Will the G2M Control a Yamaha MM6 Keyboard?

[MarkFromHawaii]

Probably a dumb question but I'd really like to know. I saw this device in Muscians Friend and am intrigued by the posibilities.

[johnmc]

Hi, the MM6 seems to have standard MIDI-IN DIN connections and its MIDI implementation chart shows it will recognise all the messages that the G2M transmits so it certainly looks like it would work.

[MarkFromHawaii]

Thank you John. As I was searching YouTube last night for more demo viddies on the G2M I came accross one from our local Easy Music Center. I'm going to give them a ring to see if they have the G2M in stock.

[MarkFromHawaii]

I got the G2M today along with a 5-pin, 20 ft. midi cable. At the store I tried it out with a Yamaha MO6 and it seemed to work OK. I've got it set up at home now with my MM6 and Strat and it seems to only play the default grand piano voice. I can change the voices on the keyboard and play them on the keyboard but my guitar will play the piano sound only. I noticed that if I select a pre-recorded demo song or user song, it'll play one of the voices used in the song such as electric piano, slap bass or jazz organ. I've tried changing some of the utility midi settings on the MM6 but this does nothing to remedy the situation. For now, my work around is to configure a new user song with a track with the voice I want and then record/play a few random notes on the keybord. This becomes the new voice triggered by the G2M. Any ideas for a real solution?

[johnmc]

Hi Mark,

The G2M transmits on MIDI channel 1 (this is fixed), so whichever sound you want to play will have to be set to receive on channel 1. I'm guessing your keyboard has the piano as default on channel 1.

John.

[MarkFromHawaii]

Thanks John. A MIDI Implementation Chart is located on pages 108-109 of the MM6 Manual:

http://www.motifator.com/index.php?ACT= ... board_id=1

Could you tell me what information would clue me as to the MM6 not being able to read data on ch. 1? I can live with the slightly time-consuming procedure of re-recording a new voice in a user song to use the G2M but I'm just curious how to interpret the chart.

Thanks again,
Mark

[johnmc]

Hi Mark,

The MIDI chart shows is a bit obscure but it shows that it receives on channels 1-16. Also, on p.73 it says

The MIDI IN connector receives MIDI messages from external MIDI devices. This can be used to control the MM6 or play it’s tone-generator from an external MIDI device.

However, there doesn't seem to be any information about how received MIDI messages get routed to sounds. P74 mentions that the main voice transmits on channel 1 but it says nothing about receiving. I would have assumed that the main voice would receive on channel 1 but from what you said, it sounds like this is not the case. The only other thing I can think of is that they have mapped track 1 to channel 1, track 2 to channel 2 etc. so the only way to assign a sound to channel 1 is to create a user song as you have done.

The manual also mentions connecting to a PC via USB-MIDI to be able to record/play back performances to a PC sequencer. Have you tried that? I wondered if it might help shed some light on how the MIDI routing works.

John.

[MarkFromHawaii]

Hi John,

The MM6 came with Steinberg's Cubase AI 4.0. I played around with it for a couple days but got frustrated with latency issues - we're talking REAL bad. Maybe my old Dell PC running XP can't handle it. Most of my home recording is done on a Boss 1180CD, a nice plug and play stand alone workstation. Once running (just registering Cubase is a whole other issue) I had high hopes for Cubase but alas, it just didn't work out for me. In any case, I totally agree about the midi documentation for the MM6 - it leaves much to be desired. I will use my work around solution for now.

Thanks for all the help,
Mark