Yamaha RM50 Owner's Manual page 21

Selecting a Rhythm Kit
Playing a Pitched Voice
Using Multiple MIDI
Channels
12
This changes the program mode to "pitched voice". You would use this
setting to play a bass part, for example. For the moment, however, press the
[-1/NO] key once more to display the "rhythm kit" setting.
After you have selected the correct channel mode, you can begin choosing a
rhythm kit. First you must select the bank. The RMS50 gives you three rhythm kit
banks to choose from — the preset bank, the internal bank, and the data card
bank — each of which holds 64 kits. These banks are represented by the letters
"Pp", "I", and "C" in the display.
To change the bank selection from the preset bank to the internal bank, use
the [>] key to move the pointer to the letter "P" in the display, then press the
[+1/YES] key.
Now all you have to do is change the rhythm kit number. Press the [>] key
again to move the pointer to the rhythm kit name in the LCD, then press the
[+1/YES] key four times to select kit I-5. The name and number of the kit will
appear in the LCD.
That's all there is to it. The RMSO is ready to play the drums for you.
The procedure for choosing a voice to play as a pitched voice is the same as that
for selecting a rhythm kit, except that you must set "pitched voice" instead
of "rhythm kit" as the channel mode. When you select this mode, the RMSO will
give you 23 voice banks to choose from. This may seem like a lot of voice banks
... but it makes a lot of sense when you consider that the RMS5O can hold 1,128
voices in its internal memory alone!
The number of voices in each bank varies with the bank type. A table de -
scribing the type and number of voices in each bank is presented on page 59.
We mentioned earlier that the RMSO can respond to note messages received on
each of the sixteen MIDI channels. To use the MIDI terminology, the RM50 is a
multitimbral tone generator capable of playing sixteen timbres simultaneously
(within the limits of its sixteen-note polyphonic voicing capacity). Because it is a
rhythm sound module, it differs from other multitimbral tone generators in that
its timbres normally consist of groups of different voices — rhythm kits — rather
than single voices.
@ a