Using The P-100 In An Extended Midi System - Yamaha P-100 Owner's Manual

Using the P-100 with an extended MIDI system
Thanks to the great variety of MIDI devices now available, extended MIDI systems come in such a variety of shapes
and degrees of complexity that we cannot fully cover all the possibilities here. However, we would like to give you an
example of how the P-100's MIDI merge function might be used in a fairly simple extended system consisting of the
P-100, a tone generator, and a synthesizer.
The illustration above shows the SY99, the P-100, and the TG77 hooked up in series, or what is known as a daisy
chain. This setup constitutes a lot of performance power, as it includes three multitimbral tone generators, two of
which — the P-100 and the TG77 — can be controlled by either of the two keyboards, or by the SY99's sequencer.
When the SY99's keyboard or sequencer transmits on the P-100's receive channel, the P-100 will respond as described
on the previous page. Since its MIDI merge function is turned on, however, it will also pass messages it receives on all
sixteen MIDI channels along to the TG77. The SY99 will thus be able to control both the P-100's two voices and any
of the TG77's 16 timbres.
You could achieve the same result by connecting the TG77 to the P-100's MIDI THRU terminal instead of the MIDI
OUT. But then, you would not be able to control the TG77 using the P-100's keyboard. That is the charm of MIDI
merge function: it allows you to control a single device with either (or both) of two other devices. In the system
pictured above, the P-100 will control the TG77 as described previously, letting you play both of these instruments
without affecting the SY99. (You might be tempted to connect the TG77's MIDI THRU terminal to the SY99's MIDI
IN in order to let the P-100 control the SY99, but you shouldn't. The P-100'S MIDI merge function would end up
passing data received from the SY99 through the TG77 and back to the SY99, causing all of the notes to double up.)
To sum this system up, then, all three instruments, will respond when you play the SY99, and only two will respond
when you play the P-100. By turning off some of the timbres in the SY99 and the TG77, you could come up with a
number of variations that will let you play only one of the three instruments at any given time.
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