Don't know how to do it on them, but if all else fails maybe put a sequencer in between them that has midi filtering, or a stand alone midi filter if they make them. Best o luck.

[loungedumore]

Kind of what he said , except I would look in to the " master keyboard's global setup and see if you can filter the midi data it sends and maybe the slave too . There may be a setting to turn off sending / receiving CC messages , program changes etc. . Also not a real solution to your issue , but if one is always the master clock then there is no reason to send midi back from the slave and I can see that causing some other issues if it's set up to send data of any kind .

[HellaRad]

Don't know how to do it on them, but if all else fails maybe put a sequencer in between them that has midi filtering, or a stand alone midi filter if they make them. Best o luck.

Well, it seems unnecessary. One would think I could do everything I need to do with the equipment I currently have. However, can you provide a link to a product you might have in mind in order to point me in the right direction?

Why is it that you think my keyboards don't have midi filtering?

Thanks again for your help guys!

[Zamise]

I don't know if they did or not, just if they don't or can't do what it sounds like you want them to do then a midi filter would be in order. I don't use any personally, but I know my RS7000 can filter midi messages which gave me the idea to give to you. RS7000 would be overkill though, but its midi filtering is pretty easy, just go in and check the type of events you want filtered etc.. If your gear has midi filtering, +1 for them, maybe can do it with them alone.

I think loungedumore might be talking about midi echoback, might go by other names on other gear, but if you don't have that set up right you'll know pretty quickly with an infinite loop back then major midi lag.

The only other thing I might would try, prob won't work, but is to see if you can set the slaved synth to recieve on a blank channel, or just turn midi receive channel to off, then maybe you'll still have the master clock signal receiving to it? Just an idea if it is possible on those synths, I think I remember a few of mine has a midi receive off setting, but I'm not really sure how'd that would due for you or not, if it'd also block the clock too I don't know. Good luck again, hope you can get it figured out.

[Stab Frenzy]

Hmmm, that could be a tricky one. Roland manuals are notoriously vague and annoying to understand in my experience. I had a look at the Fantom XA manual online and I don't think there is a way in the synth to filter out incoming midi messages to ignore them I'm afraid.

I think probably the easiest way to do this would be to use something that sends midi clock and start/stop signals (anything that will do this should work, a drum machine, another synth, whatever you've got lying around) and use that as the master, slaving both keyboards to it which should let you use both sequencers in sync but without having them interact with one another.

To hook it up you'd go Master Device Out -> XP-80 In and XP-80 Thru -> Fantom XA In.

[HellaRad]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I truly appreciate it. I think I'll bookmark this and use it as a reference to solve my problem. In the meantime I need to save for some more gear

[cornutt]

Set the XP80 to transmit on a different channel than the Fantom is receiving on. That way, the Fantom will not receive any note, program change, controller etc. data from the XP80. MIDI Clock is non-channel-specific so the Fantom should still receive that.

[Stab Frenzy]

Set the XP80 to transmit on a different channel than the Fantom is receiving on. That way, the Fantom will not receive any note, program change, controller etc. data from the XP80. MIDI Clock is non-channel-specific so the Fantom should still receive that.

That would only work if you didn't want to use more than 16 channels in total. I imagine that isn't the case otherwise it would be even easier to just use the sequencer on one of the synths and use the second just as a slave module.